A VIKING SHIP
These ships were developed by the Norse sea rovers for use in war, and as the seas they sailed were generally rough their ships had to be seaworthy. The result was a type that still leaves its mark. The seaworthy whaleboats of to-day are very similar in shape.
In these ships the Norsemen regularly sailed the Baltic and the North seas, where the elements give even the ships of to-day many a vicious shaking. Yet these sturdy old pirates, for they were hardly more, ploughed their way through storm and fog, without compasses, without any method of determining their positions at sea except their instinct and what guesses they could make—measuring voyages not by miles but by days—coming, going, bent only on conquest and on pillage. Nor did they confine themselves to the more or less landlocked seas. They launched their sturdy boats from the narrow beaches of Norwegian fjords, and with sturdy backs bent to sturdy oars, and great, colourful square sails set when the wind was right, drove their ships to Scotland, to the Orkneys, the Faroes, and to Iceland, and not content with that drove on to Greenland, to Labrador, to Nova Scotia, and probably drew up their ships on the shores of the very bay that waited yet another half a thousand years ere the Pilgrims saw it from the unsteady deck of the Mayflower.
In their open boats that tossed like flotsam among the angry waves, these hardy mariners lived. Their food must often have been hardly edible, their supplies of water hardly fit to drink, and comfort there never could have been. Wet through by boarding seas, all but unprotected from the cold of long sub-Arctic nights, or scorched by the sun in breathless summer calms, their beards caked with salt from the driving spray, or dripping moisture left there by the fogs, these heroes of the sea swung their oars for days, for weeks, perhaps for months, and feared the great Atlantic not at all.
They built these ships of theirs from the lumber that covered Norway’s mountain-sides. They hewed the timbers, and fashioned them, and made their ships as artists paint their canvases, not by the aid of mathematics but by the aid of the innate art that was theirs and the experience of generations of forefathers bred to the sea. They launched their ships into the slate-gray waters of the stormy north, and stocked them with rough food and rough implements. They shoved off from the rocky coast of the land that had bred them and swung their great oars over the crests of the surging sea, and clear of the land hoisted their sails and were gone to new worlds far across the ocean.
A 13TH-CENTURY ENGLISH SHIP
The Viking influence is still easily traceable in this ship, but the forecastle and the sterncastle have put in their appearance. Also the hull is heavier than and not so sharp as in the earlier Viking ships.
To us who live in a world so supercivilized that the Norseman’s wildest dreams could not have approached the commonplaces of modern life, it is difficult to imagine a crew of these stern and brawny men, fifty or sixty strong, perhaps, with their barbaric helmets temporarily laid aside, with their shields hung along the gunwales, and with their great backs bending in unison to the oars. Seated on the heavy thwarts, their supplies below their feet, their swords and battle-axes strewn about carelessly, but handy to each calloused palm, they pulled for hours, chanting their songs of war, roaring their choruses. Pausing now and then to rest or to fill horn flagons from some supply of ale; tearing with their teeth at salted fish or haunch of tough dried meat; changing their positions now and then, perhaps, to keep their hardened muscles from growing stiff; sleeping in the bow or stern, or down among the bales and bundles that lined the long, low hull; wrapped in homespun capes in rain or fog or driving spray—thus did these hardy mariners sail to the west and home again. Leaving a land where life was hard, they journeyed far to other lands at least as bleak as theirs, and journeyed back again, not looking for the land of spice, or summer seas, or far, romantic Cathay. Of such climes they knew nothing, nor did they care.
As time passed these ships became heavier and broader, with more draft and with higher sides, although they still retained the sharp stern which was somewhat similar to the bow. The sails, however, developed little and about the only complication was an additional strip of canvas that could be laced to the foot of the sail, increasing its area considerably. In light winds this was attached. In heavy winds it was unlaced. This, by the way, was a common feature before the later methods of reefing sails came into use.