The next in point of time and importance on record was the highly renowned expedition of the Argonauts for the golden fleece to Colchis, a country of Asia, on the Euxine sea. Immediately after this was the colonization of Cyrene, in Africa, by Battus, one of the companions of Jason, in his Colchian expedition. Shortly afterwards, the Grecian states united against Phrygian treachery and the abuse of Grecian hospitality; forming another most memorable epoch in the history of the world. We are informed the Grecian Neptune, or as mythology styles him a God of the Saturnian family, for the great service he did his father, Saturn, or Noah, against the Titans, had the seas given to him. History informs us that the first inventor of rowing vessels was a citizen of Corinth; and likewise that the first naval war was between the Samians and Corcyrians. The history of Ithicus, translated into Latin by St. Jerome, affirms that Griphon, the Scythian, was the inventor of long-boats; and Strabo also gives the honour of the invention of the anchor to another Scythian, the famous Anacharsis, whilst Greece herself by her historians, ascribes its invention to Eupolemus. Also, it is said, that Icarus invented the sail, and others, various other pieces of the component parts of ships and boats. The specification of such other imperfect memoirs, many of fabulous appearance, may be of no great importance.
It appears certain that among the four sons of Javan, the son of Japhet, the grandson, and other the posterity of Noah, who peopled the “Isles of the Gentiles,” the Grecian Islands must long before the days of Minos have used those seas, from the insular nature of their inhabitants. And it certainly does not appear extravagant to us, to presume that this people were among the first who navigated the seas. Mankind in various parts of the world, being stimulated by the same necessities, urged by the same wants, and possessing the same means, might probably produce similar inventions to each other. Most, indeed, had occasion to navigate lakes, and cross rivers. They accordingly constructed such machines as would answer their purpose of passage or migration. So were rafts and canoes, formed of canes, osiers, twigs, &c., where they grew, which they fashioned like boats, and then covered with skins of various animals; others formed rafts of wood; whilst some others fashioned canoes, having hollowed out trees for that purpose. One way or other, each people thus possessed a marine, proper for their purpose it is true, but in various degrees of excellence. This was the case with Greeks as well as barbarians of all nations; all these people, excepting the immediate descendants of Noah, might, perhaps, lay a feasible claim to the honour of the original invention of these articles; and, having never seen such, they virtually have each a good title to the distinction. Indeed, many of them might have taken the idea for such invention from the policy of certain animals, and the nature of others; to instance the sagacity of the beaver and his raft, and the little nautilus with his swelling sail: hence they might have adopted from that animal, and that piscatory insect, the idea of a raft, and also of a vessel with a sail.
In latter days we find the Teutonic Saxons first came to this country, according to Mr. Turner, the Anglo-Saxon historian, in vessels they called cyules-kells by Sir Walter Raleigh. Marine vessels have borne a variety of names, as well as of numerous figures, from the gondola of the Venetian to the canoe of the Esquimaux,—the British man-of-war to the ponderous bonaventure in which the Doge annually espouses the sea.
All those nations, too, through whose hands the maritime power has passed, from time to time, as they have been instructed by experience, or taught by necessity, might repeatedly have made additions and improvements in naval architecture: some calculated for mercantile utility, while others have only attended to warlike strength, and some to answer both purposes, like our Indiamen. But now, the British navy, being supplied with the best materials, and having as ingenious workmen as any, with the addition of the warlike children of the soil, may openly defy all nations, and proudly claim the sovereignty of the seas where her flag has been flying ’midst the battle and the breeze for so many years.
But the most important improvement in Navigation—propelling vessels by steam—has been left to our own times. The steam-engine was first applied to small vessels for the coasting or river trade; but it has now increased to vessels of the largest size,—in fact, the most part of the British navy are steamships. In former times before the introduction of this valuable auxiliary, the passage between England and America was tedious and uncertain, sometimes taking months, but rarely less than from four to six weeks, according to the state of the weather; but now the case is altered. There are a regular line of steamships, one of which leaves Liverpool every week, and the voyage is performed with almost positive certainty in from twelve to fourteen days, independent of the rude Boreas, or the boisterous Atlantic. These vessels are of the largest size and handsomely fitted up for the accommodation of passengers.
LIGHT-HOUSES.
A light-house, in marine architecture, is a building, or watch-tower, erected on the sea-shore, to serve as a land-mark to mariners, on a low coast, by day, and, in any situation, to inform them of their approach to land in the night;—being of most essential utility in causing them to take soundings, avoid shoals, rocks, &c.; or else it is a building erected on a rock in the sea, which, from its situation, would be extremely dangerous to vessels, were not some intimation given of the existence of a rock, where it is locally situated. Of this latter description is the celebrated Eddystone light-house, off Plymouth.
Although this species of architecture is not likely to have been so general in extreme antiquity, because it could not have been essentially necessary to any except to those nations who, from the proximity of their situation to the coast, or other circumstances, pursued maritime concerns; or to those whose connexions rendered the encouragement of the marine of other nations important.
The oldest building of this description, which we believe to be upon record, is the famous Pharos erected on the Egyptian coast, which, being very low land, and exposed entirely to the almost constant west winds coming up the Mediterranean from the vast Atlantic, must, of necessity, have made the port of modern Alexandria, anciently called Dalmietta, very dangerous. It was originally erected by Ptolemy Philadelphus, for the encouragement and convenience of the Phœnicians, who were accounted the foreign factors of that empire; as the Egyptians possessed an unconquerable aversion to the sea, and therefore they never obtained its sovereignty: whilst the former people were the first who obtained the supremacy of that sea.