WAR CRAFT OF THE FAR WEST, CENTRAL AFRICA, THE FAR SOUTH, THE PACIFIC,
AND THE FAR EAST
Notwithstanding the enormous strides made in ship construction, it is
still possible to find in active use vessels but little removed from
the earliest types known. It is, of course, in the “Mysterious East,”
where anything that served its purpose very well centuries ago seems to
have been expected to retain its efficiency for ever, that one finds
those survivals from bygone ages. The earliest vessels known were
hollowed logs, or dug-outs; such are in use still. Planks were stitched
or lashed on above the bulwarks to raise the freeboard and keep out
the sea; the same contrivance is applied to this day. A few strips of
bamboo or other light material tied together formed rafts; their exact
counterparts are in existence in many parts of the world. It was found
possible to sail them by means of a sail of matting attached to a yard
which was supported by a stout mast destitute of stays or standing
rigging; a centre-board or drop keel which could be lowered through the
middle of the raft into the water prevented leeway, and steering was
effected by means of a pole with a blade attached, usually tied on,
this long paddle being sometimes used near the middle of the after end
of the raft and sometimes at either of the after corners, the necessary
leverage being obtained by the provision of a stump for the purpose.
The origin of such rafts is lost in antiquity, yet they continue to be
found in active service.
The bark canoes which the Indians of North America employed on the
great rivers and lakes when white men first went there are unchanged in
their method of construction, and though in places where civilisation
and the mechanical arts have assumed sway the old canoes have given way
to the products of the modern boat-builders’ skill, yet in the farther
North-West the Indian canoe ripples the summer surface of the lakes
and streams as it did centuries ago. The real Indian canoes were made
by building the frame, and then placing upon it a carefully prepared
strip of birch bark sufficiently large to cover the entire frame in
one piece; it was lashed to the frame and then stitched at the ends to
form the bow and stern. The larger canoes were sometimes stiffened by
having two or three pieces of wood lashed thwartwise. The canoes were
propelled by means of paddles, and the Indians sat or knelt on the
bottom of the boat. Many of these canoes weighed as little as 60 lb.
and some even less. Their chief use was in the migrations of the tribes
between their summer and winter quarters, and very picturesque they
must have appeared to the early settlers as a flotilla glided past;
that is, if an Indian could ever be regarded by an early settler as
anything but “pizen.” But these canoes served equally well to convey
the painted and feathered braves to battle; and anyone who has seen the
Indians in their canoes can well imagine how in days now happily past,
it is hoped for ever, a fleet of these boats, filled with cruel and
relentless men, passed swiftly and silently over the waters at night,
their paddles so skilfully wielded that the blades entered and left
the water with never a splash to break the solemn stillness. Then the
Indian canoe was no longer an emblem of joyous happiness, made only
for the sparkling waters and clear nights and days of that foretaste
of Paradise, the Indian summer, fit craft for the romantic passing
of Hiawatha to “the kingdom of Ponemah”; but an evil thing, as swift
and silent and terrible as the bloodthirsty men it bore to victory or
destruction.
[Illustration: WAR CANOES OF INDIANS OF THE NORTH-WEST. _From a
Photograph of a Painting, supplied by the Curator of the Chicago
Museum._]
The skin canoe or kayak of the Eskimo holds only one person, though
its length may be anything from 7 or 8 feet to 25 feet. It is simply a
light frame, running to a fine point at either end, never more than a
few inches in depth, and with a breadth determined by the breadth of
the man who is to use it. It is entirely skin-covered, except for a
small hole in the deck, just abaft of amidships, in which the solitary
occupant sits. The Eskimo are very clever in the management of their
light craft--it weighs but a few pounds, and for its size is probably
the lightest sea-going vessel in the world--and employ it chiefly in
hunting, even at some distance from land.
The bark canoes of the Australian blacks were very primitive affairs;
they have almost disappeared, sharing the fate of the rapidly dwindling
aborigines. It may be doubted if a trace of one of these canoes
could now be found from one end of the Murray River to the other.
Since the blacks saw how easily the white man knocked together a few
planks and made a flat-bottomed, straight-sided boat, they ceased to
labour at bark canoes, but instead obtained a few boards, usually
by pilfering, “borrowed” or begged a few nails, and with a stone
for a hammer have done likewise, patching the very leaky seams with
anything that came handy, were it scrap of tin, leather, raw hide, or
well-greased fragment of a dirty, torn, old blanket, and making up
for deficiencies by incessant bailing. Never again on the southern
Australian rivers will the bark canoe convey the braves to the scene of
the tribal conflict, or ferry in the dying glow of the setting sun the
skeleton-painted men to the edge of the grim, dark forest on the other
shore to attend a great corroboree, whether of war, rejoicing, or grief.
Nor have the African negroes made much progress beyond the dug-out
stage of war canoe construction. The Moors and Arabs long since proved
themselves excellent seamen and shipbuilders, designing boats suitable
to their needs, and are in quite another category. The negroes of
the Cross River district in Southern Nigeria may be taken as typical
of the African canoe makers. They usually chose a mahogany or awosa
tree, and, having felled it, burnt it hollow where it fell. It was
then dragged on rollers to the waterside and finished with whatever
tools were available, matchets, knives and axes being used since the
white man’s introduction of those implements. Occasionally a canoe is
“smoked” or hardened by being exposed to the hot smoke of a fire built
round it. Some of the war canoes are as much as 60 feet in length, and
are wide enough to allow the men to sit two abreast. The larger ones
have a steering platform on a level with the gunwale or raised a foot
or two above it, and a smaller platform is placed at the bow, where a
flagstaff may also be fixed. When there are no thwarts or seats the
crew sit on the bottom of the canoe or on the gunwale, according to the
size of the vessel. Both bow and stern overhang. The paddles are made
of hardwood in one piece, 3 to 4 feet in length, and are pointed.
It is to the East Indies and the Pacific that we must turn to find the
most wonderful examples of the war canoe. They may be divided into
two classes: those with outriggers--this section including double
canoes--and those without.
[Illustration: A “DUG-OUT” CANOE OF NEW GUINEA.]
[Illustration: NEW GUINEA CANOES WITH OUTRIGGERS. _From Photographs
supplied by the Hon. J. E. Jenkins._]
Many of the canoes lacked stability, even in calm waters, and the risk
of capsizing was greater in waters liable to sudden storms or exposed
to the ocean swell. To meet this difficulty and at the same time permit
of the continued use of the shallow harbours of their coasts, the
Malays are supposed to have invented the outrigger, and this conjecture
is based on the fact that wherever the Malay influence is traceable
there some form of the outrigger or double canoe is to be found also.
The primitive hollowed log generally constitutes the hull of the canoes
of the Pacific Islanders. The rest is mainly a matter of ornamentation.
With but few exceptions, the islanders seem to have believed that
the higher and more imposing and ornamental they could make the
stems or sterns of their vessels, the more dreadful in war were they
likely to be. Many of these elevations are beautifully carved; other
canoes are merely grotesque, and not a few have no artistic feature
whatever to redeem them from absolute hideousness. As a means of
terrifying an enemy by presenting such things to his astonished gaze
they would doubtless be effective, had it not been that the enemy
would retaliate by presenting something equally ugly, with the result
that the moral effect which each party sought to exercise upon the
other would be neutralised. Some of the islanders are said to have
decorated the prows of their vessels with the skulls of opponents
killed in previous expeditions; while others contented themselves with
locks of human hair, similarly derived, as naval adornments. With the
exception of bows, arrows and spears, all their weapons were designed
for fighting at close quarters. It must have been a labour of love,
as well as a feeling of pride in the appearance of the fearfully
shaped and murderous clubs, which led them to carve their weapons as
carefully as they did, to render them so deadly, and to adorn them
with mother-of-pearl and sharks’ teeth. Not a few of the paddles were
given serrated edges in order that they could be the more effectively
employed as war clubs if necessary.
There are not many native war canoes now left in the South Seas. None
of the islanders, except the head-hunters, habitually kept canoes for
war purposes, though at times one would be designed and built for some
special expedition. The last of the great Samoan war canoes has almost
rotted to pieces on the shore. It is doubtful if it has ever been used
in a warlike expedition. It was between 60 and 70 feet in length, and
18 to 20 feet beam over all. It consisted of two large single canoes,
placed parallel a few feet apart, and joined by a plank deck which ran
across the greater part of the vessels. Amidships was a house-like
erection, used as a shelter. It was propelled by oars, but also carried
a mast and sails. It could easily carry a hundred men.
The great canoe to hold three hundred men is but a memory; all that is
left of it is its steering paddle, 40 feet in length, which adorns the
wall in the Ethnographical section of the British Museum.
[Illustration: STEM-PIECE, MAORI WAR CANOE.]
[Illustration: STERN-POSTS OF MAORI WAR CANOES. _From Examples in the
Dominion Museum, Wellington, New Zealand._]
[Illustration: A MAORI WAR CANOE. _From Angas’s “New Zealand.”_]
The canoes of that mysterious people, the Maori of New Zealand, well
repay attention in greater detail than is possible in this book. The
origin of the people themselves is unknown, though, if their traditions
are to be accepted, they migrated a few hundred years ago from certain
of the islands in the Central Pacific, partly conquered and partly
absorbed the people whom they found there already, and have remained
ever since. There has been more than one such expedition. There are
affinities between the Maori and the Hawaians. Did the Maori come
originally from Hawaii, or is there some connection between them and
the ancient Egyptians, as is held to be indicated by certain points
of resemblance in their carvings and mural decorations? In what sort
of canoes did they cross the ocean, and how did they find their way?
Unfortunately, the old chiefs who held the traditions have all died,
and it is only owing to the painstaking researches of a few
scholars who recognised the need and value of preserving what could
still be learnt, that anything at all is known of the history of
this strange people. Their legends tell us that some of their canoes
were of great size; some could carry fires or places for cooking the
food, and others were double canoes. One of the latter is said to
have had a platform connecting the two hulls, and bearing a house; it
was a three-masted vessel. All the New Zealand canoes had names of
symbolical or historical interest. One of them was called _Marutuahi_,
which, translated literally, means a slaying or devouring fire.[8] The
dimensions of the historical or legendary canoes are not known. The
straight, tall kauri pines of the North Island enabled large canoes to
be built; one is said to have been 110 feet in length, and many of the
later canoes were 60 to 80 feet long, and held a hundred to a hundred
and fifty men. These boats had long, overhanging bows ornamented with a
figurehead and two carved boards extending some little distance along
either bow. Between these boards and resting on the stem the carved
figurehead was placed and was often adorned with tufts of feathers. A
mast set rather far forward and raking aft supported a triangular mat
sail, the foot of which extended along the boom one and a half times
to twice the length of its height, and enabled the canoe to sail very
near the wind. The stays of the mast and the sheets of the sail were
of plaited flax. The drawbacks to these canoes were that having no
keels they made great leeway, and that their length made them awkward
to manage whenever they were caught in anything like a rough sea; they
could not meet the seas end on, but lay in the trough of the waves, and
were so well handled that disasters were few. In rough weather they
were covered with flax mats over a portion of their length to prevent
the seas breaking inboard.
The long pine hull was of great strength, but to render it more
seaworthy topsides were lashed along the sides of the hull from end
to end of the vessel with braids of flax fibres,[9] and the seams and
holes were caulked with a species of down. As a precaution against
leakage and to strengthen the joint, a long, thin batten was lashed
over the outside of the joint.
The decorations of the Maori canoes are wonderful. The spiral pattern
often seen in their carvings is taken from the unfolding of the frond
of a fern, and has been supposed to symbolise the unfolding of life or
the attainment of a planned enterprise. The greatest care and the most
artistic efforts were lavished upon the carvings of the prow and stern
boards. These boards were very large and always removable. The log
from which the stern-board was fashioned was generally about 15 inches
in diameter and 6 to 15 feet in length, and in its complete state
was covered with conventional and elaborate patterns. The figurehead
log was about 6 feet in length and 4 feet wide, and 2 to 4 feet in
thickness. Both were of hardwood and coloured red with kokowai or
ochre. If the figureheads represented the dead chiefs who had joined
the immortals in the Maori heaven, they must have lost in the other
world what little beauty was left to them in this world after being
tattooed. Not a few of the figures are extraordinarily grotesque, and
the weird effect of the red ochre is heightened by the introduction of
bright shiny eyes made of the inner shell of the haliotis. Many also
show the tattoo marks which were supposed to add to Maori beauty, and
most bore bunches of feathers of the kaka and albatross, and on gala
days were further adorned with an elaborate and gaudy feather wig.
The thin batten, already alluded to, covering the join of the topside
and hull, was always stained black. Gannet feathers were inserted to
cover the lashings and contrasted vividly with the black batten and
the reddened canoe. The sides of many canoes also were painted in wavy
lines of red, white and black, as though in imitation of the wave
motion. Streamers of pigeon tail feathers hung from the top of the
stern-board to the water; even the sail point on the boom bore its tuft
and streamers of feathers.
[Illustration: A LAKATOI NEARLY COMPLETED.]
[Illustration: A LAKATOI UNDER SAIL. _From Photographs supplied by the
Hon. J. E. Jenkins._]
The dug-out, as the type common to all the Pacific islands, usually
has the outrigger attached; it can only be used in still waters. Very
frequently it is duplicated to form a double canoe, or even three may
be used abreast and covered, together with the intervening spaces,
with a deck upon which a deck house is erected. As the deck extends a
considerable distance beyond the sides the amount of deck space thus
obtained is very great, as can well be imagined if the hull be formed
of three canoes each 50 or 60 feet long, and the deck extends 3 or 4
feet on either side and is nearly square. If canoes with outriggers
were employed as double canoes they were placed with the outriggers
lashed together.
The accompanying illustrations of a New Guinea boat or “lakatoi” show
how these vessels are arranged. They each carry two short pole masts
which support immense spars of bamboo or other light material to which
sails of palm leaves are attached. These sails are so constructed that
they can be hauled up or down their spars as required. They have been
described as suggesting when under full sail gigantic lobsters holding
up their claws in distress. The houses upon them are formed of rattan
and palm leaves. An idea of their dimensions may be formed by comparing
in the illustrations the vessels themselves and the men and women upon
them.
Not the least amazing features of these boats are that long sea voyages
were undertaken in them, and that in spite of their size not a nail was
used in their construction, the whole thing being tied firmly together
with coco-nut or other fibre.
The Fijian canoe was very similar to that just described. The Tahitian
“pahi” is frequently 80 feet in length, of the raft-boat type, and
bears a distinct likeness to the “balsa” of Ancient Peru, and has some
of the features of the catamarans of the Chatham Islands, and “has a
closer likeness still to a Chinese junk, with its high latticed stern
work.”[10] These pahi were broad in the beam, neatly planked over
inside, and were fitted with a bulkhead or inner casing, and had the
usual elevated carved stern, sometimes consisting of one post and
sometimes of two. These vessels were capable of covering 120 miles a
day without much difficulty if the wind suited. The Pacific Islanders,
says the same authority, “in the early days of Polynesian enterprise
(about 1400 A.D. and earlier) would make voyages of over a thousand
miles at a time, taking the sun as their compass by day and the moon
and stars by night, adapting the time of their sailings to the shifting
of the Trade wind ... veering from north-east to south-west in its
appointed season.”
[Illustration: CANOE FROM SHORTLAND ISLAND.]
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF SHORTLAND ISLAND CANOE. _a_, =The keel.= _c_,
=The timbers.= _d_, =The small, solid, wedge-shaped timber in bow, with
ornament.= _By permission of C. M. Woodford, Esq.. F.R.G.S., and the
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland._]
[Illustration: WAR CANOE, TESTE ISLAND, NEW GUINEA. _From Photograph
supplied by the Hon. J. E. Jenkins._]
Unquestionably the most remarkable canoes to be found in the Pacific
were those made in the Solomon Islands. Though destitute of metal
tools, the islanders yet managed to design them with mathematical
accuracy, to construct them to scale and in accordance with the
designs, and to put them together with skill and precision. Such
canoes were made by the Solomon Islanders as long ago as the sixteenth
century, for de Mendaña, who visited the islands in 1568, has left
a description of them. The canoes, he says, were constructed of
planks, well made and light, and were crescent-shaped and capable
of holding about thirty persons. Later explorers have recorded that
the hull was formed of a dug-out, and that topsides were added. This
type of canoe appears to be peculiar to the Melanesian inhabitants
of the British Solomons.[11] For neatness and accuracy the Shortland
Island canoes come first, but “for beauty of line and exterior
decorations the large tomako or head-hunting canoe of the New Georgia
group unquestionably excels.” The built canoes were cut with the aid
only of stone implements, but now the natives use the plane iron,
fitting it into the handle formerly used for the stone implement. In
many canoes a central ridge is left along each plank to strengthen
it, and a projecting boss is left at the places where the planks and
timbers join. The timbers, or ribs, etc., are either naturally grown
or shaped from the solid. The planks are properly seasoned in the
building sheds, and when the canoe is being put together the various
parts are accurately fitted and tied with strips of fibre through the
holes in the bosses. The seams are caulked with a vegetable putty
made from scraped nut kernel, which hardens in a few days. The canoes
consist of garboard strakes, second, third, fourth, fifth, and gunwale
strakes, stem and stern pieces, and the timbers or ribs. The last fine
specimen of the head-hunting canoe of the New Georgia group was 44 feet
over all, 4 feet 8 inches beam, and 2 feet 4 inches deep. The height
of the bow, in addition, was 9 feet 7 inches, and that of the stern
10 feet 9 inches. All the Solomon Islands canoes are ornamented with
shells. A white-painted arm on the side of the vessel has a sinister
interpretation. It indicates that heads have been taken; if the arm
points to the bows the victims were males; and if to the stern the
collection taken up was of female heads. Both stem and stern-boards
had human faces carved upon them, the idea being that the faces kept
a good look-out in every direction. This was, no doubt, a pleasing
fiction or a superstition; the natives placed more reliance upon their
keenness of hearing and vision than upon the vigilance of the wooden
faces to detect the approach of an enemy.
The Malay influence has been shown not only in the building of
outrigger canoes, but in the popularity of piracy among the natives
of the East Indies. Probably the Malays have been pirates ever since
there has been commerce in those waters upon which to prey. It is
certain that the earliest European vessels to wander into the distant
Orient found the industry established, active, and prosperous. Steam
navigation, improved firearms, and the electric telegraph have done
much to curb the propensities of these merciless marauders, and the
influence of noble men like Rajah Brooke of Sarawak has been of equal
value. But they found it a hard lesson to learn that commerce must be
respected and commercial vessels let alone; it was gradually accepted
as inevitable that piratical exploits would be followed by the visit
of a European gunboat which would blow every Malay proa and pirate
to pieces at the first opportunity. This idiosyncrasy of the Western
world had to be observed, but the pirate does not take kindly to the
uninterrupted ways of peace, and whenever he can he indulges in his
hereditary calling, though his victims may be only small native trading
boats and junks.
[Illustration: HEAD-HUNTING CANOE FROM YSABEL. _By permission of C. M.
Woodford, Esq., F.R.G.S., and the Royal Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland._]
[Illustration: HEAD-HUNTING CANOE FROM YSABEL (DETAIL OF BOW).
_By permission of C. M. Woodford, Esq., F.R.G.S., and the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland._]
The Malay dug-outs intended for piracy or war were broader than those
intended for other purposes. A writer in 1848[12] described them as
built of timber in the lower part, with the upper part of rattan,
bamboo, and dried palm leaves, this lighter part being added to
prevent the sea washing in over the low sides. “Outside the bends,” he
continues, “about a foot from the water line, runs a strong gallery
in which the rowers sit cross-legged.” Apparently the gallery was on
or outside the gunwale, an arrangement which would help to steady the
long, narrow hull. Then, as now, a cabin was placed in the after part
for the accommodation of the chief in command of the boat, but an
interesting feature of the proa he describes was an unrailed flat roof
extending from the cabin roof almost the length of the ship and serving
a double purpose of providing a fighting deck for the warriors and
affording shelter for the crew. The weapons were the kris and spear,
which “to be used with effect require elbow room.” As the Malays were
energetic fighters, they were seldom long in obtaining all the elbow
room necessary. A brass gun in the prow, under the flying deck, was the
only firearm.
The modern Malay proa is a more ambitious affair. It is built to be
light, fast under sail or oar, and very shallow in hull. The last was
very necessary in vessels which usually sought safety by fleeing into
waters too shallow to permit of serious pursuit. A convenient length
was 64 feet, or 72 feet over all; the breadth would be 14 feet and
the depth only 4 feet 6 inches. Some were longer and broader, but
the Malays were usually careful to increase the draft as little as
possible. The accompanying photograph is of a model of a proa having
these dimensions, and recently added to the South Kensington Museum.
The boat is a combination of Chinese and Malayan design. It will be
noticed that the vessel has very fine lines forward, almost identical
with those of the Arab dhows of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, a
sharp run aft and shallow floors, and should be very fast. Instead of
the fighting deck overhead, already described, she has a deck extending
the whole length and breadth of the vessel and slightly below the
level of the gunwale, an arrangement which would enable a large number
of men to lie concealed behind the bulwarks and ready for instant
attack. The deck has two covered hatchways. The roof of the cabin at
the stern provides a platform for working the rudder and the guns,
there being one brass muzzle-loader on each quarter. The projecting
platforms or galleries at the bow and stern provide additional deck
space and would facilitate the boarding of a prize. The boat has two
pole masts, one set very far forward and the other rather forward of
amidships, neither having stays. The sails of all vessels of this
class were made of strips of palm leaves, except when the pirates
appropriated the sails of captured ships, as they are said to have
done at times, and altered them to suit their own vessels. The Chinese
type of dropping rudder, which could be raised or lowered by means
of a windlass, was a common feature in these Malay proas, the use of
the steering paddle being chiefly confined to the smaller craft. The
vessel represented is armed with one smoothbore gun carried on the bow
platform, and two similar weapons carried aft; she also had six gingals
or heavy muskets mounted on swivels, and there was a plentiful supply
of arms for hand-to-hand fighting.
A very similar boat to the proa, but more heavily and substantially
constructed, was that specially favoured by the Dyaks in their
head-hunting expeditions. It was long and narrow, and could carry sixty
to eighty men. The Borneo Dyaks adopted the flying deck as a fighting
platform,[13] but carried the fantastically decorated stern-board to
an extravagant height, which must have interfered seriously with the
stability of the vessel. These stern-boards are said to have been
intended as shields for the occupants of the boats, who turned them
end-on to the enemy and were protected by the boards from the hostile
arrows and spears.
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS OLD CHINESE JUNK, “WHANG HO.” _Photograph
supplied by “Shipping Illustrated.”_]
[Illustration: MALAY PIRATE PROA. _From the Model in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. By permission of R. Walters, Esq., Ware Priory, Herts._]
The Chinese seem to have attained to a certain degree of civilisation
many centuries ago, and then to have gone to sleep. The dwellers along
her coasts were traders and, when opportunity offered, pirates, but
as China maintained a policy of splendid isolation both under her
old dynasties and after her Manchu conquerors assumed control of her
destinies, she had little need of a navy and no interest to serve in
encouraging a fighting marine. China used guns in land warfare as early
as the eighth century A.D., yet in the eighteenth century she had
war junks carrying, not artillery, but soldiers armed with bows and
arrows, while the sides of the vessels bore leather shields painted
to look like tiger heads, to scare the enemy. Some of her junks were
propelled by means of a couple of paddle wheels on each side worked by
manual power. The Chinese war junks differed from the trading junks in
the greater strength of their construction and in the number of guns
carried. Some had guns approximating to 68-pounders, and it was not
unusual to find a junk with twenty-one guns of varying dimensions.
Each was the same cumbersome, slow-moving craft. These vessels were
sometimes over 1,000 tons burthen. One of these junks, the _Key-ing_,
which visited London in 1848, sailed across the Atlantic from Boston
to St. Aubin’s Bay in the remarkably good time of twenty-one days,
a performance comparing favourably with that of many of the western
sailing ships; generally she sailed “like the wind,” that is to say,
“where it listeth,” and was as likely to arrive at one port as another.
Another famous junk in her time was the _Whang-Ho_, but whether the
junk of that name which started on an exhibition tour of the world two
or three years ago was the original or was a copy, as is alleged, is
a point which is in dispute. She left San Francisco for New York and
London, intending to make the voyage by way of Cape Horn, and soon
showed that her intended port was about the last place where she might
be expected. Instead of New York, she fetched up at Tahiti, where the
crew went ashore and stayed. She sailed with a new crew for the stormy
waters of Cape Horn, and was thought to have gone to the bottom until
she turned up in Torres Straits, and nearly got into trouble through
being suspected of smuggling, or carrying contraband. After being
nearly wrecked off Java, she entered Batavia River, and sailed again
some weeks later, but her condition became so bad that she had to be
abandoned. Her captain wrote in his log-book, in October, 1909: “She
will not hold together much longer.... The beams are not fastened to
the hull of the vessel, but lie loose in her.... It is certain she has
never been a man-of-war, but has been specially built for exhibition
purposes in the most careless fashion.” A few days later she was left
to her fate.
[Illustration: JAPANESE WAR GALLEYS AND A PROTECTED GALLEY ‘KIKKOSEN,’
15th CENTURY. _Photograph by special permission of the Japanese
Imperial Naval Commissioners._]
[Illustration: PICTURE OF THE ATAKA MARU POSSESSED BY TOKUGAWA SHOGUN
THE “ATAKA MARU.” _Photograph by special permission of the Japanese
Imperial Naval Commissioners._]
The Japanese, who pursued a policy of isolation until they were
forced to admit Western influences, were as conservative in their
shipping as in everything else. Their trading junks were all built
to pattern, externally and internally, decreed by the authorities,
and no deviation from it was permitted. In their warships, however,
a greater variety of design was allowed. As early as the fifteenth
century they had sea-going ships carrying cannon, a weapon derived at
some time, perhaps, in the unrevealed past, from the Chinese after
the latter conferred upon the Japanese the Chinese system of writing,
a religious system, and other evidences of Celestial superiority.
There were several types of these war galleys, some of which are here
illustrated. The vessels shown were generally very strongly built
with a displacement of about 200 tons. They were propelled by over one
hundred and fifty oars, and their gun positions had bulwarks about
4 feet high, protected by thick wooden shields. A smaller type of
vessel, also in use at that time, may be called a protected galley.
They were very small vessels, displacing only about 25 tons each. They
were nearly flat-bottomed, but had a top covering, or hood, made of
metal sheets, which extended from side to side and almost from end to
end, like a turtle back. Their guns were mounted inside the cover and
fired through small ports cut through the sides of the vessel itself.
These boats were two-ended; that is, of similar shape at either end,
so that they could travel either end foremost, and they had a curious
tunnel constructed along their bottoms in which a peculiarly shaped
paddle-wheel was revolved by manual power for the propulsion of each
vessel. The Japanese warships increased in size and ornamentation until
the _Ataka Maru_ was built. She is of more than ordinary interest, as
she was the last and the largest of the old native warships built for
the Japanese Government before the adoption of Western methods. She was
180 feet long by 63 feet beam and 22 feet depth, and was propelled by
one hundred and thirty oars. Her armament consisted of five heavy guns
and a number of smaller weapons, and her vital parts were protected by
copper sheathing. The Japanese, as already stated, probably obtained
their knowledge of explosives and firearms from the Chinese, and a few
years ago repaid the obligation by giving the Chinese most instructive
lessons in the superiority of modern methods and weapons.
One of the oldest vessels, and at the same time one possessing
characteristics supposed to be essentially modern, is the Arab dhow.
It is as old as the days of Alexander the Great in its chief features,
and in the fineness of the lines of its hull, its seaworthiness, and
its general handiness is not unlike the Viking ships, and is equal to
anything of similar size that the average modern builder could produce
with the same materials. They are employed in gun-running, smuggling,
and the slave trade, when, more legitimate cargoes are lacking or not
sufficiently remunerative.
The Siamese were among the Eastern nations who took kindly to the sea,
and were able to use their warships to some effect. Thus, about two
hundred and fifty years ago, when a European power, depending upon
its superior strength, took forcible possession of the island of Junk
Seylon, the King of Siam of that day ordered the “immediate building of
six warships, each carrying ten guns with pattaroes, and well manned
and fitted with small arms.” These vessels were built in one month,
and this emergency mobilisation and the fighting orders were all to be
obeyed under penalty of death and forfeiting of estates, the latter
penalty being added no doubt to prevent the expectant heirs of a
warrior depriving his majesty of the latter’s services.