It may be inferred from the passage in Homer that in his time sawn timber was not unknown; and, though nearly all the then voyages were performed by coasting from headland to headland, it is clear from other passages[14] that the navigators did even then sometimes venture out of sight of land: their vessels were, however, then, and for many years later, undecked; few representations of any ancient galleys, even on the earliest vases, having come down to us in which there is any certain indication of a deck: while Thucydides distinctly gives it as his opinion that the Homeric vessels were only large open boats.[15] The larger ones had, perhaps, a sort of half-deck, to give the people in them a little shelter. Being flat-floored and of small immersion, they as it were glided over the surface of the water, having little or no power of resistance to the action of the waves, and being, therefore, capable of very little progress except when sailing before the wind. To enable them to resist the penetrating power of the water, the ancients appear to have used in very early times a species of pounded sea-shells, introduced carefully into the seams and chinks between the planks—a process found to answer well for a short time; when, however, the ship strained, this caulking was liable to fall out, letting in the water as before. A somewhat similar method is described in the Transactions of the Embassy sent to China in 1792, as seen there at that time.
In later days, other methods were adopted; one of which, attributed by Pliny to the Belgæ,[16] consisted in beating pounded seeds into the fissures between the planks of vessels—a substance, he says, found to be more tenacious than glue, and more to be relied on than pitch. This is evidently the same in principle as the modern practice of caulking. In the same way we find in remote times that pitch and wax were used partly for the prevention of leakage, and partly also to preserve the planks from the sea-weeds and animalculæ with which the waters of the Mediterranean abound.[17] The discovery, too, of what is supposed to have been a galley of Trajan at the bottom of Lake Riccio shows clearly that, in Roman times, sheathing as well as caulking were used to preserve the bottoms of ships. The famous Locke,[18] alluding to this discovery, says, “Here we have caulking and sheathing together above sixteen hundred years ago; for I suppose no one can doubt that the sheet of lead nailed over the outside with copper nails was sheathing, and that in great perfection; the copper nails being used rather than iron, which, when once rusted in water with the working of the ship, soon lose their hold and drop out.”
Names of ships.
Ships in ancient times were known by a great variety of names, most of which are descriptive of the purposes for which they were built, or of the services in which they were employed.
Omitting triremes, the most usual ships of war, the following list enumerates their chief varieties:—
Thus olkas was a large heavy tow-barge; ponto—a word of Gallic or Celtic origin[19]—a punt.
Gaulos, a round heavy merchant vessel, named probably so originally by the Phœnicians, and preserved to modern days in the galleon or galeass of the Middle Ages, and the galley of later times.
Corbitæ, slow sailing ships of burthen—so called because they carried baskets at their mast-heads. Hippagogi, as their name implies, carried horses. The characteristic of all these vessels was that their structure was bulky, their sides and bottom rounded from the flat, and, though not without rowers, that they were chiefly dependent on their sails.
Of a lighter class, and for greater speed, were the scapha (or skiff); the acation, or acatus; and the linter, which, though like ratis, often used for any kind of vessel, was more strictly a light boat or wherry.[20] Generically, merchant vessels were called mercatoriæ, or vectoriæ, as being the carriers of merchandise. So piscatoriæ were boats used for fishing.
Decorations.