AN EGYPTIAN BOAT OF 6000 B. C.
This drawing was made from what is probably the most ancient known record of a ship. The high bow and stern seem somewhat overdone, and it is likely that they were less elevated than this picture shows them. The carving from which this was taken, however, exaggerates them still more.
The very first pages of recorded history tell us of ships, and we know that many prehistoric men were adept at building such boats as dugout canoes. In Switzerland many signs have been found of a people who dwelt there in the Stone Age, and among the simple belongings of this people of great antiquity have been found canoes hollowed from single logs. In the bogs of Ireland, and in England and Scotland similar dugouts have been occasionally found, which had been buried in the course of time far below the surface of the ground.
By the time the Stone Age came the dugout was perfected, and still later other types of boats appeared. Perhaps the hollowed log suggested the use of the curved bark of the tree as a canoe, and ultimately a framework of wood was developed to hold the weight of the occupant while a covering of bark kept out the water. The framework was necessary for two reasons—first, to give the structure the necessary strength to keep its shape; and second, to bear the weight of the builder and his belongings. Other coverings, such as skins and woven fabrics covered with pitch, came into use in parts of the world where suitable bark was scarce.
The next step in the building of boats was a method of fastening pieces of wood together in suitable form. This probably came from a desire for boats of larger size, which required greater strength, for man early became a trader and wished to transport goods. Bark could not support a heavy hull, and dugouts are necessarily limited in size, being constructed of the trunks of single trees, although dugouts fifty or sixty feet in length, or even longer, are not unknown. Probably the earliest boats of this new type were tied together by thongs or cords. Even to-day the natives of Madras, in India, build boats by this method, and similar types are to be found on the Strait of Magellan, on Lake Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa, and in the East Indies. Many of these have been very highly developed until now they are built of heavy hand-hewn boards fitted together with ridges on their inner sides, through which holes are bored for the thongs that lash them together. The boards are fastened together first, and later a frame is attached to the interior. This construction makes a very “elastic” boat which bends and twists in a seaway, but which, because of this “elasticity,” is able to navigate waters that would prove fatal to the more rigid types of crudely constructed boats. The Hindoos often use them in the heavy surf that drives in upon the beaches from the Bay of Bengal.
A LARGE EGYPTIAN SHIP OF THE 18TH DYNASTY
The overhanging bow and stern were common on most early Egyptian ships, and the heavy cable, stretched from one end of the hull to the other and supported on two crutches, was used to strengthen these overhanging ends.