The Ancients were full of horror of the mysterious Great Sea, which
they deified; believing that man no longer belonged to himself when
once embarked, but was liable to be sacrificed at any time to the anger
of the Great Sea god; in which case no exertions of his own could be of
any avail.
This belief was not calculated to make seamen of ability. Even
Homer, who certainly was a great traveler, or voyager, and who had
experience of many peoples, gives us but a poor idea of the progress of
navigation, especially in the blind gropings and shipwrecks of Ulysses,
which he appears to have thought the most natural things to occur.
A recent writer says, “Men had been slow to establish completely
their dominion over the sea. They learned very early to build ships.
They availed themselves very early of the surprising power which the
helm exerts over the movements of a ship; but, during many ages, they
found no surer guidance than that which the position of the sun and
of the stars afforded. When clouds intervened to deprive them of this
uncertain direction, they were helpless. They were thus obliged to
keep the land in view, and content themselves with creeping timidly
along the coasts. But at length there was discovered a stone which
the wise Creator had endowed with strange properties. It was observed
that a needle which had been brought in contact with that stone ever
afterwards pointed steadfastly to the north. Men saw that with a needle
thus influenced they could guide themselves at sea as surely as on
land. The Mariner’s compass loosed the bond which held sailors to the
coast, and gave them liberty to push out into the sea.”
As regards early attempts at navigation, we must go back, for certain
information, to the Egyptians. The expedition of the Argonauts, if
not a fable, was an attempt at navigation by simple boatmen, who, in
the infancy of the art, drew their little craft safely on shore every
night of their coasting voyages. We learn from the Greek writers
themselves, that that nation was in ignorance of navigation compared
with the Phenicians, and the latter certainly acquired the art from the
Egyptians.
We know that naval battles, that is, battles between bodies of men
in ships, took place thousands of years before the Christian era. On
the walls of very ancient Egyptian tombs are depicted such events,
apparently accompanied with much slaughter.
History positively mentions prisoners, under the name of _Tokhari_, who
were vanquished by the Egyptians in a naval battle fought by Rameses
III, in the fifteenth century before our era. These _Tokhari_ were
thought to be Kelts, and to come from the West. According to some they
were navigators who had inherited their skill from their ancestors of
the lost Continent, Atlantis.
The Phenicians have often been popularly held to have been the first
navigators upon the high seas; but the Carians, who preceded the
Pelasgi in the Greek islands, undoubtedly antedated the Phenicians
in the control of the sea and extended voyages. It is true that when
the Phenicians did begin, they far exceeded their predecessors. Sidon
dates from 1837 before Christ, and soon after this date she had
an extensive commerce, and made long voyages, some even beyond the
Mediterranean.
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