This luxurious ship was built on Lake Nemi, Italy, during the reign of the Emperor Caligula (37-41 A. D.). It sank to the bottom at some unknown period, and has often been examined by divers, for it is still in a fair state of preservation. It is 250 feet long, and its equipment was of the most luxurious kind. Suggestions for its recovery have been made, and it is possible that the lake, which is a small one, may be drained in order to study this old ship and another one that is lying near it.
In 1922 A. Y. Gowan sailed a 98-foot motor cruiser around the world. That the boat was not designed for such a voyage is proved by the fact that her gasolene capacity was not great enough to permit her to make the longer jumps between ports entirely under her own power. This necessitated tows, and for many a weary mile of the way she wallowed and jerked at the end of a towline. Yet this yacht, intended though she was for protected waters, made the voyage, although she must have been uncomfortable to a degree in rough weather. This voyage proves that with a little thought, in these days of weather reports and compiled data on prevailing winds and stormy seasons, a small vessel may lay her course so as to avoid the most serious bad weather—barring, of course, local storms that do, sometimes, attain great ferocity. It is well known, for instance, that during the summer months the North Atlantic is generally mild while during some of the winter months it grows exceptionally boisterous and ugly. Therefore the small boat that would cross it had best choose the summertime. Should Mr. Gowan’s little yacht ever find herself in the grip of a really serious North Atlantic winter gale she would run a most excellent chance of never seeing pleasant weather again. Yet, as I have said, a tiny rowboat crossed this very stretch of water in the summer of 1896.
A EUROPEAN SIDE-WHEELER
These steamers are often seen in European waters and are widely used as excursion boats.
All of this merely means that good judgment, based upon experience and compiled information, is about the most valuable bit of sea-going equipment that the deep-sea small-boat sailor can have. Nor does that apply only to small-boat sailors. Nor, again, is it always necessary for the sailor, merely because his boat is small, to feel that he must stay in port in heavy weather or founder if it come upon him while he is on the sea. Not by such a doctrine have the fishermen of Gloucester made for themselves the reputation that they have. Summer and winter they take their schooners out to the Grand Banks and live out the greatest storms that try those storm-tossed waters. From the deck of a 50-foot Gloucester fisherman I have seen the seas tower high before her bow, seemingly about to crush the craft, and have seen the mighty troughs, which, from the crests of the great seas, seemed abysmal in their depth, yet did the little vessel ride through them without so much as a splintered rail. These schooners come in loaded with fish and often encrusted with ice. It is true that their sails are sometimes split, their masts sometimes swept overboard. Yet is the fatality among such vessels light, despite the fact that they face most of the storms that blow each winter on the Banks.
Had it not been that small boats can safely sail the seas it is difficult to see how we ever could have arrived at the era of great ships. Ancient history tells us of ships that, at least until the prime of Greece and Rome, could not by any stretch of the imagination be called large. Yet the old ships of the Phœnicians sailed, even before the days of Greece, all over the Mediterranean, out into the Atlantic, as far north as the English Channel, at least, and on one occasion, around Africa. Then came Greece, and ships grew somewhat in size. Then Rome appeared, and ships grew larger still, although most of them still were small, as always. By the time of Caligula (37-41 A. D.) Roman shipwrights had greatly increased the size of their large ships, as is proved by a ship now resting on the bottom of Lake Nemi in Italy.
During and following the Dark Ages ships had again become small, and only gradually did they enlarge. Even by the time of the Spanish Armada a ship of 1,000 tons was considered huge. Yet such ships, as I said, were considered very large, not more than a handful of the more than three hundred ships in the Armada and the British fleet opposing it approaching such a measurement, and hardly more than three or four exceeding it. Among the 197 British ships that opposed the Armada but seven were more than 600 tons.
A HUDSON RIVER STEAMER