Ships of the seven seas

by Hawthorne Daniel

From the western end of the Strait, Magellan steered to the north and west, diagonally across the greatest expanse of water on the globe—an ocean discovered only a few years earlier by Balboa when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and named by him the Great South Sea, but renamed by Magellan, because of the gentle weather he encountered, the Pacific. In all the voyage across the Pacific he discovered but two islands, although he sailed through the section occupied by the numerous archipelagoes that we call the South Sea Islands.

AN EARLY 16TH-CENTURY SHIP

This ship, while similar in many respects to Columbus’s Santa Maria, has made some advances over that famous vessel. The foremast is fitted to carry a topsail in addition to the large foresail shown set in this picture. On ships somewhat later than this one a small spar was sometimes erected perpendicularly at the end of the bowsprit, and a sprit topsail was set above the spritsail which is shown below the bowsprit here.

After terrible suffering from scurvy, from lack of water, almost from starvation, the little fleet of four ships (one had deserted just after the Pacific was reached) finally reached the Philippines. Already Magellan had sailed under the Portuguese flag around the Cape of Good Hope to a point in the East Indies farther east than the Philippines, so he was, actually, the first man ever to circumnavigate the globe. In the Philippines, however, he was inveigled into an alliance with a perfidious chief named Cebu, who, after witnessing Magellan’s death at the hands of the natives of a neighbouring island (he was pierced in the back by a spear), captured and murdered two of Magellan’s chief officers, after which the dwindling band of adventurers burned one of their ships, for they were short-handed, and sailed to the south and west with the remaining three. Two more ships were lost ere the Atlantic was again reached, and at last the Vittoria, the only ship remaining of the original five, reached the Canaries, where thirteen men out of the forty-four who still remained were thrown into prison by the Portuguese governor, and only thirty-one of the original two hundred and eighty returned to Spain to tell their wondering countrymen the story of their travels. That voyage, saving only the first voyage made by Columbus, was the greatest in the history of men upon the sea.

These voyages, as I have said, were mostly made in caravels. None of the ships was large, and Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria, was below rather than above the average. Vasco da Gama’s ships were larger, as were many others. But no other ship in history is so widely known as that little vessel of Columbus’s, and a description of her, being a description of caravels in general, is of double interest.

From bow to stern she measured but ninety feet, and she displaced about one hundred tons. But more than that is needed to give one an adequate idea of her limitations. The bow was high and awkwardly overhung the water by twelve feet, not being carried gradually out as are the bows of sailing ships to-day, but jutting ponderously forward from an almost vertical stem. Amidships the deck was low, dropping down abruptly about one fourth of the way aft. This midship deck (it was called the waist) was unbroken for another fourth of the vessel’s length, and then another deck was built at about the level of the forward deck, behind which a high sterncastle reared itself aloft until it surpassed the altitude of the forward deck, but fortunately did not jut out over the water aft as the bow did forward.

These two raised sections at the opposite ends of the ship were originally built with the idea of defense in mind. Ships for many centuries had had raised platforms fore and aft, on which the men who defended them could congregate in order to rain their arrows upon the decks of enemy ships. So useful were these “castles” that often enemy boarders were able to penetrate to the waist only to be driven off by the rain of missiles on their heads. When gunpowder came into general use tiny cannon were mounted in swivels attached to the bulwarks of these “castles,” but old ideas were not easily got rid of, and for a long time ships continued to be built with raised bows and sterns.

So it was that the Santa Maria had her forecastle and her sterncastle. The former term is still in use on ships, and signifies the quarters of the crew, which still are often placed in the bows of ships. The sterncastle has no present-day counterpart, and the name, too, has long since disappeared from ships.

The cabin of the great Admiral was aft, in the topmost section of the sterncastle and was, from our point of view, not exactly palatial. It had a bed, which looked more like a chest except that it had highly raised head and foot boards of carved wood. There was a table, and there was little else. A door opened on to the high narrow deck, and windows (ports such as ships now use were not then thought of) opened in the narrow stern high above the water.