Ships of the seven seas

by Hawthorne Daniel

On August 3, 1492, he sailed from Palos in command of three little ships—three ships that are now more famous than any others that ever sailed the seas; and with these ships—the Santa Maria, the Niña, and the Pinta—he discovered a new world and opened new seas that now are crossed and recrossed constantly by such a fleet of ships as Columbus could never have imagined.

By the end of the 15th Century, as I have suggested, ships had gone through a series of developments that had made them more seaworthy and more reliable, but still, from the viewpoint of to-day, they were crude and inefficient craft in which the modern sailor would hesitate to venture on the smoothest of summer seas. The ships of war, so far as the Mediterranean was concerned, still favoured the oar, and still used sails as auxiliary power, although England and France, and the other newer nations of the north of Europe, were developing sturdy ships that depended almost solely upon sails, although they often carried great overgrown oars called sweeps, with which the ships could be moved slowly in the absence of the wind.

The galleys of the Mediterranean were no longer the many-banked ships of Greece and Rome, but were, instead, low, narrow vessels with huge oars from thirty to fifty feet long, to each of which several men were assigned, thus securing the man power that the many-banked ships had utilized with more numerous oars. In order to manage these ungainly oars a framework was built out from each side of the ship, and attached to this framework were the oarlocks. This arrangement has its present-day counterpart in racing shells which, being barely wide enough for the rowers, cannot balance its oars in locks attached directly to its sides. Therefore a framework of steel rods is built opposite each seat in order that the oarlock may be at such a distance from the rower that he may get the necessary leverage to make each stroke effective.

The Crusades, which began in the 12th Century, had acquainted western Europe with many luxuries of the East hitherto unknown to the rougher people of the West, and as a result, trade increased greatly, necessitating the building of many ships, and as is always the case, progress was made because new minds were put to work. In this case ships improved. Metal nails, expensive as they were, for they were made, of course, by hand, had come into use, and new designs took the place of old.

The ship that, at the time of Columbus, was the most popular was the caravel. To our eyes she was ungainly, crude, and unseaworthy, yet these clumsy vessels, with their high sterns and overhanging bows, made most of the early voyages of discovery—voyages that for romance, for adventure, for danger, and for importance, rank higher than any others that were ever made.

Two of Columbus’s three ships were caravels. The Niña, however, was but a tiny cockleshell, only partially decked, that proved, by chance, the most valuable of the three, for in her Columbus was forced by circumstances to return to Spain after the Santa Maria had been wrecked by a careless helmsman on a far-off island in the world that she had found, and the Pinta had wandered away, the Discoverer knew not where, in the hands of men tempted to be unfaithful to their great commander.

SEATING ARRANGEMENT OF ROWERS IN A GREEK TRIREME

While there were other arrangements that were sometimes used, this seems to have been much the most common. The slaves who operated the oars were chained in place, and in case of shipwreck or disaster were usually left to their fate.

So important was the work done by the Santa Maria and the other caravels of her day that were sailed by Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope, by Americus Vespucius to the South American mainland, by the Cabots to Nova Scotia and New England, and by other great discoverers on other great voyages, that they warrant closer attention than has been given to other passing types. With a fleet of caravels Magellan sailed from Spain, crossed the Atlantic, skirted the South American coast, discovered the land we now call Argentina, where he found a people he named the “Patagonians” because they had big feet. In subsequent accounts by a member of his crew these people were said to be giants, although they are merely men of good height and strength. From Patagonia, Magellan sailed south and entered a channel on each side of which lay mighty mountains rising precipitately from the water. The land to the south he named Tierra del Fuego—the Land of Fire—either because of the glow of now extinct volcanic fires that he saw, or of distant camp-fires of the natives which he sighted as he made the passage, and this land for many years was supposed to be a great continent that stretched from the Strait of Magellan, as the passage Magellan found was later called, to the south polar regions.