It is not my purpose, in this chapter, to go into great detail in telling of the development of ships from this time on, for the designs were infinitely great, the variations numerous, and there were, until the 19th Century, but two vital improvements—the compass and a considerable improvement in the ability of sailing ships to make headway against the wind.
Rome, during most of the centuries of her supremacy, controlled every sea within her reach. The Mediterranean was entirely hers, and her galleys and her soldiers ventured into the Atlantic and visited parts of the world that seemed to stay-at-home Romans to be the very fringes of the earth. The ships they built grew in size: the corn-ships, which brought food to the capital from Egypt, are thought to have been as much as 200 feet long, 45 feet broad, and 43 feet deep. When St. Paul was shipwrecked he was in company with 276 others, and the ship they were on carried a cargo besides. These ships carried three masts, each having huge square sails, and on one mast was spread a square topsail as well.
Roman ships that voyaged to Britain probably gave to the wild men of the North—including those who later became the Vikings—the idea of the sail, and probably all the people of northern Europe learned the use of sails, directly or indirectly, from the Romans.
Ultimately Rome fell beneath the onslaughts of the Barbarians, and the Mediterranean seat of power (although still called the Roman Empire) moved to Byzantium, now called Constantinople.
Here Western civilization resisted for centuries the attacks of the Mohammedans, until the great city on the Bosphorus fell before the armies of Mohammed in 1453.
A PHŒNICIAN BIREME
Despite the fact that the Phœnicians did more with ships than any other ancient peoples before the Greeks and Romans, little is known of Phœnician ships. They developed the bireme, an oar- and sail-driven ship with two “banks” of oars, and circumnavigated Africa.
During all of the centuries that Constantinople had been holding out against the growing power of the Mohammedans, the west and north of Europe were being remade. For a time Western civilization seemed doomed, for the Moorish Empire in North Africa had pushed across the Strait of Gibraltar, had subjugated Spain, and had crossed the Pyrenees into France, where, fortunately, their great army was put to rout at the battle of Tours in 732. But although they were driven from France they maintained their hold upon Spain, and not until the Granada Moors were defeated by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 was Spain again free of them. They controlled North Africa from Suez to Gibraltar and introduced many Eastern ideas. It is probable that the lateen sail, which originated in Egypt and is still in common use in the Mediterranean, owes at least some credit to the Moors for its introduction to western Europe.
In addition to the influx of Mohammedans, civilized Europe had to contend with the hordes of barbarians that descended from the wild country to the north of the Alps, for the most of Europe except its Mediterranean fringe was a dark and barbarous land. But the centuries that we call the Middle Ages saw a growth of culture, a growth of learning, a growth of nationalism that were to make the modern world. In all of this ships played a vital part.