"In our times, discovery has been made of a thing quite new: nobody imagined that the sea which extends from the Indies to China, had any communication with the sea of Syria, nor could any one take it into his head. Now behold what has come to pass in our days, according to what we have heard. In the Sea of Rum, or the Mediterranean, they found the wreck of an Arabian ship which had been shattered by tempest; for all her men perishing, and she being dashed to pieces by the waves, the remains of her were driven by wind and weather into the Sea of Chozars, and from thence to the canal of the Mediterranean sea, and at last were thrown on the Sea of Syria. This evinces that the sea surrounds all the country of China, and of Sila,--the uttermost parts of Turkestan, and the country of the Chozars, and then it enters at the strait, till it washes the shore of Syria. The proof of this is deduced from the built of the ship we are speaking of; for none but the ships of Sarif are so put together, that the planks are not nailed, or bolted, but joined together in an extraordinary manner, as if they were sewn; whereas the planking of all the ships of the Mediterranean Sea, and of the coast of Syria, is nailed and not joined together in the same way."
When we entered on this digression, we had brought the historical sketch of the discoveries and commerce of the Phoenicians down to the period of the destruction of Old Tyre, or about six hundred years before Christ. We shall now resume it, and add such particulars on these subjects as relate to the period that intervened between that event and the capture of New Tyre by Alexander the Great. These are few in number; for though New Tyre exceeded, according to all accounts, the old city in splendour, riches, and commercial prosperity, yet antient authors have not left us any precise accounts of their discoveries, such as can justly be fixed within the period to which we have alluded. They seem to have advanced farther than they had previously done along the west coast of Africa, and further along the north coast of Spain: the discovery of the Cassiterides also, and their trade to these islands for tin, (which we have shewn could hardly have taken place so early as is generally supposed,) must also have occurred, either immediately before, or soon after, the building of New Tyre. It is generally believed, that the Cassiterides were the Scilly Islands, off the coast of Cornwall. Strabo and Ptolemy indeed place them off the coast of Spain; but Diodorus Siculus and Pliny give them a situation, which, considering the vague and erroneous ideas the antients possessed of the geography of this part of the world, corresponds pretty nearly with the southern part of Britain. According to Strabo, the Phoenicians first brought tin from the Cassiterides, which they sold to the Greeks, but kept (as was usual with them) the trade entirely to themselves, and were utterly silent respecting the place from which they brought it. The Greeks gave these islands the name of Cassiterides, or the Tin Country; a plain proof of what we before advanced, that tin was known, and generally used, previous to the discovery of these islands by the Phoenicians.
There is scarcely any circumstance connected with the maritime history of the Phoenicians, more remarkable than their jealousy of foreigners interfering with their trade, to which we have just alluded. It seems to have been a regular plan, if not a fixed law with them, if at any time their ships observed that a strange ship kept them company, or endeavoured to trace their track, to outsail her if practicable; or, where this could not be done, to depart during the night from their proper course. The Carthaginians, a colony of the Phoenicians, adopted this, among other maritime regulations of the parent state, and even carried it to a greater extent. In proof of this, a striking fact may be mentioned: the master of a Carthaginian ship observing a Roman vessel following his course, purposely ran his vessel aground, and thus wrecked his own ship, as well as the one that followed him. This act was deemed by the Carthaginian government so patriotic, that he was amply rewarded for it, as well as recompensed for the loss of his vessel.
The circumstances attending the destruction of New Tyre by Alexander the Great are well known. The Tyrians united with the Persians against Alexander, for the purpose of preventing the invasion of Persia; this having incensed the conqueror, still further enraged by their refusal to admit him within their walls, he resolved upon the destruction of this commercial city. For seven months, the natural strength of the place, and the resources and bravery of the inhabitants, enabled them to hold out; but at length it was taken, burnt to the ground, and all the inhabitants, except such as had escaped by sea, were either put to death or sold as slaves.
Little is known respecting the structure and equipment of the ships which the Phoenicians employed in their commercial navigation. According to the apocryphal authority of Sanconiatho, Ousous, one of the most ancient of the Phoenician heroes, took a tree which was half burnt, cut off its branches, and was the first who ventured to expose himself on the waters. This tradition, however, probably owes its rise to the prevalent belief among the ancients, that to the Phoenicians was to be ascribed the invention of every thing that related to the rude navigation and commerce of the earliest ages of the world: under this idea, the art of casting accounts, keeping registers, and every thing, in short, that belongs to a factory, is attributed to their invention.[2] With respect to their vessels,-- "Originally they had only rafts, or simple boats; they used oars to conduct these weak and light vessels. As navigation extended itself, and became more frequent, they perfected the construction of ships, and made them of a much larger capacity. They were not long in discovering the use that might be drawn from the wind, to hasten and facilitate the course of a ship, and they found out the art of aiding it by means of masts and sails." Such is the account given by Goguet; but it is evident that this is entirely conjectural history: and we may remark, by the bye, that a work otherwise highly distinguished by clear and philosophical views, and enriched by considerable learning and research, in many places descends to fanciful conjecture.
All that we certainly know respecting the ships of the Phoenicians, is, that they had two kinds; one for the purposes of commerce, and the other for naval expeditions; and in this respect they were imitated by all the other nations of antiquity. Their merchant-ships were called Gauloi. According to Festus's definition of this term, the gauloi were nearly round; but it is evident that this term must be taken with considerable restriction; a vessel round, or nearly so, could not possibly be navigated. It is most probable that this description refers entirely to the shape of the bottom or hold of the vessel; and that merchant ships were built in this manner, in order that they might carry more goods; whereas the ships for warfare were sharp in the bottom. Of other particulars respecting the construction and equipment of the ships of the Phoenicians, we are ignorant: they probably resembled in most things those of Greece and Rome; and these, of which antient historians speak more fully, will be described afterwards.
The Phoenicians naturally paid attention to astronomy, so far at least as might be serviceable to them in their navigation; and while other nations were applying it merely to the purposes of agriculture and chronology, by means of it they were guided through the "trackless ocean," in their maritime enterprises. The Great Bear seems to have been known and used as a guide by navigators, even before the Phoenicians were celebrated as a sea-faring people; but this constellation affords a very imperfect and uncertain rule for the direction of a ship's course: the extreme stars that compose it are more than forty degrees distant from the pole, and even its centre star is not sufficiently near it. The Phoenicians, experiencing the imperfection of this guide, seem first to have discovered, or at least to have applied to maritime purposes, the constellation of the Lesser Bear. But it is probable, that at the period when they first applied this constellation, which is supposed to be about 1250 years before Christ, they did not fix on the star at the extremity of the tail of Ursa Minor, which is what we call the Pole Star; for by a Memoir of the Academy of Sciences (1733. p. 440.) it is shewn, that it would at that period be too distant to serve the purpose of guiding their track.[3]
[1] Dr. Vincent, in the 2nd vol. of his Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, has a very elaborate commentary on this chapter of Ezekiel, in which he satisfactorily makes out the nature of most of the articles mentioned in it, as well as the locality of the places from which they are said to have come.
[2] One of the most celebrated gods of the Phoenicians was Melcartus. He is represented as a great navigator, and as the first that brought tin from the Cassiterides. His image was usually affixed to the stern of their vessels.
[3] In the time of Solomon, about two hundred years after the period when it is supposed the Phoenicians began to direct their course by the Lesser Bear,--it was 17 1/2 degrees from the North Pole: in the time of Ptolemy, about one hundred and fifty years after Christ, its distance had decreased to 12 degrees.