While the Egyptians were the first to picture their ships, it is not certain that they were the first to have ships of real size and sea-going ability, for the very temples and tombs on the walls of which are shown the ships that I have described have also the records of naval victories over raiders from other lands who must have made the voyage to the Egyptian coast in order to plunder the wealth of that old centre of civilization.
The Egyptians, however, were never a sea-going people in the sense that the Phœnicians were. But strange as it may be, the Phœnicians, despite the fact that they probably invented the alphabet, did not make the first record, or, as a matter of fact, any very important records, of their great development in the ship-building art. The earliest picture of which we know of Phœnician ships is on the wall of an Assyrian palace and dates back only to about 700 B. C. which was after the Assyrians had conquered the Phœnicians and had for the first time (for the Assyrians were an inland people) come in contact with sea-going ships.
By this time the Phœnicians had had many years of experience on the sea, and the Assyrian representation shows a ship of more advanced design than the Egyptians had had.
There are few records, however, from which we can gain much knowledge of Phœnician ships, although we know they ventured out of the Mediterranean and were familiar with the coasts of Spain, Portugal, France, and even England, where they went to secure tin. And as I mentioned earlier, they may even have circumnavigated Africa, and it seems likely that they invented the bireme and the trireme, thus solving the question of more power for propulsion.
A bireme is a boat propelled by oars which has the rowers so arranged that the oars overlap and form two banks or rows, one above the other. A trireme is similar except that there are three banks. With this arrangement a boat may have twice or three times as many rowers (in these old boats there was never more than one man to an oar) without lengthening the hull.
To the Greeks we owe the first detailed accounts of the art of ship-building and of ship construction. In early Greek history the vessels were small and were usually without decks, although some of them had decks that extended for part of their length. They carried crews that ranged up to a hundred or more, and, in the democratic fashion of the early Greeks, they all took part in the rowing of the ship, with the possible exception of the commander. At this early period great seaworthiness had not been developed, and there are many accounts of the loss of ships in storms and of the difficulty of navigating past headlands and along rocky coasts. Later, Greek ships cruised the Mediterranean almost at will, but ship design and construction had first to develop and the development took centuries.
Even in those days there was a marked difference between the ships intended for commerce and those intended for war. The war vessels—and the pirate vessels, which of course were ships of war—were narrow and swift, while the ships of commerce were broad and slow: broad because of the merchant’s desire to carry large cargoes, and slow because the great beam and the heavy burdens prevented speed.
AN ESKIMO KAYAK
These small canoes are made of a light frame covered with skins.