The ancient Greeks and other Eastern nations had ships of considerable
size many hundred years before the Christian era. The earliest mythical
stories describe long voyages performed by vessels of far more
complicated structure than the simple canoe. The ships engaged in the
Trojan war each carried a hundred and twenty warriors, which shows that
at the period referred to they could not have been of very small
dimensions. Although they might have been open, they had masts and
sails, and were propelled by rowers sitting on benches, while the oars
were fastened to the sides of the ship with leathern thongs. Some were
painted black, others red. When they arrived at their destination, the
bows were drawn up on shore; or when on a voyage, they at night anchored
by the stern, with cables secured to large stones. At an early period
they had round bottoms and sharp prows. We hear of ships with three
ranks of rowers, called triremes, B.C. 700, and long before that time
biremes, or ships with two ranks of oars, had been introduced. In the
time of Cyrus, long sharp-keeled war-ships were used, having fifty
rowers, who sat in one row, twenty-five on each side of the ship. About
B.C. 400, the practice of entirely decking over ships was introduced;
Themistocles induced the Athenians to build a fleet of two hundred sail,
and to pass a decree that every year twenty new triremes should be
built. The Greeks even at that period, however, seldom ventured out
into the open sea, steering in the daytime by headlands or islands, and
at night by the rising and setting of different stars.
The Greeks possessed ships of war and merchant-vessels. That a
war-galley was of large size may be inferred from the fact that she
carried two hundred seamen, besides on some occasions thirty Epibatoe--
literally, marines, trained to fight at sea. These war-vessels moved
with wonderful rapidity, darting here and there with the speed of a
modern steam-vessel. The ordinary war-ships were triremes, or had three
banks of oars. The merchant-vessels or transports were much more bulky,
had round bottoms, and although rowers were employed on board, yet they
were propelled chiefly by their sails. After the time of Alexander,
vessels with four, five, and even more ranks of rowers became general,
and ships are described with twelve and even thirty ranks of rowers and
upwards--but they were found of no practical use, as the crew on the
upper benches were unable to throw sufficient power into the immensely
long oars which it was necessary to employ.
Fully B.C. 500, the Carthaginians invented the quadremes, and about B.C.
400, Dionysius, first tyrant of Syracuse, whose ambition was to create a
powerful navy, built numerous vessels of the same description, unused
till that time by the Greeks. The rowers in these ships, with numerous
banks of oars, could not have sat directly one above another, as some
suppose; but the feet of those on the upper tier must have rested on the
bench or thwart on which those immediately below them sat. Thus the
tiers of oars were probably not more than two feet, if so much, one
above another; and supposing the lowest tier was two feet above the
water, the highest in the quadremes could not have been more than ten
feet, and even then the length of the oar of the upper tier must have
been very great, and it must have required considerable exertion on the
part of the rower to move it. The most interesting part, however, of an
ancient ship to us at the present day was the beak or rostra. At first
these beaks were placed only above water, and were formed in the shape
of a short thick-bladed sword, with sharp points, generally three, one
above another, and inclining slightly upwards, so that they might rip
open the planks of the vessels against which they ran. They were
sometimes formed in the shape of a ram's head fixed to the end of a
beam; and hence in modern days we have adopted the name of rams, which
we give to ships of war built on the same principle.
After a time these beaks were fixed on to the bow of the ship below the
water, and were thus still more dangerous to other ships, when they
could strike an antagonist on the side. The bow of a ship was generally
ornamented by the head of some animal, such as a wild boar or a wolf, or
some imaginary creature placed above the rostra. On both sides of the
prow were painted eyes, such as are seen on the bows of boats and
vessels in the Mediterranean at the present day. The upper part of the
prow was frequently ornamented with a helmet covered with bronze. The
steersman or pilot was looked upon as the chief in rank among the crew,
and after him there came an officer whose duties were similar to those
of the boatswain, as he had the care of the gear and command over the
rowers. The stern or puppis, from which we derive the term poop, was
elevated above the other parts of the deck, and here the helmsman had
his seat, sheltered by a shed frequently adorned with an image of the
tutelary deity of the vessel. Sometimes he had a lantern hanging in
front of him, probably to enable him to see the magic compass, the use
of which was kept secret from the rest of the crew. A circular shield
or shields also ornamented the stern. Behind the helmsman was placed a
slight pole on which flew the dog-vane, to show the direction of the
wind. In the centre of the ship was a raised platform on a level with
the upper part of the bulwarks, on which in battle the soldiers took
their stand to hurl their darts against the enemy.
The quadremes and quinqueremes carried from three to four hundred
rowers, and a ship belonging to Ptolemaeus Philopater is described as
carrying four thousand rowers. From the surface of the water to the top
of the prow was forty-eight cubits, or seventy-two feet, and from the
water to the top of the stern fifty-three cubits, or nearly eighty feet;
she had thus sufficient room for forty ranks of rowers, and the oars of
the uppermost rank were thirty-eight cubits or fifty-seven feet long,
the handles of which were weighted with lead, so as to balance the outer
part, and thus render the long oars manageable. The lower parts of the
holes through which the oars passed were covered with leather. Till the
invention of the rudder, vessels were steered by two large oars, one on
either side of the stern, with very broad blades. Ships were also
furnished with long poles, by which they could be shoved off the ground.
The triremes were fitted with two masts, and so were even smaller
vessels; the larger had three masts, the largest of which was nearest
the stern. They were usually of fir; and the head of the lower mast,
which is at present called the top, was in the shape of a drinking cup.
Some of these tops were of bronze; the largest held three men, two in
the next, and one in the smallest; and breast-works ran round them to
defend the occupants from the darts of the enemy. They were also
furnished with tackles for hoisting up stones and weapons to hurl at the
foe. Above the main-mast was a top-mast or topgallant-mast, called the
distaff; the yards were hoisted up much as in the present day, and were
secured by parrels or hoops to the mast. They were fitted with
topping-lifts and braces. Each mast carried two square sails, and in
after days the Romans introduced triangular sails. Though they
generally ran before the wind, they were also able to sail on a wind,
though probably not very close-hauled.
Ships were supplied with weather-boards, or broad belts of canvas, to
keep out the sea, and were surrounded, also, by lines of ropes one above
another, to prevent the seamen from being washed overboard. Sometimes
these breast-works were made of skins or wicker-work, and in bad weather
were raised to a considerable height above the bulwarks. It is said
that Anacharsis, upwards of 500 B.C., if he did not invent, greatly
improved the form of anchors, which were already made of iron. The
anchor had generally two flukes or teeth, and was then called bidens;
but sometimes it had only one. We use the same terms as the ancients,
to cast anchor or weigh anchor, whence the latter term is equivalent to
set sail. Each ship had several anchors; that in which the Apostle Paul
sailed, we know, had four, and others had eight. The largest and most
important anchor was denominated "the last hope," hence, when that
failed, arose the expression "the last hope gone." A buoy was used
fixed to the anchor by a rope, to show the spot where it lay.
The Romans possessed no war fleets till the year B.C. 260, when a fleet
of triremes was built to oppose the Carthaginians. Many of them having
been sent to the bottom, however, by the quinqueremes of that people,
the Romans built a hundred of the latter-sized ships from the model of a
Carthaginian vessel wrecked on the coast of Italy. The Romans must have
had very large merchant-vessels to enable them to transport the enormous
monoliths from Egypt which they erected in Rome. These vast stones,
also, could not have been got on board and brought up the Tiber without
considerable mechanical appliances.
The construction of their ships differed but slightly from that of the
Greek vessels; they had turrets on the decks of their larger men-of-war,
and employed a variety of destructive engines; so that in battle the
soldiers on board fought much as they did when standing on the walls of
a fortress. Of one thing I am sure, that no correct drawings of ancient
ships have come down to us, if any such were really made; those on
medals, cameos, and such as are painted on walls, are probably as far
removed from the reality as a Thames barge is from a dashing frigate.
They give us, certainly, the different parts of the ship, and from them
we may form a pretty correct idea of what a ship really was like.
Certain it is, however, that ships were built of prodigious size, and if
not equal to a line-of-battle ship of late days, they must have been as
large as, if not larger than, the _Great Harry_, and probably quite as
well able to encounter as she was the boisterous seas. Long before the
Christian era, ships boldly struck across the Mediterranean, and even
passing through the Pillars of Hercules, coasted along the shores of
Iberia and Gaul, and thence crossed over to Britain, or coasted round
the African continent.
Advanced as the ancients were in architectural knowledge, there is every
reason to suppose that they were equally capable of building ships to
answer all their requirements, either for war or commerce. They were
probably thus not only of great size, but well built, and were certainly
finished and ornamented in an elegant and even a magnificent manner, far
superior to that of many ages later. The mistaken notion as to the size
of the ships of the ancients arises from the supposition that because
merchantmen of the present day are smaller than men-of-war, that they
were so formerly--the reverse, however, being the case. Men-of-war were
generally long, narrow vessels, constructed for speed, to carry only
fighting men, with a small quantity of provisions; whereas merchantmen
were built of considerable beam and depth to stow a large quantity of
cargo. A Phoenician vessel was able to afford accommodation to 500
emigrants, with provisions for a long voyage, besides her crew, while
her masts were formed of the cedars of Lebanon.