History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

Others have a broad top to their masts, not unlike the crow’s nest, visible in some of the medieval boats, represented on the Corporate seals of different English port towns.

Lastly, we find vessels wherein the oarsmen are obviously placed so as to row to the best advantage. The ships are generally biremes, with perhaps thirty rowers, and are decked.

On the deck of the second of these last illustrations two figures may be noticed with white head-dresses or veils; these are, no doubt, the wives who are accompanying their husbands in the expedition. The circular objects attached to the sides of the ships are probably the shields of the warriors. The rowers are evidently placed on a lower as well as on an upper deck.

(Layard, I. Series, Pl. 71.)

(Layard, I. Series, Pl. 71.)

No representations of naval engagements have as yet been met with on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, but they may be found hereafter.

The sculptures further show, contrary to what was long the received opinion, that the ancients possessed mechanical contrivances for diminishing manual labour, not unlike those now made use of. Indeed, the genius that planned and carried out the sculptures at Nineveh, might have been deemed equal to the knowledge of the pulley, or of the wheel and axle; and such we find to have been the case. In the museum at Leyden there exists a well made pulley, brought from Egypt; and on a bas-relief from Nineveh we clearly discern that the old mechanical contrivances differed inappreciably from those of modern days. Similar appliances would certainly have been adopted on shipboard, and ancient vessels must have been furnished with pulleys, or such other simple mechanical contrivances as were required for raising the anchor, hoisting heavy sails, or otherwise assisting manual labour.

In fact, the sculptures exhibit most of the common implements in actual use, as the saw, the pickaxe, the adze, and the handspike (or lever of the first class). Moreover, there are still preserved in the British Museum specimens of the metallic parts of all the above-named instruments.