Ancient and Modern Ships, Part 1: Wooden Sailing Ships

by Sir George Charles Vincent Holmes

Although the art of ship construction had attained to great importance amongst the Veneti, their neighbours, the Britons, were still very backward in this respect at the time of the first Roman invasion. Cæsar states that their vessels were of very slight construction, the framework being made of light timber, over which was stretched a covering, or skin, of strong hides. Sometimes the framework was of wicker.

The ancient Saxons, who were notorious as pirates on the North Sea, made use of boats similar to those of the ancient Britons. At the time of their invasion of Britain, however, their vessels must have been larger and of more solid construction, though we must dismiss, as an obvious absurdity, the statement that the first invading army of 9,000 men was carried to this country in three ships only. It is much more probable that the expedition was embarked in three fleets.

The Saxon kings of England often maintained very considerable fleets for the purpose of protecting the coast from the Danes.

Alfred the Great is generally regarded as the founder of the English Navy. He designed ships which were of a better type and larger size than those of his enemies, the Danes. They were said to have been twice as long as the vessels which they superseded. The Saxon Chronicle says, "They were full twice as long as the others; some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were swifter and steadier, and also higher than the others; they were shaped neither like the Frisian, nor the Danish, but so as it seemed to him they would be most efficient." In 897 Alfred met and defeated a Danish squadron, in all probability with his new ships.

Edgar (959 to 975) is stated to have kept at sea no less than 3,600 vessels of various sizes, divided into three fleets, and the old historian William of Malmesbury tells us that this king took an active personal interest in his navy, and that in summer time he would, in turn, embark and cruise with each of the squadrons.

Fig. 21.—Anglo-Saxon ship. About 900 a.d.

Fig. [21] is an illustration of an Anglo-Saxon ship taken from an old Saxon calendar, which is, or was, in the Cottonian Library, and which is supposed to have been written about half a century before the Norman Conquest. It is reproduced in Strutt's "Compleat View of the Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits, etc., of the Inhabitants of England, from the arrival of the Saxons till the reign of Henry VIII.," published in 1775. The proportions of the boat as represented are obviously impossible. The sketch is, however, interesting, as showing the general form and mode of planking of the vessel, and the nature of the decorations of the bow and stern. We see that the vessel was a warship, as the keel prolonged formed a formidable ram. We also may notice that the sail was relied on as a principal means of propulsion, for there are apparently no notches or rowlocks for oars. The steering was effected by two large oars, in a similar manner to that adopted by the ancient Egyptians and other Mediterranean peoples. The extraordinary character of the deck-house will be observed. It is, of course, purely symbolical, and may, at most, be interpreted as meaning that the vessel carried some sort of structure on deck.

In the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era the scene of maritime activity was transferred from the Mediterranean to the North of Europe. The Norsemen, who overran the whole of the European seaboard at one time or another, were the most famous navigators of the period immediately preceding the Middle Ages. Any record connected with their system of ship-construction is necessarily of great interest. The fleets of the Norsemen penetrated into the Mediterranean as far as the imperial city of the Eastern emperors. In the north they discovered and colonized Iceland, and even Greenland; and there are good grounds for believing that an expedition, equipped in Iceland, founded a colony in what are now the New England States five centuries before Columbus discovered the West Indies. Unfortunately, the written descriptions extant of the Norse ships are extremely meagre, and if it had not been for the curious custom of the Norsemen of burying their great chiefs in one of their ships and heaping earth over the entire mass, we should now know nothing for certain of the character of their vessels. Many of these ship-tombs have been discovered in modern times, but it happened in the majority of instances that the character of the earth used was unsuited to their preservation, and most of the woodwork was found to be decayed when the mounds were explored. Fortunately, however, in two instances the vessels were buried in blue clay, which is an excellent preserver of timber, and, thanks to the discovery of these, we have now a tolerably complete knowledge of the smaller classes of vessels used by the Vikings. One of them was discovered, in 1867, at Haugen, but by far the most important was found in 1880, at Gogstad, near Sandefjord, at the entrance of the Fjord of Christiania. Though this vessel is comparatively small, she is, probably, a correct representative of the larger type of ships made use of by the renowned adventurers of the North in their distant expeditions.