The stern board of the boat is a separate piece of timber, fitted into a groove along each side; and originally the sides were bound across with leathern thongs to keep the board in position.
An Ancient ‘Dug-out’ found in North Lincolnshire.
Think of the immense amount of labour that the making of this early ‘ship of the Humber’ cost. The patience that its makers must have displayed would put some of us to utter shame in our frantic haste to finish a thing in the shortest possible space of time after its beginning.
Long after the days of the builders of this boat, the Romans and the Angles came to our shores. With them the knowledge of shipbuilding had greatly increased, and their ships were propelled with both oars and sails.
Later again came the Northmen, against whose attacks the Angles prayed in vain. A true sea-faring race were these Vikings of old, and they could boast, as their lineal descendants in Norway boast to-day, that they possessed more ships than any other nation in the world.
Long-ships was the name given to the Northmen’s ships of war, they being thus distinguished from the wider and clumsier merchant ships. But the Northmen were a poetic race, and to a Viking his ship was a ‘black horse of the sea,’ a ‘deer of the surf’ or a ‘raven of the wind.’
The largest ships of the Vikings were ornamented with a dragon’s head at the stem, and often a dragon’s tail at the stern, whence their name Dragons. The dragon’s head and tail might be covered with thin sheets of gold, if its owner were a great king. Its prow and sides might also be coated with iron to aid in ramming other vessels.
