PART II—THE PRESENT ERA OF STEAM AND STEEL

Transcriber’s Notes:

Italic text is denoted _thus_.

The original spelling, hyphenation, accentuation and punctuation has

been retained, except for apparent typographical errors.

In Chapter 10, the quotation following the 10th paragaph stated:

On her port side she carries a red light, and it is so shut in that

it cannot be seen from the port side or from behind.

This has been corrected to read:

On her port side she carries a red light, and it is so shut in that

it cannot be seen from the starboard side or from behind.

THE

BOOK OF THE OCEAN

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[Illustration: Original Image.]

[Illustration:

DRAWN BY LOUIS LOEB. ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.

THE MAJESTY OF THE SEA.]

THE

BOOK OF THE OCEAN

BY

ERNEST INGERSOLL

AUTHOR OF “KNOCKING ROUND THE ROCKIES,”

“THE OYSTER INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES,”

“FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING,”

“WILD NEIGHBORS,”

“THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT,” ETC.

[Illustration: printers mark]

+Illustrated+

[Illustration: printers mark]

NEW YORK

THE CENTURY CO.

1898

Copyright, 1898,

By THE CENTURY CO.

THE DE VINNE PRESS.

[Illustration: decorative page header]

CONTENTS

PAGE

I THE OCEAN AND ITS ORIGIN 1

II WAVES, TIDES, AND CURRENTS 9

III THE BUILDING AND RIGGING OF SHIPS 27

IV EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS 39

Part I—Previous to the Discovery of America.

Part II—From Columbus to Cook.

V SECRETS WON FROM THE FROZEN NORTH 77

VI WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES 107

Part I—Wooden Walls, from Salamis to Trafalgar.

Part II—The Present Era of Steam and Steel.

VII THE MERCHANTS OF THE SEA 155

VIII ROBBERS OF THE SEAS 171

IX YACHTING AND PLEASURE-BOATING 187

X DANGERS OF THE DEEP 201

XI FISHING AND OTHER MARINE INDUSTRIES 231

XII THE PLANTS OF THE SEA AND THEIR USES 249

XIII ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA 259

INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS 275

GENERAL INDEX 277

[Illustration: oarsmen towing sailing ship]

THE BOOK OF THE OCEAN

[Illustration: rescue of man from the sea]

CHAPTER I

THE OCEAN AND ITS ORIGIN

Looking at the land, we divide the surface of the earth into eastern

and western hemispheres; but looking at the water, we make an opposite

classification. Encircle the globe in your library with a rubber band,

so that it cuts across South America from about Porto Alegre to Lima

on one side, and through southern Siam and the northernmost of the

Philippine Islands on the other, and you make hemispheres, the northern

of which (with London at its center) contains almost all the land of

the globe, while the southern (with New Zealand as its central point)

is almost entirely water, Australia, and the narrow southern half of

South America being the only lands of consequence in its whole area.

Observing the map in this way, noticing that, besides nearly a complete

half-world of water south of your rubber equator, much of the northern

hemisphere also is afloat, you are willing to believe the assertion

that there is almost three times as much of the outside of the earth

hidden under the waves as appears above them. The estimate in round

numbers is one hundred and fifty million square (statute) miles of

ocean surface, as compared with about fifty million square miles of

land on the globe.

To the people whose speculations in geography are the oldest that have

come down to us, the earth seemed to be an island around which was

perpetually flowing a river with no further shore visible. Beyond it,

they thought, lay the abodes of the dead. This river, as the source

of all other rivers and waters, was deified by the early Greeks and

placed among their highest gods as Oceanus, whence our word “ocean.”

Accompanying, or belonging to him, there grew up, in the fertile

imagination of that poetic people, a large company of gods and

goddesses, while men hid their absence of real knowledge by peopling

the deep with quaint monsters.

“The word for ‘ocean’ (_mare_) in the Latin tongue means, by

derivation, a desert, and the Greeks spoke of it as ‘the barren brine.’”

Over these old fables we need not linger. All the myths and guesswork

that went before history represented the sea as older than the land,

and told how creation began by lifting the earth above the universal

waste of waters. The story in Genesis is only one of many such stories.

[Illustration: A QUIET SEA, AND THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT.

From a photograph.]

Scientific men believe that when our planet first went circling swiftly

in its orbit it was a glowing, globular mass of fiery vapors; but

as time passed, the icy chill of space slowly cooled these vapors,

and chemical changes steadily modified, sorted, and solidified the

materials into the beginnings of the present form and character, until

at last _water_ came into existence. This must have been at first in

the form of a thick envelop of heated vapors, impregnated with gases,

that inwrapped the globe in a darkness lit only by its own fires.

After that, when further changes had come about,—let us picture

it,—what deluges of rain were poured out of and down through those

murky clouds where thunders bellowed and lightnings warred! At first

all the rains that fell must have been turned to steam again; but by

and by the steady downpour cooled the shaping globe so that all the

water was not vaporized, but some stayed as a liquid where it fell,

and this increased in amount more and more, until finally, between the

hissing core of the half-hardened planet and the dense clouds which

kept out all the sunlight, there rolled the heated waves of the first

ocean—an ocean broken only by the earliest ridges, like chains of

islands, marking the skeletons of the continents that were to follow—an

ocean sending up ceaseless volumes of steam to form new clouds.

[Illustration: EATING AWAY THE COAST.]

Yet all the while the cooling of the planet went on. Now, when any

heated substance cools it contracts, and the globe as a whole is

no exception to the rule; but a sphere formed of so incompressible

a substance as rock can shrink only by some sort of folding or

displacement of its surface. Therefore, as the cooling of our globe

proceeded, explosions and swellings constantly occurred at weak points

or lines on or near the surface, where the prodigious strain forced a

break. That these upheavals were most prominent and extended in the

northern hemisphere is shown by the fact that the great masses and

heights of land are grouped there; and the trend of mountain-ranges

seems to show that the range of breakage and upheaval was in general

in north-and-south lines. Elsewhere, and mainly in the southern

hemisphere, broad areas of perhaps stiffer crust sank downward, making

the vast depressions into which poured the waters of the primeval sea,

and where our oceans still sway and roll.

[Illustration: SURF AT FORT DUMPLING, R. I.]

All these changes, however, have been in the direction of insuring

more and more stability; and when the ocean water had thoroughly

cooled, the very chill of its vast masses in the depths of the troughs

assisted in the work, for the cold water, by more rapidly withdrawing

their heat, caused the rocks beneath their basins to become denser,

thicker, stronger, and consequently less liable to break or change,

than were those rocks forming the foundations of the continents.

The moment it had shores to beat upon, that moment the ocean began

to knock them to pieces under its pounding surf, and to grind the

fragments so small that they could be drifted away, reassorted, and

deposited wherever the water was sufficiently quiet to let them fall.

The original rocks—chiefly granite—held the different forms of lime,

magnesia, etc., to make the limestones; the silica to make the gritty

sandstones; the alumina to make the clays; and so on. The sea not only

was the agent to eat this old, rich crust to pieces and respread it

into strata, but to sort out for us the materials to a considerable

extent, laying down beds of limestone by themselves, and sandstone,

shales, marl, etc., by themselves. It is probable, says Professor

Shaler, that layers of rock twenty miles in thickness have thus been

laid down on the gradually settling ocean floor, much of which has been

raised again to form continental lands.

Hitherto we have spoken of the waters that surround the continents as

if they formed one mass, as, practically, they do; but for convenience

sake we may designate certain areas by separate names, which ought

now to be defined. Thus the larger, more open spaces are known as

_oceans_, and of these five are recognized, namely, Pacific, Atlantic,

Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic. Parts or branches of these, more or less

inclosed by land and usually comparatively shallow, are termed _seas_.

_The Pacific Ocean_ is the largest, it alone covering more space than

all the continents combined, having a breadth, east and west, of ten

thousand miles (about the length of the Atlantic), and an area of

seventy million square miles. The equator divides it into the North

and South Pacific. The former is comparatively free from islands,

and is inclosed northward by the approaching extremities of Alaska

and Siberia; while the latter widens at the south into the boundless

Antarctic Ocean. Its basin is a vast depression of fairly uniform

depth, studded in the western part by island peaks,—the summits of

submerged volcanic mountain-ranges. The name “Pacific,” or “Peaceful,”

was given to it by Magalhaens (Magellan), its first navigator, in 1540

(see Chapter IV), in his joy at having escaped from the tempestuous

experience he had long endured in the South Atlantic. On the whole the

Pacific deserves its name as compared with the Atlantic—a fact chiefly

due to its great size. The term “South Sea” was formerly much used for

it, but English-speaking persons now usually mean by that phrase the

island-studded district between Hawaii and Australia.

[Illustration: PERCÉ ROCK, IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, SHOWING

DESTRUCTION OF SHORE-ROCKS BY WATER.]

_The Atlantic_ commemorates in its name the myth of Atlas and his

island. Atlas seems to have been originally, among the Greeks, the

name of the Peak of Tenerife, of which they had vague information from

the earlier Phenician sea-wanderers. Then this was forgotten, and in

place of the fact arose a myth of a Titan who stood upon a vast island

in or beyond the “Western Sea,” called Atlantis. Legends of wars with

its people form a part of the nebulous hero-story of the beginnings of

Athens; and it is said to have sunk out of sight long before records

began. There have always been those who believed this story founded

upon fact, and only a few years ago a book was printed in the United

States arguing that the tale was the history of a real land; but not

only is there no literary or historical evidence that Atlantis had

any firmer foundation than vague memories of the Cape Verd or Canary

Islands, but every evidence of the geological condition and history

of the eastern shores and bed of the middle Atlantic Ocean shows that

no such convulsion as the destruction of this island calls for ever

took place there, or that there was ever such a land to be submerged.

The Atlantic occupies a long, winding, comparatively narrow trough,

that measures about ten thousand miles north and south, from the ice

of the Antarctic to the ice of the Arctic ocean, and has only a few

islets south of Iceland, the Faroes and the Shetlands, which rise from

a plateau stretching from Labrador to Great Britain, the higher points

of which were probably above the water within comparatively recent

geological times, possibly since man appeared upon the globe. The

average depth of the Atlantic south of this ridge is about thirteen

thousand feet, but greater depths are found along the African and

American coasts, on each side of a long submerged ridge from which rise

the isolated islands of Cape Verd, St. Helena, and Tristan da Cunha.

The width from Norway to Greenland is only about eight hundred miles,

but between Montevideo and Cape Town it is thirty-six hundred miles,

and the average width is about three thousand miles. The shape and

situation of the Atlantic make it the most stormy of the three great

oceans, and it is the one where the phenomena of tides, currents, etc.,

are most prominently manifested, as we shall see. It is also the most

frequented and best known, because it has been necessary to study it

for the benefit of commerce.

_The Indian Ocean_ is simply the extension of the vast southern

water-zone northward of parallel 40°, south latitude, where, from the

Cape of Good Hope to Tasmania, it is six thousand miles in width.

At this line the depth suddenly decreases, as though the edge of a

submerged Antarctic plateau defined the southerly rim of its basin

there. This ocean contains several large and some groups of small

islands, but these are mostly near the shore, and connected with the

neighboring continent by shallow waters, showing that they rise from

a submerged plateau. The average depth of the Indian Ocean is about

fourteen thousand feet; its surface-water is warmer and salter than

that of any other; and its winds and weather are more regular and

peaceful than in either the Atlantic or the North Pacific.

_The Arctic Ocean_ is the well-defined body of water around and

probably over the north pole. It is connected with the Pacific only

by the narrow and very shallow Bering Strait, and with the Atlantic

by comparatively narrow openings. It has been fairly well explored as

far north as the parallel of 80°, and found to contain many islands;

but it appears that there is great depth of water north of Spitzbergen

and northeast of Greenland, making it probable that the trough of the

Atlantic reaches to or beyond the pole itself. Most of its area is

covered with drifting ice.

_The Antarctic Ocean_ is regarded as the space of water within the

Antarctic circle; but this is surrounded by a zone of deep ocean,

unbroken almost half-way to the equator, except by the narrow southern

part of South America and by New Zealand. It is an area, apparently

rather shallow, of ice, fogs, and tempestuous gales, inclosing lands of

unknown extent.

[Illustration: WAVE-WORN CLIFFS AND PEBBLE-BEACH AT ETRETAT, FRANCE.

(FROM A PAINTING BY WILLIAM P. W. DANA.)]

But these geographical distinctions are merely convenient methods of

speech. After all, there is only one ocean “poured round all,” and its

particles are incessantly changed in place and remingled by means of

a world-wide system of tides and currents, the effect of which is to

keep sea-water everywhere uniform in character and perfectly pure and

healthful.

[Illustration: IN MID-OCEAN: A GREAT WAVE.]

CHAPTER II

WAVES, TIDES, AND CURRENTS

Now that we have studied the ancient ocean, it is time to study its

present characteristics and understand the great and important part it

plays in the world.

A very striking thing about the ocean is its flatness. Being water,

it seeks always to find its level; and we commonly assume that it

everywhere does so, and take the sea-level as the standard from which

to calculate all heights above or depths below its surface; that is,

we assume that every part of the surface of the ocean when calm and at

mean tide is exactly the same distance from the center of the globe.

This, however, is not wholly true. Careful observation has shown that

the Pacific is several feet lower on the western shore of the Isthmus

of Darien than is the Atlantic on its eastern shore—a fact due, no

doubt, to the crowding of water by the Gulf Stream into the Caribbean

Sea. The Mediterranean is known to be somewhat higher than the

Atlantic, and other differences exist in similar places elsewhere.

This introduces the subject of depth—a matter which we have learned

accurately only within a very few years. In the early days ropes alone

were used for sounding, and these had to be of considerable size to

bear the strain; but a mile or so of rope became too heavy to handle,

and depths below that length remained unmeasured. Then a little machine

was tried consisting of a heavy weight having attached to it, by a

trigger, a wooden float. This was thrown overboard. It sank, and when

it touched bottom the shock released the float. From the time that

elapsed before the float reappeared the depth was estimated. This,

however, was little better than guesswork; and accurate soundings

exceeding one thousand fathoms were not obtained until an American

naval officer began to use wire instead of rope. From this hint

was developed elaborate machinery, operated by steam, using steel

piano-wire, having automatic registers of the amount reeled out, and

carried down by weights that were released when the bottom was struck,

making it easier to recover the wire. To these weights (or rather to

the wire just above them) were attached devices for clutching and

bringing to the surface specimens of the bottom, self-closing jars to

fetch water from the lowest layer, self-registering thermometers that

recorded the temperatures at the greatest or at various intermediate

depths, and other means of learning the character of the water,

bottom-material, and animal life several miles below the surface,

including methods of photographing by aid of a submerged electric

light. Such investigations, carried on in ships suitably equipped, have

been prosecuted by several governments, most notably by the expedition

of the _Challenger_, a British surveying-ship which circumnavigated the

globe during the years from 1872 to 1876.

[Illustration: SEA-CAVE NEAR GIANT’S CAUSEWAY, NORTH OF IRELAND.]

This and many other expeditions have sounded in all parts of the world,

and explored large tracts where the water uniformly exceeded three

miles in depth. The United States ship _Enterprise_, after passing the

Chatham Islands in her run from New Zealand to the Strait of Magellan,

found the water everywhere more than thirteen thousand feet deep.

Throughout her run from Montevideo to New York the water varied from

twelve to eighteen thousand feet deep, and Captain Nares and Admiral

Belknap found like depths over equally vast breadths elsewhere.

Yet even in these basins more profound pits and valleys exist. Several

places are known near Japan and off Porto Rico exceeding five miles

in depth; and an English officer sounded 29,400 feet in the southern

Pacific Ocean, nineteen hundred miles east of Brisbane, without finding

bottom.

The average depth of all the oceans is estimated at from twelve

thousand to fifteen thousand feet. As, according to Humboldt, the

average height of the lands of the globe is only about one thousand

feet, it will be seen that all the land now above the water, and its

foundations, could be shoveled into the ocean troughs and still leave

water more than two miles in depth covering the whole planet.

The soundings and dredgings of which I have spoken enable us to make

a tolerable map of the ocean beds and to describe their features.

All the continents are bordered by a shelf reaching out under the

shallow shore-water to a greater or less distance, and then dropping,

usually with much abruptness, to the ocean trough. This shelf, perhaps

originally a part of the primeval continent, bears most of the great

islands near continents, such as Newfoundland, the West Indies, Great

Britain and Ireland, Madagascar, the Aleutian, Japanese, and Philippine

groups, the Malay Archipelago, and others. If you will look at a map

that has marked upon it the line of one thousand fathoms’ depth along

the shores of the various continents, you will find it reaching far

out from the eastern shores of both Americas, the western and northern

shores of Europe, the eastern shores of South Africa, prolonging India

hundreds of miles, and embracing great spaces among the East Indies,

while even the hundred-fathom line would connect many an island with

the mainland or with some other island, as they actually have been

connected in times gone by. The fact is, there is not a single proper

mountain-peak rising out of deep water at any great distance from the

margins of the continents. All the numerous islands of the wide oceans

are either coral reefs or the summits of volcanic cones.

Upon this shelf, and for the most part within two hundred miles of the

coast, are deposited all of the materials torn from the land by the sea

or brought down by rivers or glaciers, excepting the very finest, which

currents may float somewhat farther out, and also excepting the rocks

that icebergs carry away and drop in mid-ocean; but this is not a great

amount, for most icebergs strand on the shallows off Newfoundland or in

Bering Sea.

Almost nothing from the shores, therefore, reaches the central depths

of the open oceans, whose beds are in substantially the same condition

that they were in at the beginning, except for two things—volcanic

upheavals in some places, and the remains of animal life everywhere.

The former exception is a very important one, since it is now known,

according to Professor Shaler, that volcanoes, by their eruptions, send

more dust and broken materials to the seas than the rivers and shores

combined.

[Illustration: THE VOLCANO KRAKATOA (SUNDA STRAIT) IN ERUPTION IN 1883.]

“Although the deeper sea-floors probably lack mountains,” says

Professor Shaler, “they are not without striking reliefs, which,

if they could be seen, would present all the dignity which their

size gives to the Himalayas or Andes: the difference is that these

elevations are not true mountains, but volcanic peaks, sometimes

isolated, again accumulated in long, narrow ridges, but all made up of

matter poured out from the craters or through great fissures in the

crust. So numerous are these heaped masses of lava and other ejections

from these vents that there is hardly any considerable area of the

oceans where they do not rise above the surface. There are indeed

thousands of these volcanic peaks distributed from pole to pole....

Thus on the floor of the North Atlantic there is evidently a long,

irregular chain of these elevations extending from the Icelandic group

of islands southward to the Azores. If an explorer could view this part

of the sea-bottom, he would probably find that the line of craters was

as continuous as that exhibited by the volcanoes of the Andes.

“Besides the volcanic peaks,” Professor Shaler continues, “the

sea-bottom in certain parts of the tropics ... is beset with the

singular elevations formed by coral reefs.” But of these I shall have

more to say toward the end of the book, and I allude to them here only

as a feature of the invisible landscape beneath the waves.

Over the vast, gently undulating spaces separating these submerged

lines of volcanoes and the ridges of coral, lies a mat of mud of

unknown thickness, which naturalists term “ooze.” It is principally

composed of volcanic dust and of the microscopic “tests,” or flinty

limy skeletons of minute animals, few of which are large enough to be

seen by the unaided eye. “Dwelling in myriads in the superficial parts

of the sea, these foraminifera, as they are termed, sink at death to

the bottom, over which they accumulate a thick coating of minutely

divided limestone powder, forming a layer of ooze as unsubstantial as

the finest snow.”

In regions like the North Atlantic this ooze consists almost wholly of

such animal matter; but in other regions, such as the South Pacific,

where volcanoes prevail, it is constantly and largely increased by an

enormous quantity of mineral matter hurled broadcast by volcanoes,

all of which are on islands or near sea-coasts. A part of this is the

merest dust, which slowly settles from the air, perhaps hundreds of

miles from where it was ejected. A larger part consists of that spongy

lava called pumice, which is so full of holes filled with air and

gases that it may float half way around the globe before it sinks, as

happened after the explosion of Krakatoa.

Into the oceanic ooze, too, sinks so much of all dead fishes and other

mid-sea animals as is not dissolved or devoured before reaching it; and

it forms the grave of thousands of men. It is often said that ships

and other things would not sink far, but would float, suspended by

dense water or some miraculous influence, only a few hundred or a few

thousand feet below the surface, for no one knows how long. But this

eerie notion has no foundation in fact. “No other fate,” we are assured

by those who know, “awaits the drowned sailor or his ship than that

which comes to the marine creatures who die on the bottom of the sea.

In time their dust all passes into the great storehouse of the earth,

even as those who receive burial on land.” Wooden wrecks probably last

much longer than those of iron.

I have mentioned that a small part of what the sea tears away from the

land, or receives from rivers, winds, and other sources, is dissolved

in its waters, which now contain, no doubt, samples of every ingredient

of the rocks and soils of the dry land, and very likely some elements

not yet detected. This solvent power of the sea explains its saltness,

and it must go on growing more and more bitter as long as its waves

grind at the shores and the rivers run down. The salinity varies in

degree, water at great depths being salter than that near the surface,

and excelling in saltness where evaporation is rapid, as under the

trade-winds, while fresher in the regions of equatorial calms, where an

immense amount of rain falls; broadly, the lightest (freshest) water

is found at the equator, and the heaviest in the temperate regions.

Inclosed, or nearly inclosed, areas become very salt. Thus the Dead Sea

is what chemists call a saturated solution, being nearly one third (28

per cent.) salt, and Great Salt Lake in Utah is not far behind. The Red

Sea contains 4 per cent., and some parts of the Mediterranean nearly as

much. Taking all the open oceans together, about 3½ in every 100 parts

(3½ per cent.) is composed of various salts, more than three quarters

of which is common salt (chloride of sodium), and the remainder mainly

forms of magnesium. One of the _Challenger_ authors has estimated that

the oceans contain enough salt to make a layer 170 feet thick over

their whole area, and another writer says that the amount, if heaped

up, would be four times larger than the whole bulk of Europe above the

level of high-water mark, mountains and all.

In early times, indeed, sea-water, which yields about a quarter of

a pound of crystallized salt per gallon, was almost the only source

of salt for food. Even yet it is the principal source of supply for

the manufacture of commercial salt in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy,

Austria, the West Indies, and Central and South America; and it is

largely used in Holland, Belgium, and Great Britain. The early process,

still extensively practised in some parts of Europe, was to admit

the sea-water to large partitioned flats floored with clay, where it

evaporated rapidly. The salt-crystals remaining were then collected,

purified to a greater or less degree, and sold off-hand. It was by

similar means that our great-grandfathers in New England and along the

Southern coasts provided themselves with salt, only they used large

vats arranged over fires instead of earthen basins exposed to the sun.

But analysis of sea-water discloses small quantities of many other

recognizable minerals. Silica must be there to supply the needs of many

foraminifers, sponges, and other animals; lime in various forms exists,

or else such sea animals as mollusks could not compose their shells,

nor polyps erect their enormous reefs; bromine is present, and to the

iodine and other mineral dyes in the water we owe the lovely purples,

crimsons, and scarlets painting corallines, seaweeds, echinoderms, and

some molluscan shells, as that of the Sargasso-snail (Janthina).

As for gold and silver, both are present. I have seen it stated that a

voyage of a year or two is sufficient to permit the formation of a film

of silver all over the copper sheathing of a ship’s bottom, so that

a frigate returning from a long cruise is really silver-plated; but I

fancy this is more a matter of imagination than visible reality. Gold,

in certain chemical combinations, certainly exists in sea-water, and

may be extracted therefrom. Up to the present, however, the cost of the

extraction has been more than the precious metal obtained was worth.

Gold is often washed from sea-sand.

[Illustration: A FIORD, OR DEEP CREVICE WORN IN SEA-CLIFFS.]

The ceaseless restlessness of the ocean forms another of the greatest

contrasts between it and the immovable land—_terra firma_, as those

like to call it who have been tossing too long on the “rolling deep”.

This characteristic restlessness involves some of the most important

and interesting facts in physical geography; for were the waters

still,—that is, were the oceans simply huge, quiet ponds,—none of that

action could take place along the shores which has been so important

an agent in shaping the world and making it a suitable place for human

habitation and social development.

On a planet with an atmosphere and changing seasons like ours, however,

a stagnant ocean is as impossible as a motionless air; indeed, it is

because the air _is_ always in motion that large bodies of water are

never at rest, for it is the changing density and temperature and

movements (winds) of the air that produce waves and currents.

Waves are caused by the pressure and friction of the wind upon the

surface of the water, as you may readily see at any pond; and the water

in them simply rises and falls, driving forward a little at the very

surface so as to cause a gentle current called _wind-drift_. When the

waves approach the shallow, sloping border of the land they are checked

at the bottom by the slope of the beach, while the freer upper part

goes forward, and the waves speedily lose their rounded form and become

more and more sharply ridged and steep on the front side as they sweep

on until at last they pitch forward in the crash and thunder of surf.

In the open ocean the waves are usually doing little work except to

cause the surface to rise and fall. The harder the wind blows, the

higher the waves become, and the faster they travel. This speed has

been calculated, and has been found to be proportionate to size.

“Waves 200 feet long from hollow to hollow,” we are told, “travel about

19 knots per hour; those of 400 feet in length make 27 knots; and

those of 600 feet rush forward irresistibly at 32 knots.” These, of

course, are under the furious impulse of a gale, and it is marvelous

that ships can be made to ride over them; nor is it any wonder that

excited mariners clinging to the bulwarks of some small and heeling

craft, should call them “mountain high,” and declare in all seriousness

that they have seen their crests rising one hundred feet above their

hollows. No such altitude, nor half of it, probably, is ever reached

by a storm-wave in the heaviest cyclone. An excellent authority,

Lieutenant Qualtrough, assures us that the highest trustworthy

measurements are from forty-four to forty-eight feet. The height of a

wave depends upon what mariners call its “fetch”—that is, its distance

from the place where the waves began to form. This has been worked

out mathematically by Thomas Stevenson (father of the late Robert

Louis Stevenson, the novelist), an eminent engineer and designer of

lighthouses, who gives the following formula: “The height of the wave

in feet is equal to 1½ multiplied by the square root of the fetch in

nautical miles.” If the waves began 100 miles away from your ship, the

waves about you will be 15 feet high, because the square root of 100

is 10, and one and a half times 10 is 15 (feet). The highest waves are

not formed in the greatest tempests, which beat down their crests, but

when the gale is both very strong and long continued. The worst “seas,”

as sailors call big waves, are those met with off the Cape of Good Hope

and Cape Horn.

The depth to which wave disturbance extends depends on the violence of

the wind, and near shore upon the slope of the bottom. Prestwich tells

us that pebbles may sometimes be moved at the depth of one hundred

feet, and sand much deeper, as is shown by the fact that the bottom is

disturbed in heavy storms on the Banks of Newfoundland.

The weight and power of such on-rushing masses of water are tremendous,

as appears from the effect on coasts where they strike; but this

opens up a subject which is too large for treatment here, and I must

refer readers to geological treatises, and to such special works as

Professor N. S. Shaler’s excellent “Sea and Land,” where the work of

the ocean in tearing down and building up its coasts is fully and

entertainingly explained. I shall have something more to say on

this point, also, when I come to the chapter “Dangers of the Deep,”

and speak of the terrible destruction caused by earthquakes, and in

certain other agitations of the sea not due to the wind, and often

styled “tidal waves.” There is only one kind of “tidal wave,” properly

speaking, however; and this is a theoretical rather than an actual one,

perceptible usually only in that rising and falling of the water along

coasts twice each twenty-four hours that we call the flow and ebb of

the tides; and here we see the effect rather than the thing itself.

[Illustration: LOW TIDE, ST. JOHN’S HARBOR, N. B.]

The tide has been an inevitable circumstance of the existence on the

earth of the ocean, or any other great body of water, ever since its

origin, yet it was not until Sir Isaac Newton made us comprehend

the law of gravitation that its mystery was explained. We now know

with certainty—if you want the mathematical formulæ and so forth,

consult some good modern encyclopædia under the word _tide_—that this

periodical rising and falling of the sea is due to the attraction of

the sun and moon,—to the last three times as much as to the first,

because it is so much nearer. This attraction is exerted toward the

globe as a whole; and its visible effect upon the movable water is to

lift it bodily on that side nearest the moon, and at the same time to

pull away the earth from the water on the opposite side, which amounts

to the same thing; and thus high tides are simultaneously produced

at these antipodes, which accounts for the two a day. At the same

time, however, the intermediate spaces have low tides caused by an

attraction there toward the center of the earth. “There are thus always

simultaneously and directly under the moon two high waters opposite

each other, and two low waters at equal distances between them. Owing

to the rotation of the earth, this permanent system of swells and

troughs travels from east to west over every part of the ocean and of

its coast, and explains the regular succession of rising and falling

waters, at equal intervals of time, which we call the tides.”

[Illustration: THE EARTHQUAKE WAVE PASSING OVER THE LIGHTHOUSE ON POINT

ANJER.]

But the sun also exerts a similar but lesser influence, producing

four daily solar tides, which most of the time are lost to view in

the greater lunar tides. When, however, the moon gets into line with

the earth and the sun, so that both the heavenly bodies pull together

like a tandem team, as happens twice a month,—at new moon and full

moon,—their combined action causes unusually high water, which is the

sum of the lunar and solar tides, and is called the spring tide. High

water is then highest, and low water lowest. On the other hand, in the

midst of these fortnightly intervals, when the moon is at its first

or third quarter, the sun is a full quarter of the heavens (90°) away

from the moon. Its influence, therefore, acts at right angles to or

practically against that of the moon, and the solar tides go to swell

the low waters and diminish the high waters, forming what sailors call

neap tides,—preserving an old English word meaning _low_.

Now remember that the globe is not standing still, even while we make

these explanations, but is revolving at a tremendous speed, so that the

water under the moon lifted by lunar attraction is changing place every

instant at the rate of over one thousand miles an hour, and you have

the conception of a low wave on each side of the earth, reaching north

and south, highest and swiftest on the equator and diminishing toward

the poles. These are the true tidal waves. Were the globe covered with

an unbroken mantle of water, such waves, each about twenty inches (or

twenty-nine inches at springtide) high on the average at the equator,

would follow one another round and round the earth at the rate of one

complete circuit in every twenty-four hours. That must have been the

case in the primeval ocean before any continents existed; and something

of it still exists in the belt of unobstructed water surrounding the

Antarctic continent of ice. It would then be flood tide or ebb tide

at the same hour along the whole length of any one meridian. But in

the present condition of the globe, where the oceans are separated by

continents and broken by islands, the progress of the tidal waves is

obstructed, deflected, and wholly stopped in a great variety of ways

and places, so that the hours, amount, and behavior of the tides are

exceedingly varied in different regions, and are often very puzzling,

forming one of the most difficult matters with which the practical

navigator has to deal. Interference of tidal currents forms the

Maelstrom, off the coast of Norway, whose revolution is reversed twice

daily, the classic Scylla and Charybdis, in the Straits of Messina, so

much dreaded by the navigators of old, and many other whirlpools of

less celebrity. The tidal wave sweeping northward across the Atlantic

has time to round the northern end of Scotland and flood the German

Ocean with southward swelling currents before the rising water pouring

into the southern end of the English Channel has time to push its way

through that narrow and shallow passage; hence the two floods meet in

the Straits of Dover, which accounts for the miserable chop-sea so

sadly prevalent in that unfortunate bit of water.

The natural height of the tide seems to be from two to five feet, as

shown in the midst of the broad Pacific. “But when dashing against the

land, and forced into deep gulfs and estuaries,” to quote Professor

Simon Newcomb, “the accumulating tide-waters sometimes reach a very

great height. On the eastern coast of North America, which is directly

in the path of the great Atlantic wave, the tide rises on an average

from 9 to 12 feet. In the Bay of Fundy, which opens its bosom to

receive the full wave, the tide, which at the entrance is 18 feet,

rushes with great fury into that long and narrow channel, and swells

to the enormous height of 60 feet, and even to 70 feet in the highest

spring tides. In the Bristol Channel, on the coast of England, the

spring tides rise to 40 feet, and swell to 50 in the English Channel at

St. Malo on the coast of France.”

To this cause is also due in some degree those great oceanic currents

which form another striking fact in the history of the sea; but they

are mainly due to temperature, wind, and the rotation of the earth.

The drops that make up a body of water are the most restless things in

the world; they are always sliding down the least slope, sinking out

of the way of lighter substances, rising to let a heavier object pass

beneath them, or moving hither and thither in an ever hopeful search of

that levelness and quiet that we call equilibrium. Furthermore, when

water is heated it becomes lighter. Should, therefore, a portion of

the sea grow warmer than the remainder, it must and will rise to the

surface; and whenever a portion becomes cooled, it must and will sink.

Now, under the continuous blazing sun of the torrid zone the sea-water

near the surface gets fairly warm,—having an average temperature of

about 85° along the equator,—while in the polar regions the ocean is

always chilled by permanent or floating ice until it is nearly cold

enough to freeze; but these masses of warm and cold water cannot remain

separate in the universal ocean. The hot tropical flood, continually

rising, _must_ flow away somewhere to find its level; and it can flow

nowhere except toward the poles, for there the ever-sinking volume of

chilled and therefore heavier water sucks it in to take its place,

while it, in turn, creeps underneath toward the equator, there to fill

the gap which the escaping warm water leaves behind. So we know there

is constantly going on an interchange of water—a constant flowing

_away_ from the equator northward and southward on the surface, and a

flowing in _toward_ the equator along the bottom; an endless springing

up in the torrid zone and a steady settling down in the polar seas. One

out of many proofs of this fact is that the thalassal abysses below the

depth of a mile or so are known to be ice-cold. This could not happen

unless they were constantly filled and refilled with new water from the

great coolers at the poles; for if the water at those depths should

remain unchanged, it would soon become very warm from the heat of the

interior of the earth, whence it does constantly extract some heat.

But while this invisible _vertical circulation_ is going on, another

more visible and interesting set of movements is in progress on the

surface, forming what are known as _ocean currents_. These are vast

rivers in the ocean flowing across its face in certain directions and

to a certain depth, as rivers make their way along the land. They

begin and are kept going mainly by a union of the two causes already

explained—heat and wind.

[Illustration: A STEAMER BORNE ASHORE BY AN EARTHQUAKE-WAVE.]

The heat of the sun at the equator, warming, lightening, and

evaporating the water, constantly tends to draw the colder water from

the poles, most copiously from the South Pole; but the Antarctic water,

hastening to the equator, is soon interrupted by the extremities of

Australia, Africa, and South America, and so split into three great

branches. That which passes into the South Atlantic goes on northward

along the western coast of Africa, part of it becoming so warm under

the hot sun there that it will not sink, but constantly comes more and

more to the surface, until it strikes against the great shoulder of

Guinea and is turned sharply westward. Now it is squarely under the

trade-wind and headed the same way; constantly urged forward by this

moderate but endless tugging of the wind upon its waves, the current

can never swerve, but flows along the equator, and for half a dozen

degrees each side of it, straight across the Atlantic. South America,

however, stands in its path, and the wedge-like coast of Brazil,

pointed with Cape St. Roque, splits this great river. Part of it now

turns southward and swings back across toward Africa, making an eddy

a couple of thousand miles wide in the South Atlantic, while another

arm runs down the Patagonian coast. But by far the largest part of the

divided current is sent northward, past the coast of upper Brazil into

the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, where it is well heated, and

thence poured into the North Atlantic, to become widely celebrated as

the _Gulf Stream_.

Gathered in full force, the Gulf Stream flows northward close along

the coast of our Southern States at the rate of eighty or ninety miles

a day until Cape Hatteras gives it a swerve away, when it strikes out

to sea and pushes straight across to Spain, where a branch leaves it

and runs northward between Iceland and the British Islands, while the

main body turns southward to mingle again with the equatorial current

from Africa and repeat its journey all over again. It is in the heart

of this great circle of currents in the middle of the Atlantic that

navigators find that dreaded region of heat and calms which they call

the Doldrums; and here, too, float round and round the wide, buoyant

meadows of the Sargasso Sea.

Meanwhile another most important cold stream is making its way through

the Atlantic, known as the Arctic current. It comes down out of

Baffin’s Bay, joins a similar flood from the outer coast of Greenland,

is thrown up to the surface by the Banks of Newfoundland (where meeting

warm air, it produces those thick and prolonged fogs so common in that

region), fills the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the bight between Nova

Scotia and Cape Cod with chilly water, and finally dips under the Gulf

Stream amid that commotion of winds and waters that makes the track

of the steamships between New York and Europe the most tempestuous of

ocean highways. It is the mingling of these warm and cold waters there

which is chiefly responsible for the stormy condition of the North

Atlantic.

The Pacific has a similar arrangement of circulation north and south of

the equator. The Antarctic waters form a cold stream named the Humboldt

current, which pours up the western side of South America, keeping the

climate down to a far more wintry condition than it is entitled to by

latitude, until it reaches the southern trade-winds, which sweep it

westward straight across the Pacific, where much of it is lost among

the archipelagoes of Oceanica, and the southern part flows onward into

the Indian Ocean.

North of the Pacific equator a similar westward current moves steadily

over the great waste of waters past the Sandwich Islands to the coast

of China. From the Philippines and Japan northward, however, there

is a far stronger flow, known to the Japanese as the Black Current

(Kuroshiwo), which skirts the coast of Japan and the Kurile Islands,

makes these and Kamchatka habitable, then turns sharply east along

the front of the foggy Aleutian chain of islands, and broadening and

cooling as it turns, swings down the temperate coast of Alaska and

gradually disappears. These two great currents and their inclosed

eddies are far broader and less distinct than those of the North and

South Atlantic, but they follow the same laws.

In a similar but lesser way the Indian Ocean has a strong westerly

stream flowing straight across from Australia to South Africa, which

is of immense help to ships returning from the East around the Cape of

Good Hope. From Mozambique the water turns northward to make the return

round, but here it is complicated by the peculiar conditions made by

the inflow and outflow of the Red Sea, Arabian Gulf, and so on, and

by the disturbing influences of the monsoons, until it can hardly be

defined.

Of all these currents none is as well marked as the Gulf Stream. Its

blue water is in such contrast to the darker, greenish hue of the

remainder of the ocean that sailors can often tell when they enter the

edge of the current, half their vessel being in and half out of the

stream. If you approach from the west you find that the water at first

shows a warmth of only fifty or sixty degrees near the surface; but as

you sail on, this increases until, opposite Sandy Hook, you may get

as high a reading on the thermometer as eighty degrees, and opposite

Florida above one hundred degrees. This difference in temperature

between the eastern and western margins of the Gulf Stream is owing to

the presence of the great river of Arctic water flowing in an opposite

direction between the Gulf Stream and the shore. Off Florida the Gulf

Stream is about sixty miles wide; off New York it is over one hundred

miles in width, but is less sharply defined. Its depth is hard to

determine, but certainly amounts to several hundred feet. It is worth

remembering that, although some guesses had been made at it before, Dr.

Benjamin Franklin was the first man to study the Gulf Stream and to

tell us anything of its origin and course.

The way in which some of these ocean currents affect the weather of

the lands upon which they border shows how great is the influence of

the sea upon land-climates; indeed, it may be truthfully said that

only the continents and such great islands as Australia or Madagascar

have any climate essentially distinct from that of the ocean in their

quarter of the globe. But the equability that would reign over an ocean

of quiet water, determining the amount of cold and heat by regular

gradation in latitude between the equator and the poles, is completely

upset by the great current-movements I have outlined. Scotland, for

example, lies as far north as Labrador, and the latitude of London is

above that of Lake Superior, yet neither have those terrible frosts and

heavy snows which prevail in Canada, and make Labrador a land of ice

almost uninhabitable. This difference is due almost wholly to the fact

that the Gulf Stream pours its warm flood against the coast of Great

Britain, and even tempers the Norwegian coast, keeps Barentz’s Sea

largely free from summer ice, and clothes Spitzbergen with vegetation,

although within ten degrees of the pole. Hence in the forests of

northern Scandinavia Laps can dwell in much comfort on a line with the

frozen barren grounds north of Hudson Bay.

[Illustration: A ROUGH NIGHT IN THE GULF STREAM.]

On the other hand, the unfortunate coasts of Greenland are bathed in

water chilled by months of captivity near the pole, and loaded with

ice that cools down all the winds that blow ashore. Greenland itself

is covered with an unbroken sheet of ice, hundreds or thousands of

feet thick, yet most of it is no farther north than Sweden. The whole

northeastern coast of America, down to Labrador, is incrusted with

ice; and the region south of the St. Lawrence has a similar climate to

Finland; while even farther south, Boston, within the protecting arm of

Cape Cod, is in winter a city of frost and snow and fog from November

till April, when it really is little farther north than sunny Naples,

where one laughs at winter.

Similarly, in the Pacific Ocean, the northward movement of the great

Japanese current makes the coast of China habitable and pleasant clear

to the Sea of Okhotsk, gives the Aleutian archipelago a pretty decent

climate, and causes the islands and coasts of Alaska and British

Columbia to nourish the most magnificent forests in America, and to

have a climate resembling that of Great Britain. Glasgow and Sitka

are, in fact, in the same latitude, and under very similar climatic

conditions, except that in Scotland there are no such lofty and cold

mountains to precipitate constant rains as is the case along the

northwestern margin of America.

Similar examples and contrasts might be drawn in other parts of the

world. The weather in the interior of continents is pretty much

alike on similar latitudes the world round, varying with height; but

the climate of all sea-coasts is good or bad as a place to live, in

accordance with the temperature of the water which the currents bring

to that part of the ocean.

But the currents of the ocean influence something besides the weather.

Upon them depends to a considerable extent whether a certain part of

the coast shall have one or another kind of animals dwelling in the

salt water. This is not so much true of fishes as it is of the mollusks

or “shell-fish,” the worms that live in the mud of the tide-flats, the

anemones, sea-urchins, starfish and little clinging people of the wet

rocks, and of the jellyfishes, great and small, that swim about in the

open sea.

Nothing would injure most of these “small fry” more than a change in

the water making it a few degrees colder or warmer than they were

accustomed to. Since the constant circulation of the currents keeps

the ocean water in all its parts almost precisely of the same density,

and food seems about as likely to abound in one district as another,

naturalists have concluded that it is temperature which decides the

extent of coast or of sea-area where any one kind of invertebrate

animal will be found. It thus happens that the life of Cuban waters is

different from that of our Carolina coast; and that, again, largely

separate from what you will see off New York; while Cape Cod seems to

run out as a partition between the shore life south of it and a very

different set of shells, sand-worms, and so forth, characteristic of

the colder waters to the northward.

Out in the ocean, however, the warm current of the Gulf Stream forms

a genial pathway along which southern swimming animals, like the

wondrously beautiful Portuguese-man-o’-war (Physalia), may wander

northward for hundreds of miles beyond where they are found near shore;

yet if by chance they stray outside the limits of the warm Gulf Stream,

they will at once be chilled to death, as happened once to millions of

tile-fish.

Ocean currents carry floating burdens long distances. They bring the

icebergs to form those terrible fogs of Alaska and Newfoundland; and

they often bear far away the logs that float out of tropical rivers.

[Illustration: A YOUNG SHIP-RIGGER.]

These drifting logs often have plants growing upon them or contain

quantities of seeds which are not injured by their short voyages.

When, therefore, the coral polyps build up one of their reef-islands

until it appears above the waves, thither the currents bring roots

and seeds from neighboring islands, and quickly plant them upon the

new barren shores, so that in a few seasons the little islet becomes

green and wooded and ready to hold its own against the winds and

waves. Moreover, the same drifting stuff will carry land animals

as passengers,—insects, snails of many kinds, reptiles, and even

four-footed beasts,—and so not only give the island a vegetation, but

populate it with various of the smaller animals. This seems to you,

perhaps, a very accidental and haphazard way of fitting out a country

so that presently it may support human beings, nor is it the only

means by which barren islands become productive; but it is important

as far as it goes, and when we study into the distribution of plants

and animals in an archipelago, we are pretty sure to find those of the

same sort upon islands that lie in the same current—even to the human

inhabitants.

CHAPTER III

THE BUILDING AND RIGGING OF SHIPS

As late as 1861 an exploring ship was visited by natives of Western

Australia, riding simple rough logs. To smooth and sharpen the log’s

end and then to hollow it out has been thought to be the first step

taken by primitive man in his progress toward a boat; but I think the

dugout probably came later, or at any rate no earlier, than the folding

of bark into a trough and tying up the ends, as some savages are still

content to do. In North America, where materials were favorable,

this germ developed into the very highest type of canoe—the Algonkin

birch-bark. It may have been an attempt to imitate the bark canoe in a

more durable form which led to the laborious hollowing of dugouts; but

here again, in regions where suitable trees grew, the art developed

so highly as to produce the great sea-boats of the Papuans and our

Northwest Coast Indians, carved from a single log, yet able to carry

sixty or more persons and their luggage. Such boats as these, when

provided with sails, are practically “ships,” and satisfy every need of

their owners.

Another root of naval architecture lies in the raft, which long ago

reached a high degree of usefulness in the sea-going balsa of western

South America. It is probable that the South Sea catamaran is a clever

outgrowth of experience with a raft. In Polynesia it took the form of

two great canoes, exactly equal, fastened close together and covered

by a single central deck; and such are the seaworthiness and speed of

these double boats, that the Polynesians voyage hundreds of miles in

them.

Similar in purpose—namely, to insure stability—are the various

outriggers that at once characterize and distinguish among themselves

the native craft of the South Seas. This device consists of a beam of

the lightest obtainable wood, usually about half as long as the canoe,

which rests upon the water parallel to and a few feet away from the

side of the boat, and is connected with its gunwale by elastic rods or

planks. Sometimes these are covered, or partly covered, by a light

platform, and there are many variations in form; but the idea in all

cases is to keep the boat from overturning.

In many parts of the world logs could be obtained large enough only for

a narrow bottom or hollowed keel, and the remainder of the boat was

built up of planks and pieces ingeniously pegged and knit together with

treenails, ratan, and cords made of vegetable fibers that tightened

when wet. The Madras surf-boats are a familiar example in civilized

waters of boats made in this way which have great elasticity, and

out of them have developed, without much change, the swift proas of

the Malays, and the junks of China, Korea, and Japan. One device for

stitching these boats firmly together was the leaving of ridges on the

inner side of the planks or pieces, through holes in which they could

be tied to each other and to the inner framework without making a hole

reaching the outside. This system seems to have been earlier than the

use of treenails.

[Illustration: PROA, WITH OUTRIGGER.]

Of similar construction, apparently, were the boats of the Egyptians

and other peoples about the eastern end of the Mediterranean and the

Red Sea, which, as far back as three thousand years before Christ, at

least, had reached the size and capabilities of true ships, making, as

we shall presently see, extensive sea voyages. Pictures of them remain

in the very ancient tombs, and show that the planking consisted of

pieces about three feet square, which were laid on overlapping, like

shingles on a roof, and fastened to the framework by wooden treenails.

The Phenicians, and their pupils the Greeks and Romans, improved on

these methods in various ways, at last substituting iron, copper, and

bronze nails or bolts (which would not rust) for the wooden pegs of

their ancestors.

All of these boats and those of all western Europe (of which the best

outside the Mediterranean were the vikings’ ships) differed in one

essential point of construction from Oriental ships: instead of making

the shell of the vessel, and fitting into it a framework of connected

braces, as the Malays and Polynesians did (and yet do), they laid a

keel, bending it up or setting into it stem- and stern-posts at the

ends, and inserted along its sides curving upright timbers, well styled

“ribs,” which swelled out amidships, and narrowed in forward and aft,

making a skeleton of the shape the hull was intended to be. Finally,

over and upon this well-braced framework were securely fastened the

planks, which were narrow and ran lengthwise in every case except

that of the ancient Nile boats. The Scandinavian vikings developed a

craft of their own, one of the most interesting of the ancient ships;

and to these northern craftsmen is traceable the principal influence

that has shaped British (and consequently American) ship-building and

seamanship. This early Scandinavian boat was always made of oak, sharp

at both ends, and rather shallow, the general form being much like that

of a modern whaleboat, with a great rounding keel—if, indeed, this

wonderful sea-craft may not be a lineal descendant of the viking ship.

The hewn planks were attached to the keel and to the ribs (usually

single, naturally bent V-shaped prongs of oak) in a most ingenious and

serviceable manner, and they were always overlapping or clinker (_i.

e._, clencher) built. Several of these and other prehistoric boats have

been found buried in peat-moss and in mounds in Germany, Denmark, and

Scandinavia, and have been described by various writers.

The motive power of all the early boats was found in human arms,

wielding paddles or oars. It is said that the oldest forms of paddles

of which we have any record among the Egyptian or Assyrian hieroglyphs

show them to have been shaped somewhat like the arm and hand, and that

similar paddles were to be seen a few decades ago on the canals in

Holland. This is natural, because undoubtedly the first paddle ever

used was the naked hand. Short paddles were soon found less powerful

than long ones; but in order to work the latter it was necessary to

brace them against something in the middle. Notches were therefore cut

in the edge of the boat, or thole-pins were inserted, the paddle became

an oar, and by and by boatmen learned the art of feathering, and so

forth.

Steering could be done of old, as now, with a turn of the rearmost

paddle in a canoe, and as canoes enlarged, the steering-paddle was

lengthened. As the sterns of the ancient boats were usually either

sharp, like the prows, or else built up into an ornamental height, the

most convenient place for the steering-oar was over the right side,

where it was balanced in a loop of cable, or otherwise, as close to the

after end of the boat as practicable, and then a cross-piece extended

inboard from the handle, enabling the steersman to move it more easily

by giving him the benefit of leverage. Such was the arrangement of

steering-gear in all the ancient Mediterranean boats, and it is to a

similar arrangement in the sea-going craft of our northern ancestors

that we owe our words _stern_ and _starboard_, which originally

meant “steering-place” and “steering-side.” The modern rudder is

substantially the same oar, set upright, tiller and all, and hinged to

the stern-post; in fact, the word has descended from the old Teutonic

name for “oar,” and all gradations between steering-oar and true rudder

may still be found.

Though some romantic stories are told by the old mythologists as

to its origin, the idea of rigging was as natural and practical in

its development as that of hull or steering-gear. That a strong

breeze moves a canoe, and that, if a man in a canoe holds his robe

outstretched or a thick bush upright, the force will send him along

without the labor of paddling, and lengthwise rather than sidewise,

because that is the direction of least resistance, were facts quickly

and gratefully seized upon by the earliest boatmen. To have a skin

ready for the purpose, and to set up a pole and ropes to hold it in

position, were easy matters; yet in this simple arrangement you have

the first sail.

But skins were too heavy and valuable for such a purpose, except in

such limited circumstances as those of the Arctic Eskimos.

Persons who spent much time on the water, therefore, like the most

ancient Egyptians and the islanders of the Chinese and South seas, soon

devised a way of weaving rushes or splints of bamboo into broad mats,

and thus were able, on account of their lightness, to carry much larger

and more effective sails, which were kept outstretched by one or more

cross-poles or spars, and could be taken down quickly. Many such sails

are in use to this day not only among Asiatic and African boatmen, but

on the northwest coast of Canada. A fine example hangs above my desk as

I write.

With the discovery of how to make cloth and cordage of woolen, silken,

hempen, and cotton fibers (and in Egypt of papyrus), came a still

better material for ropes and sails, since cloth was so much lighter

that a far greater extent of it could be spread than before; its

flexibility enabled it to be handled, changed, and rolled up snugly,

and its cheapness encouraged its use and the practice of navigation

generally. We read of silken sails on the royal barges of medieval

times, but they could hardly have exceeded in strength or elegance

those of the fine Phenician ships that carried the commerce of the

world twenty-five centuries ago. “Fine linen with broidered work from

Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail,” exclaims

the sacred chronicler (Ezekiel xxvii. 7). Hempen cloth, indeed, was

preferred for sails until the present century, as is expressed in our

word _canvas_, which is derived from the Latin name of flax; but now

cotton has mainly superseded it.

Anciently the sails were often colored, purple or vermilion being the

badge of a monarch or an admiral. Black denoted mourning. “In some

cases the topsail seems to have been colored, while the sail below

was plain; and frequently a patchwork of colors was produced by using

different stuffs.” Various inscriptions and devices were also woven or

painted on the sails, sometimes in gold. The Venetians and Greeks do

the same to this day, adding a gaudy feature to the lovely Levantine

sea-scenery; and the sails of the North Sea fishermen are turned to a

rich red and yellow by the tanning mixture in which they soak their

canvas.

[Illustration: REEFING A TOPSAIL IN A STORM.]

As for the shape, all rigs seem reducible to two types—the lateen and

the square. The former is characteristic of the eastern half of the

world, the latter of the western half, including primitive America,

where, so far as I know, only plain, rectangular sails were ever made

by the Indians.

[Illustration: A HONG-KONG “PULL-AWAY” BOAT.

Showing method of hoisting and reefing matting sails.]

There must be some good reason for a broad division like this, and

it is found in the different conditions which eastern and western

seamen had to meet. The lateen seems to have originated in the Indian

Ocean, is seen wherever Arabs are, and has been taken eastward by the

Malays as far into the South Sea Islands as their influence extended.

It is a huge, triangular canvas extended at a steep angle by a long,

flexible yard balanced across the mast to which it is loosely hung,

and controlled by a sheet attached to the free corner. It is thus very

lofty, and therefore suitable to a region of steady and usually light

winds. This is the characteristic rig of the Arab dhow—a model that has

come down from remote antiquity and is capable of excellent service on

the northern and eastern coasts of Africa, where it prevails. It was

probably in a small vessel of this kind that the Apostle Paul suffered

shipwreck; and an outgrowth and perfection of it is the dahabiyeh

of the Nile, now become famous as a tourists’ pleasure-boat, whose

immensely lofty sail is precisely adapted to catch every faint breath

that comes across the river from the deserts. Such sails are spread

like the great pointed wings of an albatross over the narrow decks

of the Malayan “flying proas” and other swift South Sea craft, and

urge upon their fleet errands the xebecs, saics, feluccas, and other

light craft of the Levant and Barbary coasts, identified with former

piracy and modern smuggling, as well as with fishing and freighting.

Some of these boats have two or three masts, the xebec and felucca

being notable because of the curious forward rake of the foremast;

and in that extremely picturesque Portuguese fishing-boat called the

muleta there are, in addition to the big lateen, a huge free second

sail ballooning out to leeward from the tip of the yard, and a host of

little flying jibs forward, which somebody has well likened to a flock

of birds hovering about the prow. Good examples of lateen-rigged boats

may be seen in Louisiana, built and manned by the Greek, Maltese, and

Sicilian fishermen.

The difficulty of handling in rough or squally weather this long yard

and expansive canvas makes it unsuitable for such weather as prevails

in the western Mediterranean or on the Atlantic; and to meet these

stormy and frequently changing conditions, and obtain a rig with which

they could beat to windward, the earliest rough-water seamen devised

square sails. What the rig of the ancient far-voyaging Phenician ships

was we have no means of knowing, but the indications are that they

carried lug sails, which appear to be the simplest and earliest of the

“square” forms; that is, sails suspended from short cross-yards, and

controlled by ropes (sheets) attached to their lower corners. Such at

least were the sails of the Roman and Greek merchant and war vessels of

the classical era, and they persist to-day in the local fishing-smacks

of the stormy Adriatic.

The true home of the square-sailed craft, however, was northern Europe,

where the Norwegian, Dutch, and Norman coasters and fishermen of to-day

probably represent fairly well the rigs of the bold viking boats of

twelve or fifteen centuries ago.

Of the slow development of ship-building during the middle ages we have

little information, but in the fourteenth century we begin to hear of a

revival in the art, as, indeed, was needful when the long voyages were

to be undertaken which the discovery of the mariner’s compass had then

rendered possible. In this revival the Venetians and Genoese took the

lead, but the English were not far behind. There was a large variety

of vessels in that day, rude though they were, and called by names we

should hardly recognize.

Though the hulls of these vessels were large and tight, their shape

was poorly adapted for speed or for safety in bad weather. Their decks

were built up into immensely high structures at the stern and bows,

after the old galley model, and to form forts for soldiers. Our word

“forecastle” reminds us of this old usage. Their masts were single

sticks,—not divided into topmasts,—and hence, necessarily, were thick

and heavy; and they bore upon their summits large “top-castles” where

marines stood in battle to shoot down upon the enemy’s decks. This

weight above, with the height of surface exposed to the wind and the

clumsy rigging, made it impossible for them to sail safely except with

a fair and gentle wind (they never attempted it otherwise), and they

were required to carry an enormous quantity of ballast. There was

so little room for anything except armament, sleeping-berths, and a

cooking-room in the war-ships that every war fleet had to take with it

small vessels carrying provisions; and the case was little better in

respect to merchant vessels.

The ships in which Vasco da Gama, Columbus, the Cabots, and other

explorers did their marvelous work were no better than this. Strangely

inefficient they seem to us, and we wonder that some of the simplest

contrivances in rigging were not adopted centuries before they came

into use until we remember that it was not for long, speedy voyages

that vessels were intended previous to the sixteenth century (with

certain exceptions in northern seas), but simply as a means of carrying

slowly from one coast-port to another a great number of men or huge

cargoes.

However, as the known world widened and trade grew, inventions by

private ship-owners continually improved the rigging, though it would

be hard to find a class of men slower to change old ways for new than

the seamen. Columbus’s “caravel” had four short masts, the forward one

having a square lug-sail and the three after masts lateens. It was

very gradually, indeed, that lateens were given up, and most curious

combinations of sails were to be seen in this transition period of the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The old-fashioned Mediterranean

barca, for example, had as foremast the forward-raking “trinchetto”

of the felucca, with a huge lateen, while the mainmast bore three

square sails and the mizzen two lugs; and in addition to this two banks

of oars were provided! In fact, it was not until 1800 that English

frigates substituted a spanker for the lateen-rigged mizzen.

Another curiosity of rigging possessed by these solidly built,

beautifully carved vessels (no such exterior decoration has been seen

since as adorned the ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)

was the quaint little spritsail-topmast. By this time the single

heavy pole-mast had been superseded by the three built-up masts and

topmasts, braced by stays, made accessible by rope ladders (shrouds),

and carrying several tiers of topsails instead of only one. A bowsprit

had been added, also, and this became almost a fourth mast, so loaded

were it and its stays with various small sails. Its outer end bore

this miniature spritsail-mast, with topmast, shrouds, and tiny sails

all complete, surmounted by a pole-head, or jack-staff, upon which was

hoisted the flag since known as the jack, and always now carried at the

prow of any national boat or ship, even such as the shapeless monitors.

But gradually, out of the experience of long voyages, the competition

of merchants, and as an effect of improved gunnery and consequent

changes in naval tactics, the lofty deck-structures, great tops,

needless outworks, and odd sails, like this spritsail, were got rid of,

and vessels were trimmed down and equalized until they became, as now,

“ship-shape, Bristol-fashion.”

The rigging of modern sailing-vessels is divided into “standing” and

“running”; the former includes the masts, their stays, now generally

made of wire, and such other rope-work as is not adjustable.

The sails, also, may be assigned to two classes: first, those attached

to a mast, with or without boom and gaff, or to a stay, which are

called fore-and-aft sails because they may be ranged lengthwise of the

ship; and, second, those suspended by their upper and lower edges to or

between spars or “yards” swung across the mast, and known as “square”

sails, the lowermost of which are really lugs. All the variations

of shape seen in America, except the rare and local lateens, can be

counted in one or the other of these classes.

The styles of rig visible in American waters are not many, and are

easily learned. Let us begin with the simplest—that having one mast.

[Illustration: ANCIENT CARAVELS.

Copied from old manuscripts and tapestries.]

The _cat-boat_ (_i. e._, cat-rigged boat) is one having a simple

pole-mast stepped very near the bow, and a fore-and-aft sail laced to a

gaff and boom and managed by a sheet. This is the rig of the ordinary

American sail-boat, which is noted for its ability in pointing up into

the wind. In England it is known as a una-boat. Sometimes the peak

of the sail is sustained by a little loose spar called a “sprit,”

instead of a gaff. In the chapter on Yachting will be found further

illustrations of these small rigs.

A _sloop_ has one mast (with topmast) set well back from the stem, and

a bowsprit. The sloop-rig consists of a fore-and-aft mainsail, spread

by means of a boom and gaff, a gaff-topsail, a forestaysail, and one

or more jibs. A _cutter_ is now substantially the same thing, though

formerly somewhat distinguished. Both are derived, probably, from the

northern lugger, and old-time pictures show queer intermediate forms,

often having a square topsail instead of a gaff. Thus the earlier of

the Hudson River sloops, which were not only the freight-carriers but

the packet-boats between New York and Albany from the time the Dutch

introduced them until steamboats took their place, had the top of the

mainsail supported, lug-fashion, by a short yard, and carried above

that a square topsail; but this rig was steadily modified toward the

modern type to make it faster and safer in the sudden squalls that

beset this hill-girt river.

Of two-masted rigs, the oldest is the _brig_, which has square sails on

both masts, just like the main and mizzen masts of a full-rigged ship.

Then there is the _brigantine_, a slight modification of the brig,

and the _hermaphrodite brig_, or _brig-schooner_, with fore-and-aft

sails on the after mast. This kind of vessel has been greatly modified

(one of its most extraordinary forms was the _ketch_), is less common

now than formerly, and took its name, which is derived from the same

source as “brigand,” from the fact that it was the most common rig of

the pirates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its place was

largely taken for small vessels by a purely American invention, and

one of the greatest of Yankee notions—the _schooner_. The schooner

was originally small, and had two masts; but now is often built of

great size, with as many as five or six masts, each of which has a

fore-and-aft rig—that is, a sloop’s mainsail and gaff-topsail on every

mast, with forestaysail and several jibs in front, and staysails

between. Sometimes a square sail is placed on the foretopmast, which

makes the vessel a _topsail schooner_. The first one was built by a

Gloucester sea-captain about 1817, and proved so satisfactory that all

the fishing-fleet were soon rigged in that way, whence the idea has

spread to all parts of the world.

Until recently, however, vessels large enough to have three masts were

always “square-rigged,” as _barks_, _barkentines_, or _ships_; for,

although we have come to speak of any big vessel as a “ship,” yet in

proper nautical language a ship is a vessel rigged in a particular way,

and it is nothing else. In fact, in olden times they were sometimes

very small—too small to be economical, as we now know. The “Naval

Chronicle” for 1807 contained an account of a full-rigged ship of

only thirty-six tons’ burden, which for one hundred and thirty years

previous to that date had been cruising about the English coast, and

may be doing so yet, for aught I know.

[Illustration: A FIJI ISLAND OUT-RIGGED CANOE, APPROACHING A

FULL-RIGGED SHIP HOVE-TO.]

Masts have their proper names: the tallest is in the middle of the

vessel, and is called the _mainmast_; the next tallest stands in front

of it, and is the _foremast_; and the third is in the stern, and is

named _mizzenmast_, because it carries the mizzen (sail). All the

rigging, except that belonging to the bowsprit, is repeated for each

mast, and each piece is named with reference to the mast or part of the

mast or appropriate sail to which it belongs: as, for example, main

shrouds, fore shrouds, mizzen shrouds, mizzen-royal, maintopsail yard,

foretopmast studdingsail downhaul, and so on. In a proper full-rigged

ship all the sails upon the masts, except the spanker, are square,

and are named from the sections of the mast opposite which they hang.

Counting from the deck to the truck, or tiptop of the mast, they are

as follows: on the mainmast, mainsail or maincourse, maintopsail,

maintopgallant-sail, mainroyal, and skysail; on the foremast, foresail

or forecourse, foretopsail, foretopgallant, foreroyal, and skysail;

on the mizzenmast, cross-jack (and behind it the spanker, mizzen, or

driver), mizzentopsail, mizzentopgallant, mizzen-royal, and skysail.

The bowsprit sails are the forestaysail, foretopmast staysail, jib,

flying jib, and outer jib, or jibstaysail. Each of the stays running

diagonally from mast to mast bears a triangular sail known by the name

of the particular stay on which it hangs, as maintopmast staysail, and

so on—nine in all. In addition to all this, a little sail is sometimes

set above the skysail, and another under the bowsprit, while out

beyond the ends of the yards are often extended light additional spars

carrying studdingsails. In favorable weather, when the captain wishes

to “crowd all on,” as sometimes can be done for days and weeks together

before the trades, almost forty sails may be spread, and the ship moves

grandly along under a swaying cloud of canvas that reaches far beyond

her rails on each side, and towers more than one hundred feet into the

steady air.

But the cost of building, maintaining, and handling these grand

fabrics is so great that they are steadily diminishing in numbers,

and perhaps are destined before long to disappear altogether from the

seas to which they have lent so much picturesqueness and romance. The

supremacy of the schooner seems likely to prove complete. Unwilling to

concede everything at once, many vessels are now rigged with square

sails on the foremast and mainmast and fore-and-aft sails on the mizzen

(a _bark_), or square sails on the foremast only, and the others

schooner-rigged (a _barkentine_); but even these are disappearing in

favor of the three-masted or four-masted schooner. This is due to the

fact that the schooner rig will sail closer to the wind and gives

as much force in proportion as the ship style, while it is far less

expensive to build, and more quickly and easily managed, not requiring

nearly as many men, and therefore being cheaper to run as well as

to set up. It is for these reasons that I have called it one of the

greatest of Yankee notions.

[Illustration: A MULETA, OR PORTUGUESE LATEEN-RIGGED FISHING-BOAT.]

CHAPTER IV

EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS

PART I—PREVIOUS TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

Wherever it may have been that man first appeared upon the earth, the

period must certainly have been incalculably long ago, for he had time

to spread to all parts of the habitable globe long before any sort of

record begins. Little, if any, part of the world has yet been found

where the evidences of man’s residence in the long-forgotten past do

not exist. So long ago that all tradition of it is forgotten, and only

the imperishable stone implements they used remain as traces of their

presence, mankind had reached and settled the farthest northern and

eastern coasts of Europe and Asia, and the southern extremities of

Africa and India. These might have been reached by land; but similar

traces exist in many islands which, so far as we can see, could never

have been connected with each other or with any continent by lands

now submerged (as perhaps has been the case in some other islands)

since man originated. Such places, then, could have been reached and

colonized only by means of boats, and that at an exceedingly remote

time.

Some hint of what these prehistoric navigators might have been able to

do may be gathered from the performances that we know of in the South

Sea, where almost every island and coral atoll that could support a

colony has apparently been inhabited, since long before even tradition

begins, although some of them, like the Hawaiian group, are separated

from all others by hundreds of miles of open sea.

It is exceedingly interesting and suggestive to read in a work like

Professor Friedrich Ratzel’s “History of Mankind,” of the dispersion

of population over the islands of the South Pacific Ocean, where a

mixed population of black and yellow races possessed themselves of

the whole of Oceanica long before white men had even heard of that

part of the world. This astounding fact gains in significance when

we remember that wide tracts of very deep ocean divide these islands,

many of which are so small that they were found by exploring navigators

only with difficulty. Cook and Beechey and other early voyagers note

finding upon certain islands people who had come thither in their own

boats over distances of six or eight hundred miles; and there are many

instances of castaways surviving voyages of one thousand or fifteen

hundred miles, even against the trade-winds. But these involuntary

voyages were no longer than many others undertaken for war or trade,

or because of famine or a mere love of wandering. Over-population of

the limited spaces of most islands and groups led to the colonization

of others; and it must often have been necessary to go far away to

seek unoccupied or thinly peopled refuges. This could not have been

done had men not been good shipwrights, not only, but careful students

of the heavens by whose sun and moon and stars they steered, aiding

themselves with charts made of sticks. The remotest groups, like the

Sandwich Islands and Easter Island, were found and settled too long

ago even for tradition to retain more than a fabulous story about it.

“These Vikings of the Pacific,” says Ratzel, “continued to discover

even small and remote islets. In the whole of the Pacific there is not

one island of any size of which it was left to Europeans to demonstrate

the habitability.” It has even been argued that the continent of

America was peopled by Pacific Islanders, who made their way to it

from Polynesia; but of this there is no direct evidence, and it seems

unlikely, because the prevailing winds and currents flow from South

America, rather than toward it, in this part of the Pacific.

But leaving these dim old times when barbarous men voyaged far and wide

over seas, and races mingled that were born on opposite sides of wide

waters, let us note what traveling our civilized ancestors did.

The evidences of ruined walls, graves, carvings, and stone tools

show that that earliest of civilized races of which we now have any

knowledge—the Hittites—were acquainted not only with the coasts of

the Mediterranean Sea, but had boldly rounded the headlands of Spain,

skirted the stormy Bay of Biscay, and settled colonies in England

and France. Who were these Hittites? They were an Asiatic people,

dwelling in the Taurus Mountains of the eastern part of Asia Minor,

who increased into the most powerful nation of that part of the world

about two thousand years before Christ, and carried on wars with the

Egyptians, among others, until at last they were overcome by the rise

of the empire of Assyria, north of them, about eleven hundred years

before Christ. Doubtless they explored the African coast somewhat south

of the Red Sea, and very likely knew the Persian Gulf and the route

to India. My own opinion is that we are likely to give the people of

antiquity too little credit rather than too much in the direction of a

knowledge of geography.

Meanwhile there was rising along the Mediterranean from Palestine

northward the most able commercial race of antiquity, who styled

themselves Canaanites, as in the Bible, but whom the Greeks called

Phenicians, the name by which we know them best. Their capitals were

the cities Tyre and Sidon, the ruins of which are still to be seen

on the Syrian coast a little way south of Beirut, and the wealth and

commercial power of which will give us some interesting paragraphs

for a future chapter. Suffice it here to say that their rulers were

foremost among the loosely organized “nations” between the Nile and the

Euphrates, and that they maintained their power through a long period,

not only by their wealth and enterprise as traders, but mainly through

their skill and energy as navigators. As we shall see when we come to

consider their commerce in Chapter VII, they excelled in the building

of ships, in an understanding of how to steer long courses by the

heavenly bodies, and in sea knowledge generally. It is well known that

the Phenicians traded in their ships down the west coast of Africa to

and beyond the Canary Islands, which they also visited; made repeated

voyages to the French coast and the British Islands; and may very

likely have gone around into the Baltic, for they knew of its amber,

though this might have been obtained by the overland trade routes. It

is believed that they ascertained that Africa was, in fact, a huge

island; for it was to prove this supposition that Pharaoh Necho (or

Naku or Neku) II, an enlightened Egyptian monarch who reigned in the

sixth century before Christ, hired a crew of Phenician seamen to man

an expedition whose purpose it was to circumnavigate Africa. These men

started down the Red Sea in 611 B. C., and in 605 B. C. came sailing

home through the Strait of Gibraltar, to the delight of their friends

and confusion of a kingdom full of I-told-you-sos.[1] Just twenty

centuries elapsed before any one else repeated that feat, so far as I

know;, and no wonder it was forgotten. This same Necho II did even more

for maritime commerce, for he attempted to complete the canal, begun

long before his time, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea,

and seems to have made a passage along which barges and small boats

might be towed, which remained open for many centuries, and in part

followed the line now covered by the Suez Canal. Earlier than that

Darius, the Persian conqueror of Egypt, had dug a navigable canal from

the Nile to the Red Sea; and this shows that there must have been large

traffic in both seas at that time to justify such tasks.

[Illustration: AN EARLY ROMAN BIREME.]

By this time the power and prosperity of Tyre and Sidon had declined,

and Carthage, originally a colonial city, had become the most important

center of Phenician influence; and from this port there sailed a

century later (perhaps about 500 B. C.) an exploring expedition under

a Carthaginian king named Hanno, intended to study and establish trade

with the West African coast. It was a large and powerful fleet, said

to number sixty galleys; and that women were taken as well as men

shows that it was intended to form settlements at suitable points,

as, indeed, was done. The account of it has been preserved in a short

writing called the “Periplus,” by an ancient but unknown Greek; and

this inscription is regarded by most scholars as entirely authentic,

since all its details conform to modern knowledge, even though it is

impossible to identify surely the various points mentioned. It tells us

that the terminus of Hanno’s exploration was an island beyond a gulf

called Noti Cornu, in which he found a company of hairy women, whom

the interpreters called _gorillas_. It was in memory of this that the

manlike apes which a few years ago were discovered on the west coast of

Africa received the same name; but they are not known anywhere north of

the Kamerun Mountains, while the farthest point any critic is willing

to believe reached by Hanno is the Bight of Benin, some distance north

of the Kameruns. It is easy to believe that the inquiring Carthaginians

might have heard of these apes,—or perhaps of chimpanzees, now found

as far north as the Gambia River,—and reported actually seeing them,

in order to add glory to their name. At any rate, this expedition

increased largely the ancient knowledge of the sea in that direction;

and navigators now knew the shores of the Atlantic from the Gulf of

Guinea to the North Sea; but there the knowledge of the world seems

to have rested for more than a dozen centuries, principally, no

doubt, because there seemed nothing beyond, either north or south, to

invite the merchants who then, as ever since, have been the principal

promoters of discovery. It is only within the past century that

voyages of discovery have been undertaken purely for the sake of the

increase of knowledge. Previous to that the object was always either

military conquest or the extension of trade.

[Illustration: SHIP OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR.

(About 240 B. C. Banks of oars and lug-sails.)]

Attention was now turned to the eastern seas, overland routes to India

and even to China having become well known both to conquering armies

and to mercantile caravans. The coasts of Abyssinia, of Arabia, of the

Persian Gulf, and of western India were settled by a semi-civilized

people for a thousand, perhaps two thousand, years before the Christian

era; but they were broken into many independent tribes; and their

ships, if they had any, only crept from one harbor to another near

by, and neither knew nor cared what lay beyond the farther headlands.

As time went on, however, and strong kingdoms arose in Egypt, Arabia,

Syria, and Persia, consolidating these scattered tribes into nations,

it became necessary to learn the sea-routes between more distant ports.

Thus it came about that while the Pharaohs still flourished, Arabic

commerce extended regularly along the coast of Abyssinia, and doubtless

as far southward as Zanzibar, while the Malays had probably already

reached and colonized Madagascar. There seems no reason to doubt that

those remarkable ruins in stone which the late Mr. Thomas Bent has

studied at and near Zimbabwe, in Mashonaland, East Africa, are the work

of Arabian gold-miners, made perhaps a thousand or more years ago; and

it is pretty certain that Arabic seamen even at that date regularly

traded as far as the island of Madagascar.

The Persian Gulf has been another nursery of a seafaring people

since long before the record of history begins; yet so slow were

they to learn of anything outside their capes, that it was accounted

a wonderful thing when, in the winter of 325-4 B. C., Nearchus, the

admiral of the fleet of Alexander the Great, voyaged from the mouth of

the Indus to the head of the Persian Gulf. Soon afterward, however,

under the house of the Ptolemies, rulers of Egypt, fleets sailed

regularly between Red Sea ports and India and Ceylon.

But now for many long centuries the boundaries of the known world

were not to be much enlarged (although methods of navigation were

improved and commerce continued within the limits of Roman and Arabic

dominion), for we know of the discovery of no new coasts until we

begin to hear of the doings of an independent and far northern people,

scarcely known to the civilized world, and certainly not regarded as a

part of it.

On the bleak shores of the North Sea, where the fiords and creek-mouths

of Scandinavia gave shelter not only from foreign enemies, but from

each other, there had grown up a seafaring race of men, of Gothic

ancestry, who had settled on the coasts of what are now Norway, Sweden,

and Denmark. They styled themselves Norsemen, or men of the North, and

did not object to the title Vikings, or Fiord-men; but their enemies

called them pirates, and with much reason, for they ravaged and ruled

all the coasts both north and south of the Baltic, voyaging northward

to the “land of the midnight sun,” colonizing northern France in the

tenth century, and taking practical possession of all they pleased of

the British Isles—Ireland and northern Scotland in particular. Here

these Norsemen met equally fierce foes, or found congenial partners,

as the case might be, in the Scottish and Irish seamen of that day,

who were themselves bold freebooters and wide voyagers; and when, in

the middle of the ninth century, the Northmen had discovered, as they

supposed, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, a little exploration soon

showed them that the Irish _culdees_, or priests of the Christian

church planted in Ireland by St. Patrick, had been there before

them—first in 725, according to the Irish chronicles of Dicuilus, who

seems worthy of credence. Indeed, it is believed by some antiquarians

that these Irish sea-wanderers had colonized Iceland at the same early

age; had reached Newfoundland, and regularly resorted to its banks

for fishing and whaling (five hundred years before Cabot); and were

even acquainted with the coast of the North American continent, where

traditions assert that their colonies were planted on what are now the

shores of Virginia and the Carolinas, which they called New Ireland.

These are entertaining old stories, and may have some truth in them,

for it seems certain that the Irish reached Iceland, at least, in the

eighth century. Icelandic history, however, begins with the visits

of Norsemen in 850, followed by others, who, a few years later, took

colonies there and set up an island population which before a century

had elapsed numbered more than fifty thousand people. They had a

republican form of government, and were quite independent of the King

of Norway (Harold the Fair-haired, great-great-grandfather of William

the Conqueror), from whom the earlier colonists had fled because of his

oppression; but they kept up acquaintance with the mother-country, and

merchants and adventurers were continually voyaging between Iceland

and all the islands and coasts of that region, using stanch vessels

sometimes one hundred feet in length, and eminently seaworthy; yet

their only guides were the stars and such signs as seafaring men read

in the water and weather about them.

[Illustration: A WAR EXPEDITION OF THE VIKINGS.]

It continually happened, however, that they were driven far out of

their courses, in such a region of gales, currents, and fogs as is the

North Atlantic. In one such adventure, in the year 876, a sea-captain

named Gunnbjörn Ulfkragesson was driven far to the west of Iceland,

and when he got back to port told his friends that he had seen land.

Probably he also told them Showing build, steering-oar, and rig

(colored lug-sail), of Scandinavian exploring ships in the North

Atlantic.

that so far as he could see there was nothing but icy mountains, of

which they already had enough, for no one seems to have investigated

the matter further until more than a century later, when a turbulent

viking of the rebellious house of Erik, called Erik the Red, was

banished from Norway and fled to Iceland with his followers. He was

soon convicted there also of manslaughter in a neighborhood quarrel,

and again condemned to banishment. Iceland wanted to get rid of him and

his brawlers, and Europe would not let him return. Whither should he go?

Then his thoughts turned toward the strange land in the west that

tradition said Gunnbjörn had sighted. It is believed by the most

careful students that Gunnbjörn’s “rocks” were volcanic islets, which

have now disappeared, and are represented only by certain shoals;

but it would not be incredible that he had caught a glimpse of the

Greenland coast itself.

At any rate, Erik had little hesitation in starting out to rediscover

them. Why should he? Those rough-riders of the sea were used to voyages

of equal length. It is about 200 miles from the Norwegian coast at

Bergen to the Shetland Islands; 200 miles from the Shetlands, or 225

from the Hebrides, to the Faroes; and 275 miles thence to the nearest

coast of Iceland,—reckoning all in straight lines, shorter than any

ship could actually follow.

If his viking boat and viking crew could span those stretches of sea

unguided, what hindered his crossing the little further space whose

tempests had no terrors for this wild sea-king? In that unpossessed

land, could he find it, he might be free to riot at his will (but one

cannot help thinking there was more in the man than that!); and if he

could open to his people a new country, what wealth and power might not

come with it to him, for the humbling of his rivals at the court of

Norway.

So Red Erik sailed away to the west in 984, and two years later

returned to Iceland and reported that he had met first a far-extending

icy coast, along whose front he had sailed southward until he could

turn to the west and then northward, thus rounding its narrow southern

extremity (Cape Farewell); and there he had found a habitable region,

which he called Greenland, in order, as he said, to attract settlers

by a pleasant name. Thus this wicked old Norseman was the first of

American “real-estate boomers.”

Attracted by his story, a band of adventurers went back with him in

986, and established a settlement near the site of the present Danish

town Julianshaab, just inside the cape, on an inlet that they named

Eriksfiord.

Among these emigrants was one named Herjulf, whose son Bjarne[2] was a

merchant captain who owned his own ship, and was then absent in Norway.

Returning to Iceland shortly after Erik’s departure, he concluded at

once to follow his father, and, with a willing crew and still loaded

ship, set sail for the west. But incessant bad weather drove them they

knew not whither during many days. At last the wind fell, the sun shone

out, and they saw land; but its appearance did not agree with the

description of Greenland, and knowing they were too far south, Bjarne

turned north, and kept on, occasionally sighting the coast, until

finally he reached Eriksfiord in safety. No one knows what headlands

he looked upon; but if the Icelandic versified chronicles called sagas

may be believed,—and the wisest students of history put faith in

them,—he was the first European to see America of whom we have definite

knowledge.

Several years passed by, however, before any one tried to profit by

this accident and seek the lands that had been seen southward. Then

Leif, the eldest son of old Red Erik, resolved to do so. He had talked

with Bjarne and his men until he knew all the details of their story,

and then he bought the same good old ship, and enlisted a crew of

thirty-five men. This happened in Norway, where Leif then was, and it

is said by some that the king aided and authorized the expedition. At

any rate, after a public farewell they sailed away, and seem to have

gone straight across the ocean; but whether they did this, or sailed

by way of Iceland and Greenland, they easily found the unknown coasts

Bjarne had described, and landed in Helluland, Markland, and Vinland,

in the last of which they built huts and spent the winter of the year

1000.

The identification of these places has caused much discussion. That

“Helluland” was Newfoundland and “Markland” Nova Scotia seems tolerably

certain; but historians are not agreed as to where that winter was

spent in “Vinland,” so called (meaning “Wineland”) because a German

member of the crew gathered grapes there, from which wine could be

made. When, in 1602, Gosnold discovered a fruitful island south of Cape

Cod, he named it Martha’s Vineyard, believing that he had found the

place.

When Leif reached Greenland again, the next spring, every one was

vastly interested in his discoveries, and emigrants from Greenland,

Iceland, and even from Europe went out to colonize the new lands; but

the attempts, though spasmodically continued for a long time, seem

never to have been really successful, so that no undisputed trace of

the presence of these sea-wanderers on the mainland of North America

is known to exist. That they knew the coast fairly well from Disco

Island (70° N. lat.) southward to Virginia, is generally believed;

but where Leif Erikson spent that first winter, or where the Vinland

settlement of subsequent times was, is thus far a matter of conjecture.

Some students of the sagas place it in New York harbor, others in

Narragansett or Buzzard’s bay, near Boston, or in Nova Scotia. Formerly

the general belief was that Newport, R. I., or the shore above there,

was surely the site; but this was based, first, on the supposed

European inscriptions on a rock in the Somerset River, at Dighton,

just above Fall River, which were in reality only Indian markings;

and, second, upon the “old round tower” at Newport, which few persons

now believe was built prior to the coming of the English colonists

with Roger Williams. The late Professor E. H. Horsford believed that

he had found the site of the principal Norse settlement of the tenth

century, called Norumbega, at Watertown, on the Charles River, a few

miles west of Boston; and he made an argument from old maps, etc., to

support his assertion that the ancient river-walls, etc., there were

really the remains of a town; but historians generally do not attach

any importance to Professor Horsford’s theory.

Perhaps we shall never know where this “Vinland” was that Leif

discovered, and where the queenly Gudrid dwelt and her son Schnorr—the

first white child in America—was born; nor is it of much consequence

that we should, for the settlements were few and transitory. That they

existed, however, and that the shores of Canada and New England were

occasionally visited from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries by

Norsemen, cannot be gainsaid. That the Greenlanders did not all migrate

to the warmer, well-timbered, and fruitful region in the south was

probably due to the fact that it was so remote from their kindred, and

so open to attack by the native red men, whom they called _skrellings_.

[Illustration: A VIKING GALLEY.]

Over the long but slow history of these American settlements of

the Northmen we need not linger. Although Vinland seems to have

been abandoned within a few decades, the Greenland settlements were

maintained. A republican government was organized; Christianity was

introduced, and remains of their stone churches and Augustinian

monasteries have been identified. By the end of the fifteenth century,

however, these colonies had completely disappeared, worn out in

the hopeless struggle against climate and the savage Eskimos, but

exterminated, at last, perhaps, by the Black Death—for the great plague

which almost depopulated Europe in the fourteenth century seems to have

reached even the desolate shores of Greenland, and to have consumed the

last of these remote people, causing them to be utterly forgotten.

A more definite account of pre-Columbian North America than that of

the sagas and other traditions of the Vinlanders, and one accepted as

true by Mr. Major of the English Hakluyt Society and other competent

geographical critics, is that of the voyages and reports of the

brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno. These men belonged to a family

distinguished in Venice; and toward the close of the fourteenth century

they separately or together made many voyages in the North Atlantic,

going far beyond any previous navigators of which they knew. They wrote

letters home containing an account of these, but little publication was

given to them, and they were forgotten until the revival of interest in

geography following the early discoveries of Columbus. The documents

possessed by the Zeno family were then made the basis of a pamphlet

by a grand-nephew reciting what his ancestor had done, long before

the time of Columbus. The most interesting thing in it is an account

of how, about 1390, Nicolò Zeno fitted out a ship at the Faroes, went

over to Greenland and there learned of an island which was called

Estotiland, and which we know as Newfoundland. Not very far away to the

southwest of it, he says, was the country of Drogeo, which fishermen

whom he saw had visited. They claimed to have “discovered” none of

these places, but spoke of them as formerly well known, although then

little frequented by Europeans.

As to Drogeo,—which he speaks of as if it were the mainland,—that

was still occasionally resorted to for fishing; and he relates the

adventures of a white man who had been captured by the mainland savages

a few years previously, and adopted by them on account of his knowledge

of how to fish with a net, and to do other useful things. Such a

course would be very characteristic of the aborigines of eastern North

America, as we have since learned to know; and it is also natural that

he should have been fought for by rival chiefs, as Zeno says happened

to this man, who, by capture and exchange, or of his own motion,

traveled about and saw much of the people of this “country” Drogeo. At

any rate, the information given by Zeno tallies remarkably well with

the truth about primitive North America and its inhabitants. “They have

no kind of metal,” reported this wandering refugee, who finally drifted

back to the coast, and was able to make his escape to a fishing-boat.

Now the one really remarkable and distinctive fact about the North

Americans was just this,—that with a considerable advance in other

directions, they had never learned to fuse and forge or otherwise

utilize iron or other metals, save a little metallic copper and silver

in the Great Lakes region. But listen to the rest of his brief report:

They live by hunting, and carry lances of wood sharpened at the

point. They have bows, the strings of which are made of beasts’

skins. They are very fierce, and have deadly fights amongst each

other, and eat one another’s flesh [as was true, to a limited

ceremonial extent, after battles]. They have chieftains and certain

laws among themselves, but differing in the different tribes. The

farther you go southwestward, however, the more refinement you meet

with, because the climate is more temperate, and, accordingly, there

[_i. e._, in Mexico] they have cities and temples dedicated to their

idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterwards eat them. In those

parts they have some knowledge of gold and silver.

Now, whether all this was the observation of a single rude sailor,

or, as is more likely, summarizes what Zeno was able to learn from

all sources at his command regarding the new western mainland and its

people, it is correct and forcible. Had young Nicolò the editor, a

century afterward, tried to invent something of the kind, he would

surely have made his invention marvelous, for that was an age of fable

and bombast. On the contrary, this is a simple and accurate statement

of what we now know were the facts. Nor did he have any means of

knowing anything more of the case than his family archives revealed,

since he wrote and published this account of his uncle’s voyages only a

few years after the first return of Columbus, and before any writer had

visited the northern American coasts, or had learned the habits of the

natives. I can but believe, therefore, that the report was made in good

faith, and records simply what the Zeni did and saw and heard; and that

these bold Venetian navigators knew more about North America, at least,

before the end of the fourteenth century than Columbus had learned by

the end of the fifteenth.

I have run ahead of my story, but I wanted to show how little

impression these northern investigations and occupation of a new

continent had made upon the Mediterranean “world,” which seems rarely

to have heard of them, much less to have profited by the information,

for more than four hundred years, in spite of the fact that there was

constant communication between the Normans and British, at least, and

the Mediterranean peoples.

Let us now go back to those southern countries and see what they had

been doing toward maritime exploration during these thousand years

and more when the Scandinavians were so busy in the north. It was

principally perfecting the knowledge of the world their fathers knew.

From the very first men had tried to make maps, and succeeded fairly

well for small spaces; but to make a map of the whole world was a task

that defied human knowledge for many centuries. After Aristotle’s time

all men of education understood that the world was a sphere; and about

150 B. C. Hipparchus, borrowing an idea from the Babylonians, taught

the Greeks that the way to place their towns and mountains and rivers

and the outlines of the coast correctly upon a model of the world, was

to determine their position by observations of the heavenly bodies.

Thus the ideas of latitude and longitude originated. He could not apply

his method practically very far, because there were few or no accurate

astronomical observations away from a few cities in Egypt and Greece;

but two hundred and fifty years later Ptolemy, a learned mathematician

of Alexandria, gathered all the facts obtainable, and made an attempt

which bore a rude resemblance to the truth and served as the best and

almost the only account of the world for several hundred years. Ptolemy

flourished about 150 A. D. His book describes Asia as far east as the

Malayan peninsula, Africa south to Zanzibar and the Gulf of Guinea,

and shows a knowledge of Europe as far north as the Shetland Islands

(Ultima Thule) and Denmark; the original work seems to have contained

no maps, but these were added to it about 500 A. D. by another

mathematician named Agathodæmon. It is called the Almagest.

Nothing of value was added to this during the long stagnant period of

the world called the middle ages, when the love of learning declined

and men fell back into the old traditions, even to the extent of being

taught by their priests that it was a sin to believe that the world

was round. In those times the Arabs of Bagdad nourished knowledge more

than any one else, but even they did little for geography. Finally the

people of Europe began to wake up and look at things for themselves,

instead of tamely accepting whatever the Pope of Rome or somebody else

told them, and going and coming as he directed, regardless of whether

it was for their interest to do so or not. One of the first and one of

the most important influences of this revival in a desire for learning

and the means for larger activity among men was the sudden extension of

navigation; and this could not have come about, nor amounted to much,

had the mariner’s compass not been invented.

[Illustration:

“Off, thou Norseland Terror, clouding

Hellas with the jealous wraith

Which, the gods of old enshrouding,

Froze their hearts, the poet saith!”

]

Nothing is more obscure than the history of this instrument. The

Chinese have certainly known, from a remote antiquity, that a

magnetized needle, permitted to move freely, would turn north and

south; but they seem to have profited as little by it as by so many

other useful things that, long afterward, in the hands of the more

energetic men of the West, contributed so largely to the progress of

civilization. They were accustomed to poise a sliver of magnetized

steel upon a bit of cork and set it afloat in a bowl of water. One end

was marked, but this, with characteristic Chinese perversity, was the

one pointing toward the south, not toward the north, as with us. This

rude and simple arrangement is still in use among the Koreans—or was

until recently. With such a contrivance and little, it any, knowledge

of the variation of the needle, the Chinese of a thousand years ago

made longer voyages than they have done in more modern times, trading

not only with India, but sailing regularly as early at least as the

ninth century to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

There is no direct evidence, but it seems incontestable, that it was

from these eastern mariners that the Arabs received the compass, and

gradually brought it into use in their home waters, where it became

well known to the crusaders and other sea-going travelers of the middle

ages. Little reliance could be placed upon it, however, until the

sixteenth century, when the need for something trustworthy for long

voyages made men turn their attention to the study and betterment of it.

Toward the end of the fourteenth century, as I have said, Europe was

beginning to recover from the terrible visitations of the plague, and

to wake from its lethargy and to look abroad; and various influences

were at work to promote exploration by sea and land—and what a grand

field for study there was!

At this time nearly all the commerce of Europe, mainly in Italian

hands, was with India and China. The overland route was long, perilous,

and expensive, and that across the Arabian Gulf hardly less so. At

best, such traffic was slow and limited, and the first need of the

reviving world was the discovery of some straighter and quicker road

to the East. In this quest Portugal came forward under the brilliant

leadership of Dom Henrique (Prince Henry), styled “the Navigator,” who

was the younger son of King João (or John) I, and half an Englishman,

since his mother was Philippa of Lancaster. It was Prince Henry’s

ambition to extend geographical discovery and improve seamanship, and

he enlisted the help of the best navigators obtainable, regardless of

nationality. In order to observe the heavens to better advantage, and

also to study the tides and other nautical phenomena, he established an

observatory on the bleak headland of Cape Sagres, where he willingly

spent a large portion of his time for the sake of science. Navigation

was sorely in need of such help. Except that they had rude compasses,

of whose laws of variation, etc., they were ignorant, the seamen

of that day were little, if any, better equipped than were those

who sailed the “ships of Tarshish” a thousand years before that.

Astronomers had supplied them with rough tables of the declination of

the sun, pole-star, etc., by which, with the help of a cross-staff,—a

simple instrument for ascertaining angles,—they might make a guess at

the latitude. Longitude was found only by observations of eclipses of

the moon, and noting the difference between the time when it was due

at home, according to the almanac, and the local time of its actual

coming; but at sea the “observations” were little better than guessing.

Chart-making was an important branch of study at Sagres. So few and

rare were sea-maps then that one was never seen in England until 1489.

To the collection of information in this direction, and the improvement

of nautical methods, Prince Henry and his aids applied themselves most

diligently; but he died before much had been accomplished. Nautical

studies went on, however, under the next king, John II, for whom Martin

of Bohemia, the foremost astronomer of his time, devised a form of the

astrolabe for use on shipboard, increasing accuracy in finding latitude.

It was with no better instruments than these (and sand-glasses in

place of chronometers) as guides over chartless and unsounded seas

that the way was found to India and to America, and the globe was

circumnavigated; and that the same thing might be done again is shown

by the fact that only last year (1897) a vessel, which had barely

escaped destruction in a storm and lost all her instruments in the

mid-Pacific, was brought safely into San Francisco by observation of

the stars and “dead-reckoning” alone.

But Prince Henry (for I have run ahead of my story again) was not

content to study and teach on land alone. He was fired with the ardor

of discovery and conquest likely to augment Portugal’s wealth and

influence in the East. Expedition after expedition was sent southward,

and in 1435 Henry’s ships finally passed Cape Bojador. Great was the

wonder and rejoicing thereat, for it had always been taught by the

monks that this cape was the end of the earth; but it was not until

1462 that the Cape Verd Islands and Sierra Leone were reached. Prince

Henry had been dead since 1460, but the influence of his wise and

untiring enthusiasm and work lived on, and inspired the king and people

of Portugal to renewed efforts at solving that riddle of Africa that

perhaps the Egyptian sphinx was meant to typify. By 1469 trade had been

opened with the Gold Coast, and a few years later the mouth of the

Congo was found.

These advances showed that there was nothing unnatural or fearful in

the southern latitudes, as sailors had been taught to believe from

time immemorial,—a superstitious dread which the old chart-makers long

sustained by their habit of filling the empty sea-spaces on their maps

with fearsome and wondrous monsters,—and therefore, in 1486, King John

II sent Bartholomew Dias in two sail-boats—pinnaces of fifty tons

each—with orders to go as far as he could; and this bold captain,

passing the last known headland of the Guinea coast, sailed on and on,

tracing the West African coast, and landing here and there to examine

the swampy shores, to get fresh water, and to hoist the castellated

banner of Portugal in token of possession before the wondering eyes of

naked negroes. At length he was blown and buffeted for days and days in

heavy storms, and at their close found himself far to the eastward of

his former longitude, whereupon he fought his way on and sighted land

which he rightly determined must be the southern extremity of Africa.

This was in 1487. Returning to Lisbon toward Christmas of that year, he

reported his experiences, and dwelling especially upon the rough time

he had had in the south, proposed to style the point of the continent

Cape of all the Storms; but King John, foreseeing great things to

follow for his country, said, “No; we will call it the Cape of Good

Hope”; and so it remains to this day—but all the storms remain about

it, too!

[Illustration: PORTION OF A FIFTEENTH CENTURY SEA-CHART, BY TOSCANELLI.

Copied by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., from Justin

Winsor’s “Narrative and Critical History of America.”]

Now for some years previous to this time the monarchs of western

Europe were much exercised over rumors of the existence somewhere

in the Orient of an all-powerful and generally marvelous potentate

styled (by them) Prester John, and reputed to be a conqueror of

Asiatic, or perhaps African, infidels who later had become cut off

from Christendom. The whole affair was a myth, probably arising from

an indistinct knowledge of Abyssinia, whose negus afterward borrowed

the title; but before this was realized popes and various “Catholic

majesties” had sent embassies in search of Prester John’s court, some

of which incidentally gained valuable information. Among the latter

was Pedro Covilho, an emissary of Portugal, who, having failed to find

Prester John in western India or Persia, made his way back to Egypt and

Abyssinia, whence he sent home in 1486 or 1487 a report of progress

that told John II some surprising news of the advancement of the Arabs

of that part of the world in the sciences, and especially in those

belonging to geography and navigation.

Covilho’s messenger was a Portuguese Jew, Rabbi Joseph of Lamego, who

carried voluminous letters, one of which showed that Arabic mariners

were then familiar with the whole length of the east coast of Africa,

including Madagascar, and were perfectly well aware where it terminated

at the south, and that there was no obstacle to passing around to the

western side of the continent; and just at this interesting juncture

Dias came sailing back in his pinnace to say that it was all true, for

he had seen it.

Thus the sea-road was open to India and Cathay, and Portugal was eager

to take advantage of it. She was then one of the leading powers of

Europe, and the foremost one in colonial and commercial enterprise,

striving to wrest from Genoa and Venice the supremacy in trade that

they had so long enjoyed. Nevertheless almost ten years elapsed

before the next expedition was sent southward to confirm Portugal’s

possessions, and establish commerce with the Orient. John II had died,

and Emmanuel the Fortunate reigned in his stead—a reign that has been

called the heroic period of the nation’s history; and it must not be

forgotten that “Little Portugal” was then so mighty that a year or so

previously (May 4, 1493) the Pope (Alexander VI) had issued a bull in

which he had divided, with intended equality, all undiscovered parts of

the earth between Spain and Portugal, the former being given everything

to the west, while to Portugal were reserved all future rights east of

a certain north-and-south line.

The line of separation designated was the meridian of no variation of

the compass-needle. The existence of such a line had been discovered

by the same Christopher Columbus who was to thrill the world a few

years later; but he did not know, what only experience developed, that

this meridian was changeable, swinging many degrees east and then

returning west in the course of two or three centuries. At that time

the line seemed fixed some three hundred miles west of the Azores, and

philosophers accounted for it later by a theory that it lay in the

middle of the Atlantic because there it was subject to an equality

of attraction toward both continents which held it steady. This was

not true, but it was better than the less learned but more popular

explanation of the magnetism of the compass—namely, that it was “an

effluvium from the root of the tail of the Little Bear.” A year later,

however (June 7, 1494), the treaty of Tordesillas, between Spain and

Portugal, declared that the line of demarcation should be the meridian

370 leagues west of the Cape Verd Islands, or as nearly as possible

in the center of the Atlantic. The supposition that there might be

valuable lands within, that is, east of, that limit, inspired several

of Portugal’s subsequent searchers.

[Illustration:

DRAWN BY HENRY B. SNELL.

“THE SEA-ROAD TO INDIA AND CATHAY.”]

In 1497 King Emmanuel’s expedition was ready to sail—the largest and

best equipped, probably, that had ever been sent out by any government,

and its commander was Vasco da Gama, a young naval officer of renown.

His fleet consisted of four vessels,—small caravels, of course, one

of which was commanded by Dias,—and left the Tagus, after ceremonious

farewells, in July. Da Gama stopped at various places, but reached

and safely rounded the stormy cape in November. He had with him the

information (and some say an Arabic map) sent home by Covilho, but his

business was not to verify this, but to reach India and establish new

Portuguese possessions. Why, then, did he not strike straight across

from Cape Agulhas, as East Indiamen have done ever since? For the good

reason that he had no guide, no means of finding his way across the

southern ocean, where all the stars were strange; for sun observations

for latitude were then unknown to European navigators, and rarely used

on land. Instead of this, he was obliged to turn northward and skirt

the coast for a thousand miles, stopping here and there, until he had

passed far enough north of the equator to bring above the horizon the

familiar home stars, for which he had “tables.”

At last, from the Arab port of Melindi, near Mombasa, he turned east

and sailed straight away to India, where he anchored before Calicut,

then the most important port of southern India, on May 20. Returning

the next year with ships richly laden, he was received with public

rejoicings and given high honors; and he greatly astonished his

friends of the navy by telling them that the Arabs used the compass,

sea-charts, quadrants, and “had divers maritime mysteries not short of

the Portugals.”

Da Gama lived many years, and sailed often to India and China after

that; but chiefly on political expeditions, in which he disgraced his

otherwise great name by inexcusable rapine and cruelty.

Meanwhile some exploration had been done toward the far north, as we

shall see in the next chapter; and so the fifteenth century ended, with

Europe understood as far as Nova Zembla, Africa circumnavigated, and

the coasts of India, Malaya, southern China, and the larger Malayan

islands fairly familiar to geographers. This is much, and yet it leaves

unmentioned the greatest fact of all—the work of that grand, sad

character, Christopher Columbus, upon whose grave near Seville has been

written:

HE GAVE A NEW WORLD TO SPAIN.

[Illustration:

ENGRAVED BY E. H. DEL’ORME.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.

“There, beyond the Cape of Storms, Where the breaker’s voice of thunder

Roars when ships are rent asunder, Through a fog of ghostly forms

“Men catch glimpses of the sail, Ages old, and rent and hoary, Of that

quaint old ship of story, And cry, ‘Vanderdecken, hail!’”]

[Illustration: THE ROCK IN THE SEA.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is related by the Greek historian Herodotus, and has often

been denied, especially by the older writers; but the “Encyclopædia

Britannica” gives it credence, and tells us that the latest and best

critic of the geography of Herodotus, Major Rennel, maintains the

possibility of such a voyage, and believes it was made. He argues that

the construction of their ships, with flat bottoms and low masts,

enabled these hardy voyagers to keep close to the land, and to enter

all the rivers and harbors for food and water. I think, therefore, that

we may believe that Herodotus recorded what really happened, even if we

reject some details.

[2] This is not a Norse, but an Irish name, familiar to us as _Barney_.

CHAPTER IV

(_Continued_)

EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS

PART II—FROM COLUMBUS TO COOK

Why to Spain? It is an “oft-told tale,” and the merest reminder is all

that is needed here. Columbus was a young seafaring man, born at Genoa

about 1434, and ambitious to become a master of his profession, and

especially to acquire great wealth. He traveled to Venice, Barcelona,

and other cities where learning was to be gained, and became thoroughly

acquainted with all the astronomical and geographical science of the

time, and especially proficient in the art of cartography. Attracted by

the naval activity in Portugal under that indefatigable Prince Henry,

Columbus went to Lisbon about 1454, and endeavored to find a leading

place in the sea-work that country was doing. But Portugal’s eyes were

so blinded by the glamour of Africa and the East Indies that she had

no time to follow the gaze of this young and ardent Genoese captain

whose eyes were turned steadily toward the west, where, more and more

insistently, he urged that a sea-track, straight as a line of latitude

marked on a globe, lay open to the Indies and the coasts of Cathay. To

prove this true would be not only a glorious exploit for any man, but

an achievement of untold advantage to the nation under whose flag he

sailed.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT-STATUE OF COLUMBUS IN MADRID.]

Just how this conviction arose in the mind of Columbus we do not know.

It was probably first a purely scientific conclusion from the facts of

astronomy and geography that he had learned, encouraged by romantic

traditions of western “Isles of the Blest.” A few scientific men agreed

with him, but the great influence of the Church of Rome condemned such

notions as opposed to the Bible and revealed religion; and the mass of

the people, ignorant and superstitious, looked upon them as foolish,

and laughed at Columbus as a

dreamer or worse. Between his danger of arrest and death as a heretic

on the one hand, and imprisonment as a lunatic on the other, the man

of science in those days had a hard time. Columbus therefore sought

far and wide for evidence to support his theories and render them

acceptable. How much he learned—what, in the way of facts, he actually

knew—it is hard to say. Having fallen in love with a Portuguese lady of

good family, he married and apparently settled in Portugal as his home,

but continued his voyaging. He knew the Mediterranean from end to end.

He made several voyages to the Guinea coast, and dwelt for a time at El

Mina, then newly founded, satisfying himself of the foolishness of the

common assertion that men could not live “under the equinoctial”—that

is, near the equator. He went north to and beyond Iceland, and

acquainted himself with those waters, and thus convinced himself that

the ocean was everywhere navigable, and subject to uniform laws of

tides, weather, etc. His mind was cleared more and more of the mists of

fable and superstition, and all he learned brought into clearer view

the truth of science as a guide. He devoted more and more attention to

improving the means of finding the true position of a vessel at sea,

and of keeping a true course by the compass, which he continually

studied; and it was he who first discovered that some leagues west of

the Azores lay the meridian of no variation—a meridian that has now

moved eastward until it lies near London. Everywhere he interrogated

explorers, discussed navigation with experienced captains, and sought

the aid of new maps, improved instruments, and advancing knowledge; and

yet mixed with all seem to have been a childlike vanity, credulity, and

superstition, hard to reconcile with his courage and acumen.

How much actual evidence he had of the existence of lands below the

Atlantic horizon unknown to his countrymen can never probably be

satisfactorily answered. The latest critical biographer of Columbus,

the great Spanish liberal statesman Emilio Castelar, considers that

he was led to his discoveries by little, if anything, outside of

pure reasoning upon the rotundity of the earth and other scientific

data, and dismisses as fables or things unknown to Columbus all

the Scandinavian discoveries of Greenland and the rest, and other

stories of men who, it is said, had already seen the transatlantic

world he sought. We are told that he learned of woods and canes like

none that grew in Africa, of strange carvings, and even of the dead

bodies of men, resembling those of the far East, being cast upon the

shores of Africa and the islands near it, especially the Azores. It

seems impossible that when he was in Iceland and the other northern

regions, a man of his inquiring mind should not have learned something

of Greenland and the continental shores beyond, especially when one

remembers that for centuries previous Catholic missionaries had been

reporting progress to Rome from that distant but real field of labor.

It is quite likely that some knowledge of these facts, which must

have been known to the professors of the universities of Pavia and

Barcelona, where Columbus studied, and to other intelligent men of

Italy and Spain with whom he came in contact, had caused Columbus to go

to the north, for we know of no other errand. Perhaps he had heard of

the Zeni.

[Illustration: ships of columbus]

Especially to be noted is the allegation that Columbus possessed

information as to the experience of a Frenchman named Jean Cousin,—a

Dieppe sea-captain, who, it is asserted, discovered South America

and the Amazon River in 1488. This claim has been lately reviewed

(“Fortnightly Review,” January, 1894) by Captain Gambier of the British

navy, and he decides that it is good; and that it was because Cousin’s

first mate was one of the Pinçons that that firm was willing to assist

Columbus, as a good investment.

Whatever he knew or did not know, and whatever may have been the

difficulties in his way, Columbus spent many weary years in fruitless

efforts to interest some government in his schemes. How finally he won

Spain to his support, secured the aid of the Pinçons, merchant princes

of Palos, and sailed from that port on August 3, 1492,—and it was

Friday!—are details that need not be repeated. Equally well remembered

are the story of his daring onward voyage, and of the glorious outcome

when, on October 12, land was seen,—a new world found.

Expedition after expedition followed one another from Spain to the

newly found possessions, some conducted by the earlier companions of

Columbus, and all filled with adventurers who cared for nothing but

plunder. One of these, led by an officer named Ojeda, reached the coast

of Guiana in 1499, and coasted along the north shore of South America

as far, probably, as Maracaibo. This was the first of the Spanish

expeditions actually to set foot upon the mainland; and it would

not have been mentioned out of its place (since Cabot, as we shall

presently see, had landed on the continent nearly two years before) but

for the fact that one of its members was that Amerigo Vespucci whose

fortune it was to have his name attached to the continent.

Amerigo Vespucci (or Vespusze, as Columbus spells it) was a Florentine

engaged in the shipping business who was attracted to Spain by the

maritime activity there, and became interested in equipping the

second flotilla of Columbus and in other similar enterprises for the

government. The wealth and influence thus gained and his general

abilities led him to join that expedition of Ojeda in 1499, and

during the next four years he made three other voyages to Brazil, in

which the bay of Rio Janeiro was entered (New Year’s day, 1501), and

an exploration southward extended probably as far as South Georgia

(Islands). Upon his return from this last voyage, in 1505, he publicly

asserted that he had visited, in 1497, the coast of what is now the

southern United States. It has lately been shown by Spanish records,

however, that at that date he was busy in the government dockyards

in Spain; therefore his assertion was false. It served, however, to

deceive a forgetful public, and to procure for its author the coveted

glory of being the first “discoverer” of the “New World,” as he first

called it (though there is no evidence that he understood it to be a

continent), and hence the one entitled to give it his name.

This bold claim achieved its purpose. The oldest known map of the whole

world, dated A. D. 1500, said to have been drawn by the great artist

Leonardo da Vinci, from data furnished by Juan de la Cosa, and hence

known to historians as the “De la Cosa Mappimundi” (it is preserved

in Madrid), bears the name “America” across the new countries for the

first known time; but Juan de la Cosa was with Ojeda and Vespucci on

the expedition of 1499, and doubtless Vespucci managed the naming.

In 1507, only a year after the death of Columbus, there appeared in

France the “Cosmographie Introductio” of Waldseemüller (also called

Hylacomylus), which was regarded as the most complete and authentic

geography of its time; and here the name of _America_ was boldly

written across “a fourth part of the world, since Amerigo found it.”

The name (a Latin derivative) was novel, easy to pronounce, no one knew

or cared as to the right of it, and so it stood.

[Illustration: THE “SANTA MARIA”—THE FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS’ FLEET.]

A few lines more as to the Spanish and Portuguese navigators in these

waters, and then we shall have done with them for the present. In

1499 one of the Pinçons sailed from Spain straight to the Amazon, as

has been mentioned, avoiding the West Indies, as if he knew precisely

whither he was bound, and reached there in January of 1500. A few

months later a large Portuguese expedition under Pedro Cabral, starting

for India around the cape, was blown so far to the west that it ran

against Brazil. Everybody was hitting upon untrodden shores in those

inspiring days, and Cabral promptly took possession for his king.

As this shore was outside (east of) the hemisphere assigned by the

Pope to the Spanish, the Portuguese kept it for 389 years, in spite

of Pinçon’s priority. In 1508 Ojeda obtained the government of the

northern coast of South America, and Nicuesa of the region north of the

Gulf of Darien; and with the arrival of these adventurers in New Spain

began that era of rapine and horror which will forever disgrace the

Spanish name. The rapacious governors and their wild crews quarreled

and fought with each other as well as with the downtrodden natives,

and exploration was carried on by piracy. A learned man, Martin

Enciso, went out to take command in 1510, but he was deposed by his

soldiers the next year and sent back to Europe, where he made the

first book printed in Spanish (1519) describing America. His place was

taken by Vasco Nuñez Balboa, who entered upon a career of exploration

and peaceful conquest, generally conciliating the Indians, who told

him of another sea not far to the west, and on September 25, 1513,

guided him to the summit of a hill near Panama, whence he, first of

Europeans, gazed upon the Pacific. Who can imagine the emotions of such

a sight!—for it told the Spaniards that this land was not the eastern

margin of Asia, but a new continent. Balboa made his way through the

forests as rapidly as he could, and on the 29th, wading into the surf,

banner in hand, took possession of the waters in the name of the King

of Castile.

Balboa at once began preparations to utilize his discovery, for the

Indians had also excited him and his men by tales of a country to the

south abounding in gold. He cut and shaped timbers for small ships,

and had with enormous trouble and labor transported these across the

isthmus, intending there to build a fleet and sail southward, when

he was superseded in command by a new governor, Pedrarias. This man,

a jealous and brutal adventurer, on a false pretext of disloyalty

arrested and beheaded Balboa before he could get away—an act that

“was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to South

America at that time; for ... a humane and judicious man would have

been the conqueror of Peru, instead of the cruel and ignorant Pizarro.”

The frightful destruction of the country of the Incas soon followed,

while Cortés overran Mexico and De Soto invaded Florida.

It has doubtless by this time been in the mind of more than one

reader to ask whether, while the men of the Mediterranean region were

making these notable searchings for new shores, the men of northern

Europe were standing idle. What were the mariners of France and the

Netherlands, Scandinavia and Great Britain, doing? Well, all were doing

something, and some of them produced results of novel seafaring that

were well worth the getting, but these were principally in far northern

waters, as we shall read in the next chapter. It was not until the

opening of the sixteenth century that in England, at least, that era

of far voyaging began which signalized the Elizabethan age on the sea

as much as the poets and dramatists and statesmen-writers of her court

distinguished it on land.

[Illustration: A PEACEFUL DAY ON THE SPANISH MAIN.]

It was, however, earlier than that—in the reign of Henry VII—that

England’s story of discovery begins, and the first names are those of

two Italians known in English as John and Sebastian Cabot, father and

son, who were then residents of Bristol. The Bristol folk were at that

time the foremost mariners of England, who often went to Iceland and

all the nearer isles; and they firmly believed in certain traditional

islands and coasts far away to the west, which seem to have been

composed of no better material than the airy structures of the sunset

clouds and the romantic tales of Phenician sailors and other travelers

in the dawn of history. As long ago as when Strabo wrote, a century

before the birth of Christ, these things were of old belief, and he

recounts the delights then told of the “Isles of the Blest,” west of

the farthest verge of Africa. When the Canary Islands became known as

facts, the myth moved farther west; and when acquaintance with the

Azores proved them to be only natural earth with a fair share of its

ills, as well as of its good, people insisted that still other islands

must lie farther away, where the Elysian Fields basked in perpetual

summer and men were eternally happy. The old idea charms us even yet

when we sing “Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed in

living green.”

[Illustration: VOYAGING TO THE ISLES OF THE BLEST.]

But no such higher rendering occurred to the men of the earlier time.

They believed firmly in the actual existence of these ever-fortunate

islands under the sunset horizon of the Atlantic, and (in the north)

called them the Isles of St. Brandon, the “green isle of Brazil”

(the root of which word seems to express the idea of redness, such

as appears in low sunset clouds), the Isle of the Seven Cities or

Antillia, and by other names. Ferdinand Columbus, a son of Christopher,

says in his “History” that his father fully expected to meet, “before

he came to India, a very convenient island or continent from which he

might pursue with more advantage his main design.” This does not prove

that Columbus put any faith in the reality of these old notions, nor

does he seem to be responsible for the fact that the name _Antilles_

was immediately attached to the archipelago he actually did meet

with, and The _Brazils_ to a part of the mainland next found. These

names had been appearing on conjectural maps of the Atlantic side of

the earth for many years before his time; and that they represented

realities to many hard-headed merchants and sailors of his time is

shown conclusively by the fact that between 1480 and 1487 at least two

carefully planned naval expeditions had gone from Bristol, England,

in search of them. How much vague memories of early Norse and Irish

findings in the west may have given weight in Bristol to these old

myths is hard to say; but at any rate it was there the search for this

pot of gold at the end of the rainbow bore unexpected and momentous

results, but all were surprised at the distance involved.

About 1496 John Cabot, then a resident of Bristol, proposed to the

king an expedition in search of a new route to the Indies by sailing

due west from Ireland. Henry VII was excited by the news of Columbus’

southerly findings, and was eager to secure something of the kind for

England. Nevertheless, although the king granted privileges that might

prove profitable in case of success, he seems to have furnished no

money. Cabot, therefore, sailed away, privately equipped, in a small

caravel named _Matthew_, carrying only eighteen persons.

Never was a voyage of discovery, the consequences of which were so

far-reaching, entered upon with less pomp or flourish of trumpets. So

little note of it was made at the time that the very name of John Cabot

narrowly escaped being lost altogether, and the record of his work came

very near being replaced by a confused account of the doings of his son

Sebastian; for it was not until certain letters had been found—and that

within a very few years—in the contemporary archives of Spain and other

European countries, that we were able to give any sure account of the

matter.

It is now plain that John Cabot, in the _Matthew_, leaving Bristol

early in May, 1497, and having passed Ireland, shaped his course toward

the north, then turned to the west and proceeded for many days until he

came to land, where he disembarked on June 24, and planted an English

flag.

There seems to be no doubt that this was the mainland of North

America, and the general opinion has prevailed that his landfall was

the extremity of Cape Breton. Cabot stayed some days, but how far he

traced the coast, and whether he learned of Newfoundland or Prince

Edward Island, are matters of conjecture. At any rate, he soon turned

homeward, and arrived in Bristol probably on August 6.

We can imagine with what eagerness his story was listened to, as he

told of the fair, temperate, well-wooded land, its people and animals

and fruitfulness, that he had seen. But the thing that impressed the

Bristol men most was the report of the enormous abundance of codfish

there. This was something these canny men could see without any

illusions, and possess themselves of regardless of papal bulls; and

they at once abandoned their northern fishing-grounds and began to

resort to the Banks of Newfoundland, whither they were quickly followed

by large annual fleets of Norman, Breton, Spanish, and Portuguese

fishermen. John Cabot intended to go again the next year and make his

way onward to Japan, as he believed he could do, for, like the others,

he thought what he had found was only a remote eastern part of Asia;

and in 1498 he actually did sail westward from Bristol with five

ships, victualed for a year. None of these ships ever returned, and

no evidence exists that they ever reached their goal; and with them

John Cabot, to whom England owed her early supremacy in North America,

disappears from view.

Sebastian Cabot was a son of John Cabot, and a skilful map-maker.

Whether he went with his father on the first voyage is disputed; there

seems no direct evidence that he did so. That he did not go on the

second voyage is plain, for he had a long subsequent career, of which

accurate knowledge is a late acquisition; here it is only necessary

to add that by his statements to Peter Martyr and others he allowed

the erroneous impression to pass into history, if he did not directly

authorize the lie, that it was he, and not his father, who discovered

America and the fishing-grounds.

Now that the way across the Atlantic was learned, chivalrous sailors

hurried to add what they could to the map. Corte-Real, a Portuguese

of rank, struck northwest, and hit upon and named Labrador as early

as 1500. The next voyage of prominence introduces the French as

competitors, Francis I sending the Florentine Verrazano, a typical

sea-rover of the period, who had already been to Brazil and the East

Indies and was finally hanged as a pirate, to find out what he could

about northern America. He steered west from the Madeira Islands in

January, 1524, found land near Cape Fear (North Carolina), and claimed

to have traced the coast as far north as Nova Scotia, besides entering

a large bay (either New York or Narragansett). His whole story,

however, rests on certain letters and maps the authenticity of which

has been hotly disputed; and at any rate little, if anything, came of

this voyage.

It was far different with the next one, however,—that one sent from

France in 1534, under the command of Jacques Cartier, who sailed from

St. Malo in two tiny vessels to Newfoundland, and learned of the mouth

of the St. Lawrence River. Then, like all the other captains, none of

whom could stay over winter in America, because their vessels were too

small to store provisions, and because they were beset by fears, not

only of visible savages, but of invisible hobgoblins, he returned to

France. The next year found him back again, however, this time steering

his vessels up the St. Lawrence to “Hochelaga” (Montreal), and later

carrying home an account that led to so immediate a movement on the

part of France that Canada was the scene of the earliest colonization

of the New World, properly speaking, for the Spanish settlements

in the south were thus far nothing but military stations. France,

indeed, dreamed of obtaining the whole of North America for herself,

and attempted soon after to colonize Florida and the Carolinas; but

these attempts failed, and she was able to hold only the valley of the

St. Lawrence and the shore of its gulf. These things happened later,

however, and for many years the Atlantic coast of North America was

left unclaimed by any one, while the English and Dutch were busy in the

far north, the Spanish were rioting in the tropics, and the Portuguese

turned their attention to the southern and eastern quarters of the

globe. It is one of the most striking curiosities of the history of

the development of civilization on the globe, following the stagnation

of the middle ages and the desolation of the plague-ridden thirteenth

century, that the most remote, unprofitable, unhealthy regions were so

fiercely struggled for, while the best parts of the New World were left

until the last.

Having found Brazil, both Spaniards and Portuguese proceeded to trace

the continent southward, hoping to find a practicable way to Peru

around it. Several experienced navigators worked southward, the best

known of whom is Juan Diaz de Solis, who entered the La Plata River

and was killed there by the Indians in 1516. Columbus had not been a

moment too soon to be first. Nevertheless it was left to a stranger in

those waters, the indomitable Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães), to reap

the reward of success. The Pope and all the bishops still declared

that the earth was flat; but so little was this now believed, even

by themselves, that Magellan, who had just quitted the service of

Portugal, dared to propose to “his most Catholic majesty” the King of

Spain to sail west instead of east to the Moluccas, just as though the

earth were globular and might be circumnavigated; and the king not only

dared to listen, but approved of the proposition, which seemed entirely

practicable _if_ South America could be passed. That was the problem

Magellan set himself to solve. Should he succeed, could the Moluccas

be reached by sailing westward, then they would fall into that half of

the earth given by the Pope to Spain, and Portugal’s present claim to

them would be overthrown. Thus the experiment was well worth making in

behalf of politics as well as knowledge, and Magellan was furnished

with five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty-seven men. The

_Trinidad_ was the admiral’s ship; but the _San Vittoria_ was destined

for immortality.

He struck boldly for the Southwest, not crossing the trough of the

Atlantic as Columbus had done, but passing down the length of it, his

aim being to find some cleft or passage in the American continent

through which he might sail into the Great South Sea. For seventy

days he was becalmed under the line. He then lost sight of the

North Star, but courageously held on toward the “pole antarktike.”

He nearly foundered in a storm, “which did not abate till the three

fires called St. Helen, St. Nicholas, and St. Clare appeared playing

in the rigging of the ships. In a new land, to which he gave the name

Patagoni, he found giants of “good corporature”.... His perseverance

and resolution were at last rewarded by the discovery of the Strait

named by him San Vittoria, in affectionate honor of his ship; but

which, with a worthy sentiment, other sailors soon changed to the

_Straits of Magellan_. On November 25, 1520, after a year and a

quarter of struggling, he issued forth from its western portals, and

entered the Great South Sea, shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetta, an

eye-witness, relates, when he recognized its infinite expanse....

Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and exulting in the

meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he courteously

imposed upon it the name it is forever to bear—the _Pacific Ocean_....

And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the

American continent, steered for the northwest, attempting to regain

the equator. For three months and twenty days he sailed on the

Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled by famine to

strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rigging was

here and there bound, to soak them in the sea, and then soften them

with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to eat the sweepings

of the ship and other loathsome matter; to drink water that had

become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his course,

though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, “their gums

grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat.” [This was scurvy,

the dread of all mariners in those times and long afterward.] He

estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than

12,000 miles.

In the whole history of human undertakings [declares Dr. John W.

Draper, from whose striking sketch of this achievement in his

“Intellectual Development of Europe” I am quoting]—in the whole

history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if,

indeed, there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan’s.

That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of

superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance—a display of resolution

not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any suffering....

This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reached

a group of islands north of the equator—the Ladrones. In a few

days more he became aware that his labors had been successful. He

met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he had thus grandly

accomplished his object, it was not given to him to complete the

circumnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan,

he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mutiny of

his men, or, as they declared, in a conflict with the savages, or

insidiously by poison.... Hardly was he gone when his crew learned

that they were actually in the vicinity of the Moluccas [having

previously wandered too far north, and discovered the Philippines],

and that the object of their voyage was accomplished....

And now they prepared to bring the news of their success back to

Spain. Magellan’s lieutenant, Sebastian d’Elanco, directed his course

for the Cape of Good Hope, again encountering the most fearful

hardships. Out of his slender crew he lost 21 men. He doubled the

Cape at last; and on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar,

near Seville, under his orders, the good ship _Vittoria_ came safely

to an anchor. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the

history of the human race. She had circumnavigated the earth.

The immediate result of this voyage was to impress Spain’s sovereignty

upon the East Indies; but a vaster and more far-reaching consequence

was the influence it exerted, by its proof that the world was really

a globe, to free men’s minds from blind belief in and guidance by a

tradition, which had taught that the earth was a flat plain surrounded

by water,—an error sanctioned by St. Augustine and other influential

teachers. Magellan impressed a name upon the greatest of the oceans,

and has his own name gloriously emblazoned upon both the map of the

earth and the map of the sky in the southern hemisphere; but his

greatest title to honor, after all, is that he struck dogma the hardest

blow it ever received.

[Illustration: SEA-SURF AT SANTO DOMINGO.]

The sixteenth century seems to have been, outside of the Arctic

regions, an era of surveying rather than of exploration by sea, yet

some notable work was done in the East, where all nations now entered

as competitors in the trade, seizing upon every island or mainland

shore that they could, and holding their possessions as long as

possible. Even the English entered heartily into this rivalry, the

great East India Company having been founded in 1599. With its trading

we have nothing to do, but must note that it extended knowledge of

Oceanica considerably, and added greatly to Europe’s information as

to India, the Malayan peninsula and larger islands, China, and Japan.

The Spanish and Portuguese found themselves so busy in defending that

to which they already laid claim that they had little time to search

for new lands; and this sort of enterprise fell mainly to the Dutch,

who, now that the Netherlands were at last free from the long and cruel

tyranny of Spain, were energetically making up for lost time. Their

captain, Van Noort, went out by way of the Straits of Magellan to the

Philippines, and got back to Rotterdam between 1598 and 1601. Another

fleet made the same voyage fifteen years later; and in 1616 Cape Horn

was rounded by Willem Cornelis Schouten, who gave the name of his home

village, Hoorn, to that desolate terminus of South America.

For many years geographers had held belief in a vast “southern

continent,”—_Terra Australis_,—and most of the islands found in the

South Pacific were accidental results of some attempt to reach it. New

Guinea had been sighted a century before, and perhaps Australia also,

of which several navigators got glimpses here and there early in the

sixteenth century, satisfying them that it also was a great island.

It was not until this century was half gone, however, that the map

of that quarter of the “South Sea” was filled out with any accuracy;

and this was due to the skill and labor of an eminent Dutch voyager,

Abel Janszen Tasman, who was despatched southward with two ships by

the colonial government at Batavia, where the Dutch had already gained

political ascendancy.

“This voyage,” we are told, “proved to be the most important to

geography that had been undertaken since the first circumnavigation of

the globe.” Tasman sailed from Batavia in the yacht _Heemskirk_, on

the 14th of August, 1642, and from Mauritius on the 8th of October. On

November 24 high land was sighted in 42° 30´ S., which was named Van

Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), and, after landing there, sail was again

made, and New Zealand (at first called Staatenland) was discovered on

the 13th of December. Tasman communicated with the natives and anchored

in what he called Murderers’ Bay, because several men were massacred

there by the natives. Thence he took an irregular course east and

north, until he arrived at the Friendly Isles of Cook. In April, 1643,

he was off the north coast of New Guinea, having meanwhile sailed

around New Britain and New Ireland (now New Mecklenburg), and on June

15 he returned to Batavia.

The contribution to sea-knowledge of the remaining voyages in this

century were mainly in the direction of a better understanding of

winds, currents, ice movements, tides, and an improvement in the

methods of building, rigging, and navigating vessels intended for

long voyages. Map-making received a great impetus and was especially

cultivated by the Dutch, among whom Mercator became famous by inventing

the useful projection that bears his name and is still most commonly

used. Nevertheless, the improvement, especially in instruments of

navigation, was slow. The astrolabe generally gave place to the

cross-staff; and this to a better device called the back-staff, of

which an improved form, invented by John Davis, remained long in use.

This was called the Davis quadrant; and with it “the observer stood

with his back to the sun, and, looking through the sights, brought the

shadow of a pin into coincidence with the horizon.” Many variations of

this instrument were made, until, in the middle of the next century, it

was superseded by the sextant. Thus before the close of the seventeenth

century, astronomers and navigators had learned how to determine

latitude fairly accurately, and the sailor had prepared for him a

variety of tables of stars, almanacs, and other mathematical guides.

The determination of longitude was yet difficult, however, owing

largely to the imperfection of timepieces; and it was not until the

last year of the century, signalized by the first recorded sea-voyage

made purely for scientific purposes, that much advance was made. This

voyage, lasting two years (1699-1700), was undertaken by the eminent

English astronomer Edmund Halley for the express purpose of obtaining

information necessary to the improvement of the compass and methods

of ascertaining the position of a ship at sea, was productive of

results of the greatest service, and placed the science of navigation

upon a sure footing. It was followed early in the next century by

the establishment in England of the Longitude Board, a scientific

commission charged with the duty of determining longitudes and studying

navigation. From this board came the “Nautical Almanac,” which first

appeared in 1767, but similar almanacs are now published annually by

the governments of almost all maritime powers, and the editorship is

esteemed in the United States one of the most honored positions in the

naval service. These books contain ephemerides, or tables of positions

for each day of that year of all the heavenly bodies, “predictions of

astronomical phenomena, and the angular distances of the moon from the

sun, planets, and fixed stars,” all referred to some stated meridian.

With such an almanac, an improved compass, and one of Newton’s new

sextants as a means of quick and accurate observation of sun and moon

and stars, the navigator had little need to doubt as to where he was;

and maps began to show a corresponding improvement in accuracy.

[Illustration: “BUCCANEERS AND MANY WILD SEA-ROVERS.”]

The early part of this century, as we shall see later, was the era of

the buccaneers and of many wild sea-rovers whose far-wandering barks,

in search of adventure, picked up much information at the expense

of human lives and hard-earned property. The foremost of these was

Dampier, who seems to have gone almost everywhere a ship could go,

and who found out many new things, which he had the power of telling

well, as to Australasia; and the strait between New Guinea and New

Britain, which he discovered, is named after him. Many a commander was

now cruising in those waters, however, under English and Dutch flags

mainly, finding new lands and pillaging old ones—such as Roggewein,

Anson, Byron, Wallis, Carteret, Bougainville, and others; and such

important islands as Easter, Tahiti, Charlotte, and Gloucester groups,

Pitcairn, and others, were found during the first half of this century.

But now the English were to redeem their good name by sending out a

government expedition, or series of expeditions, whose object was

scientific discovery and the humane study of the men and resources on

the other side of the world, instead of forced trade or bloody rapine.

These were the three expeditions commanded by Captain James Cook, one

of the most capable officers in the British navy.

The first voyage was made in 1767 for the purpose of carrying a party

of astronomers and naturalists to Tahiti to observe there a transit of

Venus, after which a survey was made of the then almost unknown coasts

of New Zealand and Eastern Australia. The second voyage was to explore

the Antarctic regions, whither the French had preceded him, as we shall

see in the next chapter; and we need only say here that Cook finally

disposed of the tradition of a vast _terra australis_—at any rate a

habitable one. It is to his third voyage, then, that he principally

owes his fame.

This was undertaken in pursuance of the ruling idea of his day, that a

sea-route might be discovered north of the American continent, which

would vastly shorten the trip from Europe to China and the Spice

Islands. Others were seeking it directly by way of Baffin’s Bay, and

Cook was sent to attack the problem from the Pacific side. He was

given command of his old ship _Resolution_ and a new one, _Discovery_,

outfitted in the best possible manner, and especially guarded, in the

matter of provisions, against scurvy—that dread of the old-fashioned

seamen, in respect to which Cook himself had introduced such new and

valuable preventives as would alone have entitled his name to grateful

remembrance. He was commanded to revisit, on his way out, the South

Pacific Islands; and departed from England in June, 1776, steering by

way of the Cape of Good Hope, and reaching the archipelagoes in the

spring of 1777, where he cruised for nearly a year. In January, 1778,

he sailed north from the Friendly Islands, and a few days later hit

upon a large, inhabited, unknown group of islands, whose principal one

was called Hawaii by the people, but which he named Sandwich Islands,

in honor of an English earl who had taken great interest in his plans.

Here he spent some delightful days, and then bore away to the west

coast of America, which the English still claimed under Drake’s name of

New Albion, and which he struck near Puget Sound. Thence he went slowly

along the coast northward until he found and penetrated the deep bay

since called Cook’s Inlet. His hope that this might prove a sort of

northern Straits of Magellan was quickly disappointed, and he went on

into and through Bering Sea and Strait until he was stopped by the ice

on the north shore of Alaska, at a point still called Icy Cape. Then he

turned back, surveying both shores of the strait, and again made his

way to the Sandwich Islands, where, in an unfortunate quarrel with the

natives, he was killed. The Hawaiians have always said that this was

the act of a ruffian among them, and that the chiefs and the best of

the people never wished nor intended any harm to their visitors; and

this is probably true. His executive officer took the ships back to

England in October, 1780.

The voyages of this able and intelligent commander bore fruit in

many ways. One was the colonization of Australia, Tasmania, and New

Zealand by the English, which began in 1788. Another was the voyage

of Vancouver to the west coast of America in 1792, which intercepted

the surveys of the Spaniards there, under Quadra and others, and

enforced English possession of all the country between the Californian

settlements of the Spaniards and the Russian posts in Alaska, though

he curiously failed to find either Puget Sound or the Columbia River.

A third direct result, and from some points of view the most important

one, was the opening of a great number of the South Sea Islands to

Christian missionaries.

By this time there had arisen in the New World which these voyagers had

first stumbled upon, and then searched for, and afterward scrutinized

so carefully, a new, composite nation, which somehow forgot that all

their broad and fertile land had been given away centuries before by

an old gentleman in Rome to his friends the Spaniards, and acted as

though they thought it belonged to themselves; and by and by this

thriving nation hoisted a starry flag of its own, and proclaimed itself

the United States of America. Then, not to be behind European powers,

whose navigators were enriching libraries with magnificent chronicles

of scientific studies in sea-science, such as those of the French

“Voyage of the _Astrolabe_,” the Russian narratives of Krusenstern

and Kotzebue, and the English explorations of Beechey (who was

accompanied by Charles Darwin), the United States sent to the Pacific a

well-equipped expedition under Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Charles

Wilkes. This was gone from 1838 to 1845, surveyed the west coast of

South America, wandered about Oceanica, and did its best to penetrate

the icy limits of the Antarctic zone. The results were six magnificent

folio volumes, containing not only the narrative of the cruise, but

contributions to science by James D. Dana, Horatio Hale, John Cassin,

and other men of the last generation great in American science.

[Illustration: end of chapter decoration]

CHAPTER V

SECRETS WON FROM THE FROZEN NORTH

As soon as the sea-routes between Europe and the far East were learned,

and the American coasts had been mapped, the region within the Arctic

circle became the most attractive field for nautical discovery. All

this earlier Arctic exploration, however, was not, as it has lately

become, a system of scientific research, but was simply a series of

attempts to open new roads for commerce to follow. It occurred to every

navigator that as a sea-way had been gained past the southern end of

America, so one around its northern border might be disclosed; and

perhaps, also, a ship-route along the northern coast of Siberia. Either

of these would be far shorter than to go to “Cathay” around either

Cape Horn or Cape of Good Hope, and would enable the English and other

northerners to avoid their enemies, the Spanish and Portuguese, who

commanded the southern waters.

The first Arctic voyage of exploration, properly speaking, was that of

Willoughby and Chancellor, who in 1553 penetrated the seas north of

Scandinavia, where they became separated. Willoughby and his men tried

to winter on the coast of Russian Lapland, but all died of scurvy.

Chancellor, however, pushed on into the White Sea, reached a monastery

on the coast, and thence made his way to Moscow, where he was well

received, and thus opened a trade route of incalculable advantage to

both England and Russia. It led at once to the organization of the

Muscovy Company, and began a commerce now regularly carried on in

steam vessels to Archangel, which in 1897 was connected with Moscow by

railroad.

By 1580 several other commanders had tried to improve on this

performance, but none got past the Kara Sea, and the next important

effort was headed toward that “Northwest Passage,” which for more than

three centuries was the lodestone of Arctic students and voyagers.

It was in charge of Martin Frobisher, later one of England’s most

conspicuous admirals, who afterward made a larger expedition in which

he learned many facts about the Labrador coast and Hudson Strait.

Another English seaman, and a more scientific one, John Davis, made

three remarkable voyages, between 1585 and 1589, and increased the map

by a careful delineation of both coasts of the strait still called

after him.

Shortly afterward Dutch merchants had sent three expeditions northward

under command of William Barentz to search for a _northeast_ passage,

the third and most important of which sailed in 1596 and found it

impossible to penetrate the ice east of Nova Zembla (which had been

seen first by Burrough in 1556, who had been shown the way by Russian

fishermen), but discovered Bear Island and Spitzbergen. The crew

of Barentz’s vessel spent the winter of 1596-97 at Ice Haven, Nova

Zembla—the first successfully to face a winter in the Arctic zone.

When the next spring came they made their way to Lapland and homeward

in boats, but Barentz died on the road. This voyage was highly

important in opening to the Netherlands the whale and seal fisheries

of that region which has ever since been known as Barentz’s Sea, but

it discouraged the hopes of a “northeast passage.” In 1871 Barentz’s

winter quarters at Ice Haven were found undisturbed, after a lapse of

274 years, and in 1875 part of the journal kept by this brave mariner

was recovered. Almost every year about this time saw English, Dutch,

and Danish ships going north, each adding some new fact to geography

and the knowledge of polar waters and ice. One of them, in 1607, was

commanded by Henry Hudson, who searched the North Atlantic, found Jan

Mayen, and pointed the way to the Spitzbergen whale fisheries; yet he

had hardly more than a sail-boat, and a crew of only eleven men.

The following year this intrepid man tried to go to China north of

Asia, but failed as Barentz had done, and returned “void of hope of a

northeast passage.” Nevertheless, he tried it again a year later in

the service of Amsterdam merchants, but his men were obstreperous,

and, yielding to his own inclination as well as to theirs, he turned

west to find that “Northwest Passage” in which everybody then believed

because they hoped, and because of the difficulty of getting so great

a fact as the real North American continent proved to be accepted by

the popular imagination, which was used to small things in geography.

Very willingly, then, Hudson’s little ship, the _Half Moon_, was turned

toward the southwest; and it found something better than it sought, for

the Hudson River and the site of the future metropolis of the New World

were added to the map.

Hudson’s success in this voyage led to his immediate engagement by a

company of English merchants and speculators, who were willing to risk

additional money in searching for a northwest passage if he would lead.

In 1610, therefore, Hudson took command of a new ship, the

_Discoverie_, and sailing in her to Baffin’s Bay, found the great

opening of Hudson Strait, and with high hope that his goal was now

in view followed it westward into Hudson Bay. Here he coasted south

to what we term James Bay, and, after a comfortable winter, resumed

his examination of the west coast, whereupon the majority of his men

mutinied, set Hudson and several sick men adrift in a rowboat, and

turned back. Most of the mutineers died, but the vessel was finally

taken back to London, where the murderers were promptly questioned and

nearly as promptly hanged.

The story of another remarkable voyage closes the story of this early

attempt at the problem which, two hundred and fifty years afterward,

was to be solved only by proof of its uselessness. In 1616 another

_Discovery_—a caravel of only fifty-five tons—went north from England

in charge of William Baffin. “On the 30th of May he had reached Davis’

farthest point, Sanderson’s Hope, in 72° 41´ N., ... and reached, 1st

July, an open sea, the ‘North Water’ of the whalers of to-day. Passing

Capes York, Atholl and Parry, he yet pushed northward, and on 5th July

attained his farthest point within sight of Cape Alexander.

His latitude, about 77° 45´ N., remained unequaled in that sea for two

hundred and thirty-six years.” Arctic success depends on good luck.

[Illustration: FANTASTIC ICEBERGS IN HUDSON STRAIT.]

The next century (1700 to 1800) was a period of active polar research

in the Old World. The Russians completed their knowledge of their

Arctic coasts, Popoff reaching East Cape in 1711, and bringing back

an account not only of various islands, but also of a continental

shore eastward. It was this report that caused Peter the Great to set

on foot a costly scheme of research upon the northeastern coasts of

Siberia, which was placed in the hands of Vitus Bering, a Dane, in his

navy, but accomplished nothing of any value; and it was not until 1740

that Bering finally crossed over in a blundering sort of way and made

a brief examination of the coast of Alaska, where his ship was finally

wrecked, and he died of discouragement and chagrin. He saw neither the

sea nor the strait that bears his name, was not the first to reach the

American continent, and never learned whether or not it was connected

with Siberia. Nevertheless his voyage had fruitful results, for it

led to vast fisheries and fur-gatherings, and the writings of his

naturalist, Steller, had and still have great scientific importance.

[Illustration: A WALRUS BREEDING-GROUND, BERING STRAIT.]

By this time the whaling and allied marine industries, and the work of

such excellent explorers as the Dutchman Martens, had made mariners

thoroughly acquainted with the North Atlantic from Nova Zembla to

Greenland, and a vast advance had been effected in the knowledge of

navigation amid the ice, and in the building and equipment of ships

and the proper methods of provisioning and clothing and treating crews

in order to maintain health and comfort as well as mere safety. These

well-fitted and daringly managed whalers had at the beginning of the

nineteenth century begun to penetrate far into the waters west of

Greenland, in spite of a very curious fact, which would make anybody

but a British whaleman pause—namely, that there were no such waters. So

their best maps and treatises said!

Two hundred years had now passed since Baffin’s return from his

wonderful voyage of 1616, and during all that time not a white man’s

keel had plowed the chilling solitudes he had left, except lately these

venturesome whalers, who did not frequent libraries. Consequently

Baffin’s work had first been forgotten and then disbelieved; so that

at last first-class maps were published which omitted Baffin’s Bay

altogether, and books were written, such as Barrows’ “Arctic Voyages”

(London, 1818), that denied the authenticity of his narrative. As the

nineteenth century opened, however, England began to turn her attention

to the renewal of polar studies. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s men were

reaching the coast of their Territories here and there; but otherwise

the whole Arctic Ocean north of British America was unknown.

To relieve herself of the shame of this Great Britain soon sent into

that field a rapid succession of explorers, many of whom soon became

famous. The very first of these, John Ross, despatched in 1818,

confirmed fully the geography laid down by Baffin as far as Cape York,

in spite of the learned book-makers, and reported a great number and

variety of interesting facts; whereupon a much larger expedition was at

once arranged and placed in command of a naval officer named William

Edward Parry, who went out in 1819 with orders to find the northwest

passage, and who had in his staff such men as Sabine, Liddon, James

Ross, Reid, Crozier, and similar material, all stimulated not only by

naval and scientific pride, but by the offer by Parliament of a reward

of $100,000 to him who should first discover the desired thoroughfare.

This first voyage was a grand success. Forcing his way into Lancaster

Sound in midsummer, Parry found that Ross’s report that it was a

landlocked bay was erroneous. As Greely tells it:

The mirage-mountains of the previous year had vanished, and as Parry

crowded sail westward, he opened a series of magnificent waterways

hitherto unknown. The way lay through an archipelago (Parry), with

North Devon, Cornwallis, Bathurst and Melville islands to the north,

and Cockburn, Prince of Wales, and Banks islands to the south.

Lancaster Sound, broken at its western end by Prince Regent Inlet,

gave way to Barrow Strait, which broadened into Melville Sound, while

yet farther to the west the encroaching land formed Banks Strait

wherethrough these channels open into polar ocean.

If you will look at the map you will see that this list comprehends

pretty nearly everything south of Smith Sound. Many details of course

were lacking, and these Parry was sent a second time to work out,

but he added really little to geography by two seasons of hard work;

and a third voyage, begun in May, 1824, was still more unfortunate.

These voyages, however, enabled Parry, who was one of the greatest

of all Arctic students and navigators, to state that the western

sides of all northerly and southerly bodies of water are always more

encumbered with ice than the eastern sides; and to make many most

valuable improvements in ice navigation and equipment. His illustrated

narratives remain among the most readable books of Arctic experience,

and little has been added to their accounts of eastern Eskimo life and

customs.

Meanwhile (1819) another navy officer, who was ardent in the scientific

branches of his profession, as well as distinguished in seamanship and

naval warfare, and who had acquired Arctic experience under Buchan in

the ill-starred expedition of 1818, was sent overland to coöperate with

others in defining the mainland coast of America. This was Lieutenant

John Franklin—a name destined to become the most famous of all among

the explorers of the frozen North. For several years he and his

parties lived and traveled among the Eskimos, tracing the coast-line

from a considerable distance east of the mouth of the Coppermine

River westward almost to Point Barrow, Alaska, where they came within

one hundred and forty-six miles of meeting Beechey’s coöperative

examination by sea from Bering’s Strait; and it was out of these trips

that we got the valuable treatises upon the natural history of British

America, published by his assistants, Hearne and Richardson. This ended

in 1826.

The next prominent expedition was that of Captain John Ross and his

nephew James, afterward celebrated in Antarctic exploration; and it

turned out an exceedingly productive one. Meeting fortunate conditions

in Lancaster Sound he easily reached where the _Fury_ had gone

ashore, and refilled his ship with a portion of the stores Parry had

thoughtfully landed and made safe there—a provision which later kept

this expedition from destruction. Then he pressed on beyond where

Parry had gone, and added largely to the details of his map, but

curiously failed to recognize Bellot Strait as a thoroughfare, and so

unaccountably missed the thing he was in search of. Ross discovered

Boothia Felix; and during the three winters spent on its eastern shore,

the younger Ross, by sledging, discovered Franklin Passage, Victoria

Strait, and King William’s Land, and largely explored their coasts;

but his most important work, “giving imperishable renown to his name,”

as Greely declares, was the determination of the position of the north

magnetic pole on the west coast of Boothia Felix.

“The experiences, duration, and results of this voyage,” writes General

A. W. Greely, “are among the most extraordinary on record. The party

passed five years in the Arctic regions without fatality, save three

(two from non-Arctic causes), discovered a new land, the northern

extremity of the continent of America, and made other extensive

geographical discoveries. Its observations are probably the most

valuable single set ever made within the Arctic circle.”

[Illustration: ESKIMOS IN SUMMER TENTS.]

During the third winter (1833) a rescuing party under Captain C. Back

had gone from England overland in search of Ross; and recruited by

Hudson’s Bay Company men of experience had descended Fish (or Back’s)

River to its mouth, thus noting a new point on the map; but it failed

to reach Ross. By similar overland journeys from their trading-posts

on Great Slave Lake and elsewhere, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men,

especially Simpson, Dease, and Rae, connected various points of the

coast, so that before 1850 it was known with substantial accuracy from

Melville Peninsula to Bering Strait. In much the same way Russian

sledge-travelers had traced the northern Asiatic coast by descending

to the mouths of rivers; but no ship had yet succeeded in passing Gape

Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of Asia or any continental land.

Then came a period of the keenest rivalry and richest results in the

history of polar conquest, but also one of the greatest catastrophes.

The expeditions of Lieutenant John Franklin in 1818 and 1819 were

spoken of a moment ago. His services then and subsequently had been

recognized by the British king, who, among other honors, had made

Franklin a knight, and sent him to be governor of Van Diemen’s Land

(Tasmania), where he remained from 1836 to 1843, founded a prosperous

colony, and was regarded as one of the wisest, kindest, and most

upright men of his day. Upon his return to England Franklin was made

commander of the most important expedition that had ever yet been

fitted out to search for the Northwest Passage, and his reputation

brought the best men as volunteers to his standard. Having selected 134

officers and men, and made the best equipment possible, Captain Sir

John Franklin sailed on May 19, 1845, in the _Erebus_ and _Terror_,

Parry’s old ships. On the 26th of July they were seen proceeding

prosperously up Baffin’s Bay by a whaler, who reported them in due

course, but neither ships or crews were heard of again for many years.

Anxiety over the long silence at length aroused the people of England

and the United States to begin a search for them which lasted through

many years. It was fruitless as to its first object,—the rescue of

Franklin or any survivors,—but it gradually cleared up the sad mystery,

and it was the means of learning all, and more than all, that Franklin

sought to ascertain.

The search began by the despatch, early in 1848, of Sir James Ross in

two ships, _Investigator_ and _Enterprise_, which wintered near the

northeast point of North Devon, and returned the following year with no

tidings, although they afforded the second officer, Lieutenant F. R.

M’Clintock, an opportunity to acquire a knowledge of sledging, which

he afterward used to advantage. This failure only aroused England to

renewed efforts.

Many ships were started out at once, and also parties overland, of

which mention will be made later. The _Herald_ and _Plover_, during

1848 and 1849, scanned the whole coast from Bering Sea to the mouth of

the Mackenzie, and discovered Herald Island. Following them, in March,

1850, went the _Enterprise_, under Collinson, and the _Investigator_,

under M’Clure, via Bering Strait, while the _Assistance_ and

_Resolute_, with two steam tenders, under Captain Austin, went to

renew the search by Barrow Strait, and two brigs, the _Lady Franklin_

and _Sophia_, under a whaling captain named Penny, followed them. The

eastern expeditions discovered Franklin’s winter quarters of 1845-46

at Beechey Island, but no record of any kind indicating the direction

taken by his ships. Admirable arrangements were made for passing the

winter, and their combined sailing and sledging work added much to the

map of that district, and to our knowledge of life in polar latitudes,

but it learned nothing whatever of Franklin’s fate.

[Illustration: A FLOATING ICE-CASTLE OF THE FROZEN NORTH.

“Out from the dark, mysterious North,

With all its glamour, every night

Tingling with unforgotten dreams,

And every day flood-full of light.”

]

Meanwhile the expedition via Bering Sea had become separated in the

Pacific, and M’Clure, in the _Investigator_, got so far ahead that he

was able to pass through Bering Strait and work his way eastward north

of British America, and through the narrow Prince of Wales Strait until

he reached Princess Royal Islands, where he wintered. Here he was only

thirty miles from Barrow Strait; and when he had climbed a high hill

and saw its ice gleaming in the distance, he had in reality discovered

the Northwest Passage. Yet he was not the first, as we now know, for

when the survivors of Franklin’s ships, in their attempt to escape,

had reached Cape Herschel, they, too, saw this same passage they had

been sent to find, but then, as now, it was closed by perpetual ice,

so that although we now know the way, we can no more avail ourselves

of it than could they, except by going south of King William’s Land,

through a strait of which they had not yet learned. The next summer

was spent in a fruitless struggle to get north along the western side

of Banks (or Baring) Land, in which he succeeded only far enough to get

frozen in so firmly on the north shore of that great island that even

the summer warmth did not release his ship. He would have perished had

it not been that musk-oxen were plentiful; and by the spring of 1853,

it was plain that the _Investigator_ must be abandoned.

The _Enterprise_ meanwhile had followed M’Clure in the spring of 1851,

and passed two years in searching every shore and passage she could

find, while her men made sledge-journeys far and near, as M’Clure’s men

were doing, and once came within a few miles of Point Victory, where

Franklin’s remains would have been found. At last, in the spring of

1854, she succeeded in making her way back along the American coast,

and returned to England, completing one of the most remarkable of

Arctic voyages.

During their absence the friends of Franklin had not been idle. The

apparent sacrifice of this fine character aroused almost or quite as

much interest in America as in England, and Yankee shipmasters knew

the north as well as did the men of England and Scandinavia. Henry

Grinnell, a prominent merchant in New York, furnished the money to fit

out two ships, the _Advance_ and _Rescue_, commanded by Lieutenants De

Haven and Griffiths, of the United States navy. They assisted in the

search about Beechey Island, then struck north and discovered Grinnell

Land, after which they returned before the winter had closed in. With

them was a young physician and traveler, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who

persuaded Mr. Grinnell to send him again to the north, less to search

for Franklin, whom he had despaired of, than to prosecute explorations

in higher latitudes. In 1853, in command of the little brig _Advance_,

manned principally by whaling men, he left New London, Conn., and

made his way straight up to the head of Baffin’s Bay, which narrows

northward into Smith Sound, where, on the eastern, or Greenland, shore

of its expansion, since called Kane Basin, he was stopped by ice and

remained a prisoner until rescued in 1855.

Dr. Kane wrote the histories of these expeditions, and especially of

the latter one, in books so charmingly expressed, and abounding in such

novel information, that they were read like romances in every home in

the land, and did more to fire the ardor for Arctic discovery which has

ever since glowed in this country, than anything else that had been

said or done. The most immediate result was that Dr. I. I. Hayes, who

had been with Kane, took a ship to Smith Sound and spent the winter of

1860-61 there, but with little result. More came from the expeditions

led by an enthusiastic journalist of Cincinnati, Charles F. Hall, but

before speaking of these, let us return to the English search for

Franklin.

Undeterred by the failure of Austin and Penny, or the silence of

Collinson and M’Clure, the British government in 1852 despatched again

the four vessels used by Austin, and added a fifth, the _Assistance_,

and a store-ship, the _North Star_, to form a depôt of supplies

at Beechey Island. The old haphazard ways had given place to very

systematic methods of advance and rescue; but steam was little employed

as yet, because of the trouble and cost of supplying coal, although two

small steam vessels, as tenders, accompanied this, the largest and most

bountifully equipped expedition that had yet started out. The fleet,

under command of Sir Edward Belcher, proceeded through Lancaster Sound,

beyond which they scattered somewhat, and spent the first winter in

extensive sledge-journeys, during which they discovered (by a message

that M’Clure had left on Melville Island) where the _Investigator_ was

imprisoned, and rescued all its people in June, 1853.

This great expedition learned nothing of Franklin, although it did

learn much of other Arctic matters, and left the map substantially

complete south and west of Jones Sound; but its honors rested upon

M’Clure, who, first of all recorded men, had really made the Northwest

Passage by sailing and sledging around the northern end of America. The

settlement of this long-discussed matter had proved it of no practical

value; but the British Parliament kept its word, and gave £10,000 (half

of the promised reward) to the officers and crew of the _Investigator_,

besides raising M’Clure to knighthood. An incident of this expedition

is the fact that Kellett’s abandoned ship _Resolute_ survived crushing

long enough to drift out through Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound and

down into Davis Strait, where in September, 1855, she was found and

towed home by an American whaler. As she was little injured, she was

presented to the British government with the compliments of the United

States, and a few years later, when she came to be broken up, a fine

table was made from her oaken timbers, and returned as a present to

Uncle Sam; and it now stands in the private office of the President of

the United States in the Executive Mansion at Washington.

Two great facts had now been ascertained. One was that none of

Franklin’s men or ships survived. The other fact was, that although

there was plenty of water north of the American continent, it was so

obstructed by permanent ice that probably no vessel could ever make its

way through from the Atlantic to the Pacific; none has done so yet,

despite the determined effort of the steam yacht _Pandora_ in 1875,

but ships from the east have reached points also reached by ships from

the west. The everlasting ice sheet of the polar ocean, ever crowding

down upon this northern coast and into the channels between the islands

north of it, forms a barrier that will very rarely, if ever, pause or

open long enough to let a vessel through, even south of King William

and Victoria lands. The outflowing warm waters of the rivers or other

influences may sometimes produce a narrow space comparatively free from

ice in summer along the shore of the continent and greater islands; but

everywhere off shore, and never at a great distance, begins a thick

mass of perpetual ice, which, it is believed, extends across the pole

like a cap, and reaches on the other side nearly to Petermannland. To

this has been given the name of the Paleocrystic Sea, or sea of ancient

ice, and nothing is known of it beyond the blue cliffs of its margin

that confronts the explorer as he gazes abroad from the hills of the

Parry Islands or Banks Land, or vainly seeks in some lone vessel north

of Alaska or Siberia to penetrate its glassy front.

So thoroughly were the islands of this archipelago explored, and so

unpromising seems further study, that Arctic voyagers have long ceased

to risk their ships there, and the story of Franklin’s fate was finally

learned by land travelers. As early as 1854 Dr. Rae and a party of

Hudson’s Bay Company’s men had traveled over land and ice to King

William’s Land, proved it an island, and heard stories of the death by

famine and cold of white men who could be no other than the Franklin

crew, as was further shown by various relics which Dr. Rae obtained

from the Eskimos. Dr. Rae claimed and received £10,000 of the reward

offered by the British government. The next year another party, going

down the Great Fish River, recovered many other articles from Eskimos

at the mouth of the river and on Montreal Island. It was evident even

then that every one had perished in an attempt, nearly successful, to

reach the mainland at the mouth of this river. Lady Franklin, however,

despatched an expedition in the _Fox_, under the command of the

experienced M’Clintock, which at last brought back, not her husband,

but the satisfaction of knowing fully his fate.

All along the west and south coast remains of articles belonging to

the ships were found, and skeletons—two of them in a broken boat; and

finally in a stone cairn a written record that briefly told the tale of

disaster.

[Illustration: WORKING THROUGH AN ICE-FLOE, IN TOW OF A BERG.]

In 1845-46 Franklin quartered at Beechey Island, on the southeast coast

of North Devon, after having ascended Wellington Channel to latitude

77°, and returned west of Cornwallis Island, which was an exceedingly

successful season’s work. In the autumn of 1846 he had turned toward

the south, but had been stopped by and frozen into the masses of ice

that come ceaselessly down M’Clintock Channel and press upon King

William’s Land. Had he known King William’s Land to be really an island

he need not have exposed himself to this. During all the summer of 1847

the ships remained firm in their icy bonds. Sir John Franklin died,

and Captain Crozier took command. The spring of 1848 brought no hope,

and in April the ships were abandoned. The crews started southward

along the shore, dragging two boats (one of which was soon abandoned)

and many sledges. The Eskimos said the men dropped down one at a time,

from weakness and hunger; but it is believed that many of them were

killed by the savages for the sake of what few things they had with

them—precious articles to those natives. It appears that one of the

vessels must have been crushed in the ice, and the other stranded on

the shore of King William’s Land, where it lay for years, forming a

mine of wealth for the neighboring Eskimos. Some years later Lieutenant

Schwatka and W. H. Gilder, traveling with Eskimo parties in the region

near the mouth of the Great Fish River, found the graves of the last

remnant of the party, and recovered still other relics of this dreadful

calamity. Let me copy for you here the postscript, written by Crozier

and Fitzjames, to the short record of their work. It is startlingly

brief and impressive:

April 25, 1848. H. M. ships _Terror_ and _Erebus_ were deserted on

22nd April, five leagues N. N. W. of this [Point Victory], having

been beset since 12th September, 1846. The officers and crews,

consisting of 105 souls under the command of Captain F. R. M.

Crozier, landed here in lat. 69° 37´ 42´´ N., long. 98° 41´ W. Sir

John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by

deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.

We start on to-morrow, 26th April, 1848, for Back’s Fish River.

It would be tedious to attempt to chronicle the almost yearly

excursions into the north, but a few ought to be spoken of. One such

has been alluded to—that of Charles Hall, a Cincinnati journalist,—who

enlisted the aid of the American Geographical Society, and then

prepared himself by going upon a whaler and spending the winters of

1860-61 and 1861-1862 among the Eskimos near Cumberland Sound, where he

found the remains of a stone house built by Frobisher in 1578. Again,

from 1864 to 1869 he was living with the wandering Eskimo north of

Hudson’s Bay, preparing himself to undertake an expedition which may

be said to be the first whose avowed object was to try to reach the

North Pole. The United States government furnished him the steamer

_Polaris_, and a small but efficient body of scientific assistants,

one of whom was Emil Bessels. The _Polaris_ passed through Smith

Sound, and after completing the exploration of Kennedy Channel, and

discovering that beyond its expansion into Hall Sound it continued

straight northeastward, forming Robeson Channel, Hall stopped his ship

and by sledge-journeys reached Cape Brevoort, above 82° N., whence

he could see the open polar sea. This was not only far beyond any

previous northing, but his work added immensely to our knowledge of

both Grinnell Land and northwestern Greenland, and prepared the way for

further successes.

This sledge-journey was, however, too great a strain, for he had hardly

returned to his ship when he sickened and died. The next season (1872)

Dr. Bessels and Sergeant Mayer reached on foot 82° 09´ N., a few miles

farther than Hall. This accomplished, an attempt was made to return,

but the steamer was soon inclosed in the pack, and drifted helplessly

southward for two months, until off Northumberland Island, when a

violent gale loosened the pack and nearly destroyed her.

At length the danger became so great that on October 15th boats and

provisions were put on the ice, on which nineteen of the crew had

disembarked. Suddenly the ship broke away, and the party on the

ice drifted slowly 195 days, and were picked up off the coast of

Labrador, in 53° 35´ N., by a whaling steamer 1,300 miles from where

they had parted with the _Polaris_. The party in the ship reached

Littleton’s Island, where they passed the winter, building two boats

from the boards of the vessel, in which they set sail southwards in

June, 1873. On the 23d of that month they were picked up by a Dundee

whaler, and ultimately reached home.

Only three years before that a very similar experience had happened to

the smaller ship of a German expedition under Captain Koldewey, of

which the larger went up the east coast of Greenland to 75½° N., where

a grim headland was named Cape Bismarck. It is just south of the land

sighted by Lambert in 1670. The little _Hansa_, however, was crushed

in the ice near Scoresby Sound. The crew escaped to the floe, where

they built a house of blocks of patent fuel, filled it with provisions,

and trusted themselves to the great Arctic current which carried them

south, at the rate of about sixty-five miles a day at first, until

finally, in June, 1870, it took them to the Moravian missions near Cape

Farewell, more than twelve hundred miles from where they were wrecked.

The seas and archipelagoes north of Europe were being questioned, all

this time, as well as those north of America. The Norwegian fishermen

had been familiar with Spitzbergen waters from long ago, but it was not

until 1863 that the group was circumnavigated. The next year Captain

Tobieson sailed around Northeast Land, and in 1870 Nova Zembla was

circumnavigated, and the mouth of the Obi reached.

The men who did these feats were sealers or shark-fishers in small

stanch Norwegian schooners, which flocked in Barentz Sea at this

period, and they furnished invaluable material, as did the whalers and

sealers of American and Scotch ports, for the ice-pilots and crews of

the scientific expeditions which now began to go to the north: moreover

many of the commanders were trained by amateur service in such vessels.

It was thus Nordenskjöld began his experiences in 1864. Among these

earlier expeditions was an Austrian naval lieutenant, Julius von Payer,

who became notable, not only because he interested a new nation in

Arctic research, but because of his discoveries. His first experience

was with the German expedition to Greenland in 1869, and in 1871 he

and another Austrian navy officer named Weyprecht spent the summer in

examining the edge of the ice between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla.

Their observations led them to project an expedition to try again at

that place to penetrate eastward, and effect the Northeast Passage,

which had been regarded as hopeless for the past hundred years. The

idea of making an Austro-Hungarian expedition of it aroused great

enthusiasm in that empire, and Payer and Weyprecht were furnished with

the large steamer _Tegethoff_, equipped as well as possible, with

Weyprecht in command, while von Payer was to lead all sledge-parties.

She reached the northern end of Nova Zembla in time to get into

comfortable winter quarters, but instead of escaping in the spring was

kept imprisoned in the ice, drifting steadily northward before the

prevailing wind until, in October, land was approached, near which

the ship again became a fixture for the winter of 1873-74. In March

Payer began to make exploratory journeys, and found that they had

discovered a group of mountainous islands, separated by broad and deep

channels, which he named Francis Joseph Land, in honor of the Emperor

of Austria-Hungary.

[Illustration: A SUMMER SCENE OFF NOVA ZEMBLA]

By this time summer was approaching, when it was plain that the

_Tegethoff_ must be abandoned, and an attempt made to get home afoot.

On the 24th of May three boats were placed on sledges, other sledges

were loaded with provisions, and the ship’s company started on another

one of those Arctic marches that often end at so sad a goal. Until the

14th of August they were plodding over the ice before they reached the

edge of the pack and launched their boats, in which they sailed for

three weeks before being picked up by a Russian vessel.

This has always been regarded as one of the greatest achievements in

polar work of this century, not only because of the heroism and skill

shown, and the new lands discovered, but because it promised so much

for the future—a promise that has been largely fulfilled.

The next important expedition was another attack upon the Northeast

Passage, the hope of which would not “down”; and it was under the

leadership of Professor Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld, a Swedish geologist

and naturalist of Stockholm, although born in Finland, who had made

several previous journeys to Greenland, Spitzbergen, etc., which

were fruitful of scientific results. Then he turned his attention to

Siberia; and in 1875 and again in 1876 he sailed to the mouth of the

Yenisei, as also Captain Wiggins of Sunderland, England, was then

doing, in a profitable trade with the Siberians, which has been kept

up more or less regularly ever since. These experiences convinced him

that it was worth while to try once more to work one’s way through the

Siberian ocean to Bering Strait.

He obtained and outfitted the steamer _Vega_, and arranged that a

smaller supply-steamer, the _Lena_, should accompany him as far as the

mouth of the river Lena—a bold proposition in itself, for that was

a thousand miles beyond the Yenisei. Nevertheless, this program was

carried out; for leaving Gothenberg on July 4, 1878, a month later they

were traversing the Kara Sea, and on August 19 passed Cape Chelyuskin,

which, up to that time, had defied all attempts and has since closed

the gate to all but the daring Nansen. A week later the mouth of the

Lena was reached, and the little tender, unloading her coal and other

stores into the depleted hold of the _Vega_, turned west, and actually

sailed back to civilization uninjured.

The _Vega_ then hastened on eastward, and came near getting right

through to Bering Strait in that one season; but this was more than the

indulgent Arctic gods could grant, and at the end of September the men

found themselves frozen into the ice off North Cape (where Cook turned

back in 1778), only one hundred and twenty miles from Bering Strait.

Here they were near shore, the country was inhabited by Tchuktches—a

nomadic people, with herds of reindeer, who take the place in Siberia

of the Eskimos of Arctic America; and the time was well spent in

gathering a knowledge of these people and their country, and in making

very valuable collections in zoology and anthropology.

It was not until July 18, 1879, however, that their prison-gates

opened, and the _Vega_ steamed on. These waters were familiar enough

to navigators; and Nordenskjöld proceeded straight east, passed down

through Bering Strait on the next day but one (so near was he), and

thus easily accomplished that which had baffled men since first it had

been tried by the unfortunate Willoughby three hundred and twenty-six

years before.

But though the Northeast Passage had thus been found, it was of no more

practical value to commerce than the solving of the Northwest Passage

had been, and the value received from the cruise was in the scientific

information gained, the more accurate delineation of the coast, and the

increased knowledge of winds, currents, magnetic phenomena, and the

behavior of the floating ice-fields on that side of the polar area.

When at last, however, the _Vega_ had circumnavigated the globe by this

extraordinary course, returning home through the Suez Canal, as no

Arctic expedition had ever been expected to do, its commander was made

a baron, and all his men were loaded with praises and honors, while his

book, “The Voyage of the _Vega_,” printed in four or five languages,

spread their fame throughout the world.

Now while the _Vega_ was drifting slowly about northeast of Siberia

during that early summer of 1879, not only were Schwatka hunting for

Franklin relics with the Eskimos of King William’s Land, the Danish

Captain Jansen tracing the northeast coast of Greenland, and Dutch and

English explorers investigating the neighborhood of Francis Joseph

Land, but within a few leagues of Nordenskjöld and his men there

was beginning one of the most dreadful of those tragedies that have

seared with suffering the track of Arctic exploration since men began

to pry into the secrets of the frozen North: I mean the story of the

_Jeannette_.

Many readers of this book will easily remember the intense interest

which the starting of this expedition created in the United States, for

it was organized at the suggestion and expense of James Gordon Bennett,

the proprietor of the New York _Herald_. The government coöperated,

however, lending from its navy the officers and men needful, and

otherwise aiding the project. The vessel itself was the steam yacht

_Pandora_, which had been proved a worthy craft by Sir Allen Young in

his search for the magnetic pole in 1875, and which Mr. Bennett had

bought and rechristened.

Supplied with everything science and experience could suggest, the

_Jeannette_ sailed from San Francisco on July 8, 1879, and missing the

incoming _Vega_ among the fogs of Bering Sea, passed through into the

Siberian ocean, bound poleward. The last report of her was that she had

been seen September 3d steaming toward Wrangell Land, which had been

sighted by American whalers in 1867, and was generally regarded as of

continental extent northward. It is now known that De Long intended to

reach it and winter there; but to his dismay he could not escape from

the ice-pack, and to his astonishment found himself drifting past

the northern margin of Wrangell Land, thus proving it an island about

seventy miles long.

When two years had passed and no tidings had been received, the

United States government equipped a search expedition in the steamer

_Rodgers_, commanded by Lieutenant Berry, which in 1881 reached

and examined Wrangell Land, and then went north farther even than

Collinson, reaching 73° 44´, the highest point yet attained immediately

north of Bering Strait, where the paleocrystic ice spreads much farther

from the pole than on the American side. But he found no trace of

the _Jeannette_, and himself had a hard time getting home, for the

_Rodgers_ was burned in her winter quarters.

What then had befallen the lost vessel? She had become beset in the ice

and drifted with the pack around the north end of Wrangell Island, and

then west, until at the end of twenty-two months she had been crushed,

and sunk on June 12, 1881, in latitude 77° 15´ N., and longitude 155

E. Two small islands, named Jeannette and Henrietta, had been visited

some distance east of the scene of the catastrophe; but when the crews,

saving themselves and what little they could on the ice, started to

drag their boats and sledges homeward, they headed directly south, and

soon found a new island, named Bennett, which is the northernmost of

the New Siberia group.

It would be a sad task, were it possible, to relate here the frightful

hardships of that journey through the fast-gathering Arctic night

toward the bleak coast of Siberia. Having passed the islands, open

water was found, and the starving men embarked in their three boats for

the mouth of the Lena; but soon they were separated in a storm, and

each one proceeded as best he could. One boat foundered in the first

gale. Another, in charge of Melville (now engineer-in-chief, U. S. N.),

reached an eastern mouth of the river and ascended it to a Russian

village. A third boat, with De Long and others, also reached the Lena

delta, but only two seamen were able to proceed afoot to Bulun, a

far-away Russian settlement. Melville heard of this, and made haste to

start out searching parties, but they were too late. De Long and his

crew had died of exhaustion, and it was not until the next season that

their bodies and records were fully recovered.

Nevertheless, as we are assured by experts, the results of this

unfortunate expedition were important, physically and geographically.

“They covered some 50,000 square miles of polar ocean, and clearly

indicate the conditions of an equal area between their line of drift

and the Asiatic coast.” De Long believed the Siberian ocean to be

a shallow sea, dotted with islands; and his conclusions have been

confirmed by the admirable scientific work since of Toll, Bunge, and

other Europeans who have explored the Liachoff Islands and other places

in that part of the Arctic realm.

The desire for scientific study of the polar world had now become the

motive for northern research, though men were still ambitious to reach

the pole; and when Sir George Nares returned from the great British

expedition of 1875, to tell how the men of the _Alert_ had reached a

wintering-point beyond Robeson Channel, on the west coast of Greenland,

in latitude 82° 27´ N., and that Markham and a sledge-party had gone

about one degree farther (to 83° 20´ 26´´ N.), greater pride was felt

in this fact, perhaps, than in the careful observations and collections

that the ships had made. This remained the advance record until the

memorable feat of Lieutenant Lockwood of the American Greely expedition

eight years later.

This expedition was one of several acting in concert, according to

a scheme suggested by Weyprecht, and perfected at international

congresses of interested men meeting at Hamburg in 1879 and at St.

Petersburg in 1882. This plan was for the establishment by various

governments of a ring of stations as far within the Arctic circle as

practicable, where simultaneous daily observations of the weather,

magnetic conditions, tides, currents, etc., might be made. The

arrangement was begun in the summer of 1883, and observing stations

were established by Austria on Jan Mayen Island; by Denmark at

Godthaab, Greenland; by Germany on Cumberland Bay, west of Davis

Straits; by Great Britain at Great Slave Lake, Canada; by Holland at

the mouth of the Yenisei; by Norway at Alten Fjiord, Norway; by Russia

at the mouth of the Lena, and on Nova Zembla; by Sweden on Spitzbergen;

and by the United States at Point Barrow, Alaska, and, farthest north

of all, Lady Franklin Bay, Greenland. Nothing need be said about most

of these stations—all were successful except the Dutch; but to the

last-named belongs a story that Americans will not forget.

The command of the Lady Franklin Bay Station was assigned to Lieutenant

A. W. Greely—not a naval lieutenant, but, like Schwatka, a cavalry

officer, then assigned to duty in the Signal Service, to which (because

it then supervised the Weather Bureau) the government had intrusted

this matter. A steamer easily conveyed Greely and his party to Lady

Franklin Bay, and left them there with a good house ready to be set

up, and supplies of all sorts for two years. The prescribed series of

observations with barometers and thermometers, wind-gages, tide-gages,

magnetic instruments and all the rest, were at once begun, and two

winters passed comfortably enough. Dogs and Eskimo drivers had been

obtained, and several journeys were made, of which the most important

was Lockwood’s advance toward the pole, of which an account has

been succinctly supplied by General Greely himself in his admirable

“Handbook of Arctic Discoveries.”

[Illustration: SCENERY OF GRINNELL LAND AND THE ARCTIC SEA.]

Lieutenant J. B. Lockwood, one of the principal assistants, who had

already displayed great skill and energy in sledging, even in prolonged

temperature as low as 81° F. below freezing, undertook a long exploring

trip up the Greenland coast, to or beyond Cape Britannia. A large

party went with him at first, but gradually men were sent back, after

establishing supply-depots. “The journey onward was marked by severe

storms, rough ice, broken sledges, snow-blindness, minor injuries,

and—worst of all for loaded sledges—soft, deep snow.” At last, some

distance north of Cape Bryant, all turned back except Lockwood,

Sergeant Brainard, and an Eskimo, Christiansen, who, with twenty-five

days’ rations, pushed on. In five and one half days they had reached

Cape Britannia—the farthest north of the Nares expedition—82° 20´

N. Halting here only long enough to study the landscape from its

summit, and make sure of the remarkable fact that this northern end

of Greenland is free from the ice-cap, whose northern limit is about

lat. 82° N., they rounded a cape, and crossing channel after channel

filled with ice, which showed that all this district is an archipelago,

reached on May 10th Mary Murray Island, 83° 19´ N. “A violent gale

delayed them sixty-three hours, the cold exhausting them physically

and the delay mentally. If weather forbade travel, life must be

sustained; but they tasted insufficient food only at intervals of

fifteen, twenty-four, and nineteen hours—the last as clearing weather

made progress possible. Floes so high that the sledge was lowered by

dog-traces, ice so broken that the ax cleared the way, and widening

water-cracks in increasing numbers impeded progress. But, despite all

obstacles, they reached, May 13, 1882, Lockwood Island, 83° 24´ N.,

42°, 45´ W., the farthest of their journey, and the highest north [by

land], then or now.”

They could see land several miles northeast, which they named Cape

Washington, the highest known land, and toward the north could overlook

a polar sea to within three hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Even

here plants were numerous, and foxes, hares, lemmings, and ptarmigans

existed. The three heroic travelers returned safely, reaching

headquarters on June 3d. Another expedition by Lockwood and his two

companions explored and located the west coast of mountainous and

glacier-girt Grinnell Land, where the musk-ox and Eskimo hunters range

to the northern border.

The summer of 1883 brought no relief-ship, and the plan of escape must

be put into execution at once. A ship had, in fact, tried to reach

Greely in 1882, but, failing, had left supplies of provisions at Cape

Sabine and elsewhere. In 1883 another relief expedition sent north was

dreadfully mis-managed, and finally the ship itself was lost, and,

instead of leaving supplies, took away all that had been stored at Cape

Sabine—the precise point where they were to be needed.

Leaving Lady Franklin Bay in August in open boats, the party managed,

after desperate exertions, to get near Cape Sabine, and safely landed

on Bedford Pim Island, on the northwestern shore of Smith Sound,

October 15, 1883. Of the misery that followed, let Greely himself tell

us:

Winter had begun, the polar night was imminent, clothing in rags,

fuel wanting, and forty days’ rations must tide over 250 days, till

help could come. The main party put up a hut of rocks, canvas, boat-

and snow-slabs, while selected men scoured the coasts for caches,

sought land-game, and watched seal-holes, until utter darkness drove

all to the hut. Scientific observations were unremittingly made,

amusements devised, a spring campaign planned, and the returning

sun found only one dead. Efforts to cross Smith Sound failed, and

a hunting trip to the west found a new (Schley) land, but no game.

Finally game came so inadequately that food failed, and one by one

men died—Jens seal-hunting, and Rice striving to bring in a cache.

Courage and solidarity continued; and if Greely gave to the maimed

Ellison double food while it lasted, he did not hesitate to order

in writing the execution of a man serving under an assumed name of

Henry, who repeatedly stole sealskin thongs, the only remaining

food. Flowers, plants, seaweed, and lichens eked out life for the

six, till June 22, 1884, when the relief-ships, _Thetis_ and _Bear_,

under Captain W. S. Schley and Commander W. H. Emory, rescued them.

Records, instruments, and collections were saved to tell the story

of an expedition that failed not in aught intrusted to it, and whose

members perished through others.

To another piece of brilliant work, that of Lieutenant R. E. Peary, U.

S. N., I can give only a few words, because, like so much else that

might be said of Arctic researches, it was by land rather than by

sea. By extraordinary courage, skill, and endurance, he twice crossed

northern Greenland, showed that it is an island having a northern shore

free from inland ice in about 82° north latitude, and made stronger

Greely’s conclusion that the lands visited and seen by Lockwood, north

of Cape Britannia, are detached islands. Peary’s work may be said to

have completed the map of the continental boundary of the Arctic Ocean,

but he is still busy there.

Of Nansen, on the contrary, I ought to say as much as I can, because

his extraordinary voyage in the _Fram_ was perhaps more purely

an examination of the Arctic _Sea_ than any other ever made. Dr.

Fridtjoff Nansen was a young Norwegian who had already made his mark

in Greenland, where, soon after 1880, articles began to be found that

had belonged to the _Jeannette_, and apparently must have drifted

thence from where she was lost off Siberia. This was only a part of the

indications that convinced Dr. Nansen that a current flowed across the

unknown polar space from the neighborhood of Alaska to the northeast

coast of Greenland, and thence became the great Arctic current that we

recognize south of Iceland. He argued that if a vessel could find this

current north of eastern Siberia, she would be moved with it until she

emerged into the Atlantic. Incidentally she might drift directly over

the pole.

With this in view, he raised funds to build and equip a small wooden

vessel, furnished with both steam and sails, which was so shaped by

the roundness of her bottom, and so amazingly braced and strengthened

within, that before any “nips” of the ice would crush her, the pressure

would lift her out of water—as, in fact, happened many times in the

course of her wonderful excursion. Nansen chose twelve companions,[3]

and though some of them were educated men of science, others skilful

sea-captains, and others common sailors, all lived and worked together

in one cabin as brothers—the happiest and healthiest lot of men that

ever ventured into the hyperborean kingdom of desolation.

Leaving Norway in July, 1893, he struggled through the Kara Sea,

and it was not until late in September, 1894, that he found himself

permanently frozen into the great polar pack, north of the New Siberian

Islands; but even then he was neither so far north nor so far west as

he hoped to get, and feared that he was south of his supposed current.

For the story of the strange life led by those thirteen men on that

drifting ship, safe, abundantly provisioned, dry, warm, lighted by

electricity (power for the dynamos being gained by a windmill), I can

only refer you to Dr. Nansen’s book, “Farthest North,” one of the

most interesting Arctic volumes ever penned. Turning, zigzagging, now

advancing and again retreating as the constantly moving ice swayed here

and there under the pressure of wind or the dragging of currents, they

nevertheless made a gradual progress westward.

By March they had reached a point near the crossing of the 70th

meridian and 85th parallel, and were still fixed in the ice. Then

Nansen, taking with him Lieutenant Johansen, started north by

dog-sledges, in an attempt to reach the pole. They could take very few

supplies of any sort, and how far north they would be able to travel

must depend upon their ability to return, not to the _Fram_, which

would drift on, but to the islands of Francis Joseph Land, far away

south. The ice, bad at first, grew worse as they proceeded, being one

long stretch of hummocks and jagged ditches, with now and then a lane

of open water around which they would toil in misery only to find a

worse one ahead. On April 7th it became certain that they must turn

back. This was “farthest north,” indeed—just above the 86th degree,

hardly 275 miles from the North Pole. Then it was a race against death

by cold, or drowning, or starvation. One by one the dogs were killed to

furnish food for the remainder. At last, after almost superhuman labors

and thrilling escapes from freezing and drowning and the attacks of

famished bears, they reached Francis Joseph Land, and spent a winter in

a hut made out of stones, earth, and raw walrus hides. The next spring

they plodded on, and by good chance found the camp of the Jackson

Harmsworth surveying party (which a few days later would have gone away

in its steamer), by whom Nansen and Johansen were carried to Norway in

August, 1896.

A week later the _Fram_ came in, with every one well and hearty, having

emerged from the ice just northwest of Spitzbergen.

Since Nansen’s return another Scandinavian, S. A. Andrée, with two

companions, has disappeared into this same desert of ice and silence,

in a balloon carrying a boat, sledge, tent, and various supplies.

It was his intention to reach the pole if possible, and to do

whatever else circumstances permitted. Since his departure, on July

10, 1897, from Spitzbergen, he has not been heard from, except by a

pigeon-message two days later.

THE SOUTH POLE

We have followed up to date the history of adventurous and scientific

exploration of the hardly yielding, yet steadily narrowed, circles

of unknown coasts and waters about the North Pole. Let us now see

what, thus far, has been done to wrest from the ocean and ice of its

Antarctic antipodes the secrets of the South Pole.

[Illustration: A PENGUIN-ROOST ON THE BEACHES OF VICTORIA LAND.

Drawn by the Antarctic explorer Borchgrevink.]

Almost three hundred years ago the existence of islands far to the

southward of any continents became known to navigators, who were driven

thither by bad weather, and little by little was added to the map of

this desolate region; but it was not until 1772 that any one went into

that terrible Antarctic sea for the express purpose of a survey. This

man was the intrepid Captain Cook, and though he sailed a third of the

way around the globe in his efforts to find an entrance through the icy

barrier, he could never penetrate beyond 71° south latitude, which is

equal to North Cape, or the town of Upernavik, in the Arctic region.

Later captains did little better, until 1841, when Sir James Ross, in

his ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_,—the same vessels which afterward met

their destruction with the ill-fated Franklin expedition,—skirted the

edge of the thick ice that everywhere clothed the land, though it was

midsummer, and finally reached the base of the southernmost land yet

known on the globe—a magnificent mountain-chain stretching away to the

south from latitude 78° 10´.

The most conspicuous point of all this range of polar mountains, which

rises from an unexplored continent or great island called Victoria

Land, is the volcano Mt. Erebus. It was in eruption at the time of

Ross’s visit, and the explorer tries to tell us of the splendor of its

display when the wide glistening waste of snow and the deep blue of

the ocean and the starry sky are lit up by the column of fire hurled

thousands of feet heavenward from its crater: but who can picture the

grandeur of such a scene! This volcano is about 12,400 feet high, and

an extinct neighbor, Mt. Terror, is still higher; while a third peak,

Mt. Melbourne, exceeds 15,000 feet in altitude, and like all the rest

is covered with everlasting snow and glaciers from the tempestuous

water’s edge to its lonely crest.

Meager as this information is, it is about all we know of the surface

of the globe within the Antarctic circle; and it will be extremely

difficult to learn much more. In a latitude much farther from the

pole than that where in the north vegetation is abundant, and men and

animals live all the year round, the severity of the Antarctic climate

cuts off all life, and constantly seals the water under a cap of ice.

The coasts and outlying islands thus far examined appear to be wholly

volcanic, often composed of nothing but alternate layers of ashes

and ice; but the _Challenger_ staff dredged up from the edge of the

ice south of the middle of the Indian Ocean pieces of granite-like

and other rocks, such as belong to land regularly formed; so that

probably the whole uplift does not consist of volcanic materials; and,

furthermore, rocks containing fossil plants have been found on some of

the southernmost islands which show that in past ages—the period of

the coal deposits—the climate of that end of the world was mild enough

to support forests of trees and, doubtless, a large variety of herbage

and animals. Now most of the coast is unapproachable on account of a

border of sea-ice, or else cliffs of moving land-ice (glaciers) that

give off the flat, table-topped icebergs characteristic of the south

polar waters. No trace of any land animal—except visiting sea-fowl—has

been found, and only a little of the simplest plants (lichens); nor is

this surprising when we learn that the highest noonday heat of summer

is only a little above the freezing-point.

Why this intense cold and dreadful desolation exists so much farther

from the pole in the southern than in the northern hemisphere, I need

hardly explain to you; for you will recall that in the north the

continents are so broad as to form almost an unbroken wall about the

narrow polar sea, confining its cold waters, warming the air by wide

radiation, and guiding the heated flood of the Gulf Stream straight

into the northern sea. In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand,

an immense breadth of ocean south of latitude 40° is broken by no

land of any account, and the southward flowing warm water from the

equator becomes spread out so thin upon the vast surface that it is

rapidly chilled. It is now generally believed, as has been hinted,

that the south polar region is a continental mass, deeply buried in an

ice-sheet that is ever fed in the center as fast as it wastes away at

the circumference; for the prevailing winds there tend toward the pole

from all sides, and carry loads of moisture to be condensed and fall in

ceaseless snows.

[Illustration: ICE-CLIFFS AND TABLE-TOPPED BERGS, CHARACTERISTIC OF THE

ANTARCTIC REGION.]

The Antarctic seas, however, are by no means lifeless, but abound not

only in fishes,—cod are said to throng in these waters in prodigious

numbers,—but several varieties of whales, dolphins, and their kin

(which will be described in one of the later chapters), and many kinds

of seals, notably the huge sea-elephant, now becoming rare elsewhere.

Then, too, the Antarctic islands and headlands are the resort of

enormous flocks of certain sea-birds, all different from the Arctic

species of their families, which subsist upon the fishes and less

creatures in the water, and go to the lonely shores outside the ice-cap

only for rest and to make their nests. Of all these the penguins are

most numerous and most hardy, and a whole chapter might easily be given

to their quaint appearance and quainter ways. It also appears probable

that certain migratory birds—especially beach-feeding kinds—regularly

visit the Antarctic continent in summer from Patagonia, and breed there.

Now what has been gained by all the expense, exertion, and hardship

of polar exploration? What has been the charm that has led wise and

brave men to overcome terrific obstacles, and turn again with deeper

and deeper longings toward the mystic icy regions? Lieutenant Maury has

given one answer: “There icebergs are framed and glaciers launched.

There the tides have their cradle: the whales their nursery. There

the winds complete their circuits, and the currents of the sea their

round in the wonderful system of interoceanic circulation. There the

Aurora Borealis is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to

rest; and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial

forces of occult power and vast influence upon the well-being of man

are continually at play.... Noble daring has made Arctic ice and waters

classic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor vain ambition that

leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive, a desire

to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the economy of our

planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge.”

To polar explorers we owe not only the discovery of the waters,

coasts, and archipelagoes that now are accurately outlined upon our

maps within the Arctic and Antarctic circles, but vast and valuable

products—whale-fisheries, seal-fisheries, cod-fisheries, and many other

additions to the wealth of the world from the sea, while the Arctic

lands have yielded furs and other valuable things in great quantity.

The study of the people living under those adverse northern conditions

has been highly instructive, assisting us to reconstruct the life in

the primitive world; and what we have learned from the records of

the Arctic rocks has thrown a bright and unexpected light upon the

antiquity of the globe.

To studies of the ocean and atmosphere in very high latitudes science

is largely indebted for new facts in magnetism, in the movements of

the air and causes of climate, in the formation and behavior of ice

and icebergs, in the action of tides and ocean-currents, and in many

other departments of knowledge, all of which have been made of use

especially to the navigator. Nor has this cost over much. Attention

has been called to every casualty, and the romantic light of adventure

has brought into high relief all the hardships and sometimes horrors

of Arctic experience; but the records show that the average of loss

and suffering in Arctic work is not greater than that of ordinary

seafaring and naval careers. Sir Leopold M’Clintock has stated publicly

that during the thirty-six years when Great Britain was most active

in polar research, she lost only one expedition and 128 persons

out of forty-two successive expeditions sent out, and never lost a

sledge-party out of a hundred that made overland journeys.

After all, no doubt, the best result has been the human heroism

displayed, and the human sympathy developed. “There are,” exclaims

Professor Nourse, “and ever will be, fair fruits born out of such acts

of high aspiration, energy, and fortitude, in those who have gone out,

and in their liberal supporters; exemplars for the lifting up of the

discouraged, the education of the young. Certainly volunteers for the

paths of discovery will offer themselves until the fullest additions to

the domain of science have had their ingathering.”

[Illustration: EAGER TO BE FIRST ASHORE IN A NEW LAND.]

[Illustration: DRAWN BY HOWARD PYLE. ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.

THE “CONSTITUTION’S” LAST FIGHT.]

FOOTNOTE:

[3] The success of this most hazardous venture, although its crew

numbered _thirteen_, is equal to the success of Columbus’s first

voyage, although it began on _Friday_! “Luck” has no show when it is

pitted against pluck.

CHAPTER VI

WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES

PART I—WOODEN WALLS, FROM SALAMIS TO TRAFALGAR

Naval warfare, properly speaking, begins with the battle of Salamis,

480 B. C., when the Greek fleet, under the guidance of Themistocles,

destroyed or put to flight a horde of twelve hundred Persian vessels,

and saved Athens, to become the foundation of a strong nation.

Of these ships at Salamis we know very little, except that they were

large, open, or partly open, rowboats, having platforms at the stern

and prow, and perhaps amidships in some cases, where soldiers might

stand and discharge their arrows out of the way of the rowers beneath

them, or leap aboard the enemy’s boats whenever they could be reached.

They were, in short, early types of the galleys which subsequently

became vessels of war as powerful and serviceable, under the conditions

they were intended to meet, as are our battle-ships to-day, and

probably safer as a fighting-place for their crews.

That from rowboats rather than from sail-boats should have been

developed the highest type of Mediterranean war-vessel of ancient times

is not surprising when one remembers the light and variable winds of

that region, the usually smooth seas, the abundance of harbors, and,

above all, the need of having the vessels under complete control when

all fighting had to be done at short range—chiefly by ramming and

boarding, in fact. It must be remembered, too, that labor was cheap;

and it was considered that the most proper and economical—not to say

humane—use to which prisoners of war could be put was to make them

rowers in public ships, while enough remained to be sold as slaves to

the owners of private yachts and privateering galleys. One may imagine

a worse fate than this.

The earliest war-vessels of the eastern Mediterranean—those of Homer’s

time, for instance—seem to have been long and rather narrow rowboats,

the best of which had two tiers of oars, one above the other, the

lower, shorter tier working through oval holes in the side, and the

upper in notches or thole-pins on the gunwale. This left the upper

rowers exposed, and hence such vessels were called _aphract_, or

“unfenced”; and it was not until the Greeks began to become prominent

that the bulwarks were raised high enough to protect all the rowers,

and war-vessels generally became _cataphract_, or “fenced.”

It appears that in very early times war-ships (_biremes_) with not

only two tiers or banks of oars, but even those (_triremes_) with

three banks, were used; and the trireme became the type of the most

numerous and effective vessels of the Greek and Roman navies in their

prime. And as weight and power gradually increased, the crushing power

of collision began to be utilized, and ramming came in as a more and

more important feature in naval tactics. As the Greeks seem to have

first applied these new ideas, it is quite likely that their success at

Salamis was due to these improvements. The arrangement was this:

From the side of the vessel (inside) projected three rows of benches, a

yard apart, horizontally supported at their inner ends by timbers that

slanted toward the stern at such an angle that the top seat of each row

was exactly above the bottom seat of the row behind it. The oars of

the top tier (_thranite_) were about fourteen feet long, those of the

middle tier (_zygite_) about ten and one half feet, and the lowermost

one (_thalamite_) seven and one half feet. Each oar was so nearly

balanced in its oar-port as to work in the easiest manner, tied there

by a thong and surrounded by a loose sleeve of leather which kept out

the water. Each one of the lowermost oars was worked by a single man,

the middle ones by two, and those of the third tier by three or four,

as they were of great length.

In later times larger vessels were invented for special

purposes—four-banked (_quadriremes_), five-banked (_quinquiremes_),

and so on, even up to one of forty banks; but as we are unable to

understand how it was possible for more than five or six tiers of oars

to be operated, we may leave these extraordinary galleys to special

students.[4]

The structure of these vessels gave them the greatest strength

combined with lightness. They had very strong keels and stems, the

latter peculiarly braced; and along their sides ran waling-pieces, or

fore-and-aft bracing timbers, the lowermost curving inward forward,

until they met in front of the stem at the water-line, where they were

braced by massive timbers, and prolonged into a sharp three-toothed

spur, of which the middle tooth was the longest, reaching out perhaps

ten feet. This was covered with metal, usually bronze, and formed the

_beak_.

“Above it, but projecting less beyond the stem-post, was the

_procmbolion_, or second beak, in which the prolongation of the upper

set of waling-pieces met. This was generally fashioned into the figure

of a ram’s head, also covered with metal.... These bosses, when a

vessel was rammed, completed the work of destruction begun by the sharp

beak at the water-level, giving a racking blow which caused it to heel

over and so eased it off the beak, releasing the latter before the

weight of the sinking vessel could come upon it.”

[Illustration: HAMILCAR’S “STAIRWAY OF THE GALLEYS,” AT CARTHAGE.]

The stem was often carried up into a curving ornament called the

_acrostolion_, beneath which was a stout-walled deck-space for sailors

or the fighting-men to do their work; and the stern-post similarly

supported a lofty, richly ornamented structure (_aplustron_), arching

over the officers’ quarters.

Platforms extended up and down the center of the ship between the

rowers; and over their heads was a deck having walls or bulwarks where

the fighting-men and their various “engines” stood. In addition to

this an external defended gallery for soldiers and boarders usually

ran along the outside of the bulwarks above the oars; and awnings of

rawhide were stretched over all to ward off grappling-irons.

It must not be forgotten, however, that these galleys also had three

pole-masts, and certain sails—probably a huge split lug, with possibly

a square topsail on the mainmast, while the fore- and mizzenmasts

carried lateens. At the top of each stick was a round, protected cage

filled with archers and slingers—the prototype of our “military mast.”

Nor are the size and force of these Greek and Roman men-of-war to be

despised. The ordinary trireme had a crew of 200 to 225 men in all, 174

of whom were rowers. The space for cabins and stowage must have been

little, but this was of small account, since the war-galleys rarely

undertook long cruises, their tactics being a rush and a sharp fight,

and then a quick return to harbor, where it was the practice to draw

the lighter galleys up on shore each night. The transportation of the

ships across the isthmus of Corinth was not, then, so astonishing a

feat as it is sometimes called.

Rome’s experience, however, gained in war and in suppressing the

Levantine pirates, taught her to abandon the heavy, many-banked,

unwieldy vessels she had at first developed from Greek and Carthaginian

models, and to trust to a much lighter, swifter, and more manageable

style, with far less upper structure and rigging, and having only two

banks of oars. These were called Liburnian galleys. With this change

came naturally one of tactics, capture by chase and boarding taking the

place of the earlier attempt to crush by ramming and overriding the

antagonist.

The armament comprised not only as many soldiers with bows and javelins

as could find room in action, but various machines of offense and

defense, such as catapults hurling huge stones or marble grape-shot,

spearheaded rams or huge knives that could be run out against an

enemy’s hull or rigging, arrangements for smashing the enemy’s decks,

caldrons swung at yard-arms, holding burning pitch or oil to be poured

upon the foe, and often cranes (_corvi_), provided with grapples that,

if one could be made fast, would lift an adversary out of water, and

turn him upside down. No more vivid picture of the life in cruise and

battle of a Roman man-of-war’s man is known to me than that penned by

General Lew Wallace in “Ben Hur,” but I cannot, of course, transfer

all of it to my pages, as I should like to do, and an extract here and

there would only spoil the pleasure in store for you in re-reading it

all.

Of medieval naval warfare in the Mediterranean, the struggles between

the weak “principalities and powers” that followed the decay of Rome

and lasted for a dozen centuries, we know very little. There is more

obscurity here than even elsewhere in the dim history of the dark

ages. It is evident, however, that not much change took place in naval

architecture. The Byzantine empire succeeded to Rome as mistress of the

seas, and we know that in the ninth century the Byzantine emperors were

still building biremes (then called _dromones_) armed with tubes for

spouting Greek fire. It should be noted that boats having only a single

bank of oars came now to be called galleys; and this is the first and

proper use of the word, though popularly it is now (or until recently

was) applied to any large many-oared boat.

[Illustration: A COMBAT OF ROMAN GALLEYS (BIREMES).]

With the introduction of gunpowder and cannon into naval vessels,

the ornamental top-works—a picturesque relic of which remains in the

Venetian gondola of to-day—disappeared, as we see when the clear

light of history begins to shine on the fleets of Venice and Genoa,

when these cities were leaders of the world in navigation. Turkey—the

successor of the old Byzantine empire and of the Greek power—was

then, as now, the great enemy of the west, but in those days it was

aggressive. Its fleets were strong and well manned, and they threatened

to cross the Adriatic and fasten the baneful grasp of the Moslem upon

Italy in revenge for the persecution of the Moors in Spain. Perhaps

they would have done so had not John of Austria, admiral of the

allied navies of Spain, Venice, and Rome, won that great victory in

the harbor of Lepanto, near the isthmus of Corinth, which destroyed

nearly the whole Turkish fleet, and released fifteen thousand Christian

galley-slaves. This was in October, 1571, and it saved the West from

being overrun by the barbarous East, as exactly fifteen and a half

centuries before it had been saved near Actium, a famous promontory on

the northwestern coast of Greece, where Octavius defeated the forces of

Antony and Cleopatra.

It is doubtful whether the ships that fought in the later battle

were much different in either build or rig from those of the earlier

conflict, but their decks no more gleamed with men in armor, and in

place of catapult, crane, and caldron were cannonades and falconets,

arquebuses and hand-grenades. Perhaps, however, they had already taken

on more of that long, low shape characterizing later the French and

Italian galleys, common enough in Mediterranean ports up to about one

hundred years ago, which differed mainly from the ancient ones in their

use of much longer oars or sweeps, balanced upon a sort of extended

outrigger or shelf projecting from the vessel’s side. The galleass of

which we hear in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was a large

war-ship of this style, which foreshadowed the Atlantic ships, to be

spoken of presently, in having castellated structures fore and aft,

in which were mounted sometimes twenty guns; besides its two or three

lateen-rigged masts, it often had thirty-two sweeps on each side, each

about forty-five feet long, and handled with a long, slow stroke by

five or six men—in France mainly convicts “condemned to the galleys.”[5]

Such vessels continued to be used by the Spaniards, Maltese, Italians,

and Turks long after they had been abandoned by the French navy,

but latterly, after the suppression of piracy, in which they were

of especial service, for the conveyance of important personages and

occasions of ceremony rather than for practical service; and in the

state barge of the Doge of Venice, brought out annually to this day

at the ceremony of re-wedding Venice to the Adriatic, we have a

magnificent relic of these stately craft.

[Illustration: TYPE OF VENETIAN GALLEY.]

But such boats were adapted only to the comparatively calm and simple

navigation of the Mediterranean; and although imitated in the similar

waters of the eastern Baltic, they never flourished north of Spain.

When they gradually disappeared, their successor inside the gates of

Gibraltar was the xebec, which began to appear under Arab or Spanish

control in the seventeenth century; this was supposed to be able to

withstand any weather, and carried from fourteen to twenty-two guns

on deck, with small ports for oars between the guns. A picturesque

relative was the Portuguese muleta.

The English liked this kind of vessel on account of its strong sailing

qualities, but when they took it into their own stormy waters they

found it necessary to raise its sides to fit them for breasting

the high seas that roll in the open Atlantic or are tossed by the

contending tides of the English Channel, and developed out of it a

style of swift and handy vessel called a frigate.

During all these “middle” ages the northern nations had been sailing

and fighting on the sea as well as the southerners. Stories of sturdy

battles have come down in tradition and in such chronicles as those of

Froissart; but those old conflicts seem to have produced little change

in ship-building or armament until the experience and wisdom brought

back by the Crusaders began to spread abroad even in the half-savage

North, and to produce that revival of learning which by and by was to

make such striking changes in western Europe; and here the leaders are

Englishmen.

[Illustration: FORECASTLE OF THE “GREAT HARRY” (“GRÂCE DE DIEU”).]

In those days no national navies, properly speaking, existed in

England, France, or northward. When a monarch wished to transport

troops by water to some other land, or make a naval expedition or

campaign, he fitted out the ships that belonged to the crown as the

king’s personal property, and compelled his subjects to furnish the

rest, just as his feudal provinces and cities and lords were expected

to equip and bring to his standard any land forces required. It was to

systematize this method somewhat in England that William the Conqueror

“established the Cinque Ports, and gave them certain privileges on

condition of their furnishing 52 ships, with 24 men in each, for 15

days, in cases of emergency.” Now and then, at first, Englishmen were

disposed to resist the “arrest” of ships, which might easily mean the

ruin of their business; and special laws had to be made to quell this

reluctance. Another quaint and significant feature of that practice

was this: In every fleet one or more ships were set apart as “royal,”

and either the king or his representatives occupied them with court

ceremony to carry out the fiction of royal dominion over the sea as

well as upon the land. It naturally followed in England that after her

navy had shown its power, and signalized it especially by a brilliant

victory over Spain in 1380, Edward III should have assumed as an

additional title “King of the Seas”—an act which had far-reaching

consequences.

During the fifteenth century something like an established navy was

foreshadowed; but it was not until the reign of Henry VII, when, at

the end of the fifteenth century, the whole world was exploring the

oceans and awakening to the importance of sea power, that the first

vessel, properly called a national war-ship, was built, equipped,

manned, and sustained at government expense by England. This was the

_Great Harry_—a floating fortress rather than a ship; for, with her

towering, overweighted “castles” fore and aft, she was unseaworthy, and

came near being sunk by a slight rolling which poured the water into

her lower ports.

But a better known “_Great Harry_” was the _Henri Grâce de Dieu_, built

by Henry VIII. This king was the real founder of the British navy,

providing for it many good ships, dock-yards, trained officers, and

regularly enlisted crews. The advantage of this organization and the

superiority of English seamanship were demonstrated in the next reign

by the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

England was then at war with Spain, and Philip II thought to end the

matter by means of the greatest expedition ever heard of. It began to

be prepared in 1587 under the title of the Most Fortunate Armada,[6]

but an English squadron under Drake attacked the rendezvous at Cadiz,

destroyed over one hundred vessels and huge quantities of stores, and

then so ravaged the neighboring coasts as to delay Spain’s project for

a whole season.

In midsummer of 1588, however, after an unlucky start, in which it

was driven back by storms, the dreaded Armada appeared in the English

Channel, like a close flock of huge birds drifting along the British

coast. It consisted of about 130 ships, seven of which exceeded 1000

tons burden, and numerous small craft, and was armed with nearly 3000

cannon. Its commander was the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was a most

incompetent man for the post, and it bore, besides nearly 10,000

sailors and galley-slaves, over 10,000 soldiers; but this naval force

was not intended to attack England until after it had ferried over from

Belgium the Spanish army of the Duke of Parma.

To such a force as this England opposed a miserably small fleet—only

34 vessels that could be called ships; but she hastily armed as many

more smaller ones as she could, amid great fright and excitement, until

finally Admiral Howard commanded 80 or 90 ships and boats. There was no

deficiency in his men, however,—the pick of English “sea-dogs” was at

his call; and among the leaders of the pack were men we have already

met elsewhere—Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher, and others.

What a sight it must have been on that August day as these ships,

flying the huge banners of Castile, standing high out of the water,

with lofty “castles” forward and aft, gaudy with carving and color,

the light rippling here from silken pennants and flashing there

from shining cannon or huge poop-lanterns, moved past the southern

headlands of England, watched by half-raging, half-fearful crowds! And

how mystified and indignant must these watching country people have

been when Admiral Howard, their only defender, calmly let the Armada

sail by Plymouth, where the English fleet lay hid in the Solent, and

Captain Drake coolly insisted upon finishing a game of bowls before he

would go down to his waiting frigate.

[Illustration: STYLE OF SHIPS IN THE TIME OF THE ARMADA.]

But these captains knew what they were about. In those days, as now,

in fighting with sailing-vessels the advantage is usually with the

one who attacks from the windward side; for then he can manœuver his

vessel, whereas his enemy, heading toward the wind, can do so only with

difficulty if at all, and hence cannot easily take a good position or

escape from a bad one. Howard, therefore, waited until the closely

crowded squadrons of Spain had passed beyond him up the Channel, when

he issued from Plymouth harbor, bore down upon their rear from the

windward, and proceeded, as one of the reports expressed it, to “pluck

their feathers.”

Then began some wonderful days of sea history and naval schooling. The

Spanish vessels were floating castles armed with heavy guns and crowded

with soldiers armed with muskets and “harquebuses of crock,”—that is,

great blunderbusses supported upon a portable rest. They kept in a

close crowd, like a phalanx of old Swiss infantry, and supposed that

the English would move against them in another dense raft, and that

they would fight from deck to deck of grappled ships as if they were on

land.

But the English knew better. They had few ships as large—the _Triumph_,

1100 tons, was the biggest—or guns as heavy as the Spaniards’.

Instead of attacking in a solid mass, therefore, they spread out,

hovered on the flanks, darted a ship here and there, fired as they

saw opportunity, and kept their own vessels out of danger as much as

possible. In the light and variable winds that prevailed, the great

galleons of the Armada were almost immovable, while the English for

the most part had smaller, lighter vessels, whose nimbleness and ready

obedience to the helm astonished the Spanish. Standing low in the

water, these would drive their shot right through the enemy’s hulls,

and make off before the Spaniard could depress his guns enough to do

any damage in return; while the army of musketeers upon whom he had

relied so strongly had little chance to do anything at all.

Thus for a week the English frigates and armed fishing-boats harassed

the Armada on its way up the Channel, capturing and sinking many of

the ships, while losing some of its own, of course, until at last

the worried and baffled squadron managed to gain the roadstead of

Calais, where the army of the Duke of Parma lay. To carry this army

across and begin a campaign against London seemed now not only out

of the question, but the safety of the fleet itself was a question;

for a few days later, when a favorable wind arose, several fire-ships

came sailing down upon them from the blockading Englishmen outside.

These fire-ships—an important part of every fleet for two or three

centuries—were old vessels intended to set fire to an enemy’s ships.

Their yard-arms were set with great iron hooks, their hulls and

riggings were saturated with oil, their decks loaded with tar-barrels,

and their old guns overloaded, so as to spread destruction in every

direction by bursting. Then bold crews sailed these grappling monsters

as near the enemy as they dared,—and it must have been a service dear

to the heart of the daring,—set fire to them, lashed their helms, and

got away in their boats as best they could.

To escape these dreadful things the Spaniards were obliged to up-anchor

and put to sea, losing many ships and lives by fire or the wildly

flying cannon-balls, or by going ashore in the effort; and then the

Englishmen followed them again, like wolves after a herd of buffalo

in winter. The Spaniards dared not go back down the Channel, and

nothing remained to them but the hazardous voyage around the north

of Scotland—a venture for which the towering, unwieldy galleons were

ill-fitted. Storms overtook them in the North Sea and on the Atlantic,

and so many were cast away on the Irish coast, where those who reached

the shore were slain, that hardly half of the proud Armada crept back

to Lisbon and Cadiz.

[Illustration: A SEA-FIGHT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]

This incident was one of the most notable in European history for

two reasons: First, historically, it no doubt saved England and her

colonies from the Inquisition, and all the other depressing and

horrible burdens that long afterward weighted the papal countries

of southern Europe and their American possessions; and, second, it

reformed naval warfare not only by confirming the value of a regularly

organized national navy, but by showing that the old-fashioned, dense

fleet formation, carrying soldiers to fight as they would do on land,

was wrong and ineffective.

But though Spain had been humbled she was by no means crushed, and

sea-fighting went on a long time before either she, the French, or the

Dutch—and the last were the hardest foes—would fully admit England’s

claim to be sovereign of all the seas around Britain, and strike their

flags whenever they met one of her “king’s ships” in acknowledgment

of it. England asserted that the domain of her crown covered not only

the lands of England (and much of France), but also “the narrow seas”;

and she defined this domain to include all the Channel waters north

of Cape Finisterre and thence in a square area westward to the middle

of the Atlantic. This was not an assertion: “I can beat the world in

sea-fighting,” but was a legal claim to rule—a declaration that her

laws extended over that much sea in the same manner that it is now

agreed that the laws of all nations extend to a distance of three miles

from their coasts.

The whole idea of naval warfare in those days was defense of your

own commerce and attack upon your enemy’s; and at that time any one

you met under another flag was likely to be your “enemy” if either

party promised spoils worth a fight. Hence not only did privateering

flourish,—often degenerating into piracy,—not only did all merchant

vessels go heavily armed, but the royal ships were intended principally

for convoying or guarding merchantmen. This theory, which was only a

part of the generally unsettled condition of that formative period,

kept up a continual state of fighting on the sea, even between peoples

nominally at peace, and of course led again and again to open wars.

These were almost always popular, especially among the bold sailors

but poor traders of England, on account of the chances for prizes and

plunder that often more than repaid the expenses and losses of the

conflict; thus the war with the Dutch in 1652-54, in which William Penn

was a captain, brought in more than _£_6,000,000 worth of captures—more

than the financial cost of the war.

At this time—the first half of the sixteenth century—Holland was the

leading commercial nation of the world. Not only had her merchants

large interests of their own in both the East and West Indies, very

extensive fisheries in northern waters, and trading stations in the

African and American coasts, but a large part of the commerce of

other nations was conducted in Dutch ships, including much of England

itself. It was the unrighteous but determined effort to break this up

by any and every means that brought on the second war with Holland,

one incident of which was the capture of New Amsterdam (New York); for

fleets no longer stayed close at home, acting mainly as defenders

of coasts, as in the previous century, but now cruised and fought on

the high seas, as the Spanish had learned in many a hard struggle to

protect their trading and treasure-ships homeward bound.

[Illustration: ATTACKING SPANISH GALLEONS OFF THE AZORES.]

[Illustration:

DRAWN BY WARREN SHEPPARD.

SPANISH AND FRENCH SHIPS OF THE LINE TAKING POSITION FOR THE BATTLE OF

TRAFALGAR.]

This new practice, however, had required a change in ships and their

equipment. The English learned this quicker than any one else. They cut

down the lofty cabins, increased the height, while reducing the weight,

of masts by inventing jointed topmasts, and replaced the unwieldy

lateens by an arrangement of lofty, quickly handled square sails. By

the middle of the seventeenth century ocean-going ships had much the

same appearance as at present,—although far more elaborately ornamented

and bulging aft with stern-galleries,—the massive, high-pooped Spanish

galleon surviving longest as a relic of the old type. These changes

allowed the armament to be taken from the front and rear of the ship,

where it had formerly been mainly placed, there being no room in the

waist, and allowed it to be distributed equally up and down the ship,

which now began to deliver the “broadsides” that formed such a feature

in sea-gunnery before the days of turreted ironclads, and this, with

the constant improvement in the range and power of the artillery, soon

brought about ideas of battle formation. The early plan was to provide

a large number of ships,—eighty or one hundred on each side in a single

action were not uncommon,—because each was weak, and also because a

great number of fighting-men was thought necessary, and then to advance

from the windward in a compact mass, and endeavor to close with the

enemy and capture or destroy him by hand-to-hand promiscuous fighting.

Our word _squadron_ means a square, and, as applied to ships, is a

survival from those antiquated methods.

But when the practice of using fire-ships became common and effective,

and trimmer, more active ships superseded the cumbrous galleasses, it

was seen that this close formation only exposed a fleet to destruction,

and an open order had to be adopted, with a consequent change of

tactics. Another lesson was, that a sea-fight was a sailor’s battle,

where soldiers were out of place, and that to take a great number

of weak ships into action, crowded with men, was only to risk life

unnecessarily. Hence, larger and more heavily armed ships, but fewer of

them, appear in later engagements; and in place of a bunch of vessels,

“huddled together like a flock of sheep,” at which to shoot, the open

order gave the gunners small and single targets.

All these changes combined to enforce the wisdom of meeting an enemy

in a widely spaced line, where the strongest fighting-ships were put

forward, and smaller vessels came up in the rear. Those ahead met the

battle-ships at the head of the enemy’s column, and the lesser ones, as

they came up, were paired off against those of their own size, so that

the battle became a series of equalized duels. Such was the theory of

naval tactics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and so arose

the term line-of-battle ship, descriptive of such national craft as are

shown on the opposite page.

These fine old line-of-battle ships were large and powerful before

the seventeenth century ended. Thus in the British navy when 1700

came in there were eight which had from ninety-six to one hundred and

ten guns each—fifty-three others carrying more than seventy guns, and

twenty-three more with more than fifty guns—all at that time regarded

as fit for the line of battle, though a hundred years later nothing

less than a “seventy-four” was so considered. Such were the grandly

picturesque old vessels that won the day at Gibraltar, Copenhagen, and

Trafalgar, and at many another spot where the whole horizon echoed to

their thunderous broadsides; but of them all there now remain only a

few honored hulks in harbors, or a few grand figureheads preserved in

docks and museums.

Each navy, however, had a greater number of smaller, more active

vessels, known as frigates, corvettes, sloops-of-war, gun-brigs, etc.,

which carried from twenty to forty-four guns, and were the “eyes of the

fleet,” as one old strategist styled them. They answered to what we

should now call cruisers, and often went on duty in distant parts of

the world, or in war were scouting about and supporting the main fleet.

This class was especially cultivated by the United States, as soon as

it began to make a regular navy, at the close of the Revolutionary

War, and six frigates were built at our six navy-yards during the

last years of the last century, which were intended and proved to

be separately “superior to any single European frigate of the usual

dimensions” in speed, manœuvering, and fighting power, in proportion to

their weight of ordnance. Three of them (_Constellation_, _Congress_,

and _Chesapeake_) mounted thirty-six guns, and three (_United

States_, _President_, and _Constitution_) forty-four guns each—mainly

24-pounders; and all gave so good an account of themselves, as ships,

that the high compliment was paid us of their being carefully imitated

by foreign naval constructors.

This is not a naval history, so that I am not concerned to tell of all

the glorious or inglorious work of the navies of Europe in obtaining

and holding, or failing to get and keep, trade routes open and

territorial possessions intact in various parts of the world. During

the seventeenth and eighteenth and far into the nineteenth century,

there was no time when some nations were not fighting on the sea if not

on land; and much of the time _all_ the maritime nations were hard at

it, turning their guns to-day on the allies of yesterday, and fighting

shoulder to shoulder with them the next season against some friend of

the year before.

A few of the most famous battles ought to be spoken of, however, as

illustrating the methods and development of naval warfare, and because

we now recognize that their consequences were far-reaching.

In the wars which broke out toward the close of the eighteenth century

due to Napoleon’s ambition to rule the world, Great Britain found

herself engaged in a struggle not only with France, but really with

the whole world, for the command of the seas that washed the western

coast of Europe. The only sign of friendship to England from the Baltic

to Gibraltar was in the doubtful neutrality of Portugal. England had

to abandon the Mediterranean, and devote herself to facing the allied

powers against her outside the Gates of Hercules as best she could.

In 1797 she made a beginning by crushing a fleet of Dutch ships off

Camperdown (Holland), and a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent; but,

though both were great battles, neither had any lasting effect; and

in spite of them Napoleon planned his celebrated invasion of England

for the following year, supposing that by his expedition to Egypt,

threatening England’s East Indian possessions, he would draw away so

much of the British navy that he and his allies could put an army

across the English Channel unhindered. I need not say that his invasion

of England never was even attempted; but for a time his fleet did hold

command of the Mediterranean—a state of things to which an end was put

by England’s most famous naval hero, Horatio Nelson.

A long series of brilliant exploits had given Nelson fame, and the

vigorous accounts of them he used to send home helped his great

popularity. A large part of his service had been in American waters.

In 1798 Nelson was a rear-admiral, and was sent to the Mediterranean

after the French fleet, which, having convoyed Napoleon’s army to

its landing at Alexandria, was ready for new operations. It is

characteristic of the slow and almost useless methods of gaining

intelligence in those days, that from early June to the end of July

Nelson searched for this flotilla, and was unable to get more news of

it than an occasional rumor that it had been at some place or other

days or weeks before. The French knew no more as to the movements of

their pursuers, yet the fleets were twice within a few miles of each

other. This was Nelson’s first independent command, and his patience

and nerves were nearly worn out by anxiety.

[Illustration: WHEN DECATUR WAS A MIDSHIPMAN.]

At last, on the first day of August, the English almost stumbled on the

French at anchor in the Bay of Aboukir, among the mouths of the Nile,

between Alexandria and Rosetta—a shallow roadstead full of shoals and

rocks, for which Nelson had neither chart nor pilot.

In the interior of this bay lay the Napoleonic squadron, under Admiral

Brueys, in such fancied security that a large part of the crews was

ashore, and some of the ships unprepared for a battle when the British

appeared. It was anchored in line of battle, however, and consisted

of thirteen ships of the line, the central one being the flagship

_Orient_, having 120 guns, and probably the largest and most complete

war-ship then afloat. On each side of her were the _Franklin_ and

the _Tonnant_, of 80 guns each, and none of the others were greatly

inferior.

The British had also thirteen ships, but none was the equal of the

best French, and one of them did not engage in the attack at all.

Knowing nothing of the harbor, and aware that all his ships drew

much water,—perhaps thirty feet,—Nelson had to make a long and very

cautious detour, throwing the lead every moment and feeling his way

in. It was then late in the afternoon, and half-past six before the

_Goliath_, leading the column, got near enough to attract the French

fire. Replying, but not halting, the _Goliath_, followed closely by the

_Zealous_ and _Orion_, made for the head of the line, and then with

a daring unrivaled, for there was barely enough water to float their

keels, these ships slowly turned around the foremost French vessel and

dropped their anchors in the rear of the enemy’s line. The other ships,

as they came up, ranged alongside the front of the French, and the

deepening twilight resounded with such a roar of broadsides as never

will be heard again.

In the darkness and smoke an English seventy-four, the _Bellerophon_,

had engaged the monstrous _Orient_, and in a short time had been

crushed; all her masts were swept out of her, two hundred of her people

were killed and wounded, and she drifted out of action. But nearly the

same fate had by that time overtaken the French _Guerrière_, for the

_Theseus_ had coolly placed herself where she could rake the anchored

ship and tear her to pieces. The moment the _Bellerophon_ drifted

off, however, her place was taken by two newly arrived frigates, and

the _Orient_ presently found herself the target of three ships which

slowly but surely were cutting her to pieces in spite of her tremendous

resistance. Her admiral had been killed on her deck, where half her

officers and men lay dead or wounded, when it was suddenly seen that

she was on fire, and the whole battle was instinctively suspended to

watch the magnificent spectacle, save where some still poured in shot

and shell to prevent the French crew from extinguishing the flames.

Powerless either to save their ship or launch their boats, the remnant

of the _Orient’s_ crew could only fling themselves into the water and

trust to the mingled boats of friends and foes to pick them up. The

ships nearest slipped their cables, and tried to edge away out of

danger as the flames enveloped the towering masts, burning with amazing

fierceness in the tarred rigging and lighting up the desert for miles

inland, while the hull became a furnace. Suddenly, at a quarter before

ten, a volcano-like explosion tore the glowing old battle-ship asunder,

a torrent of burning fragments was hurled aloft,—with how many dead

heroes, no one knows,—and double darkness closed over the appalling

scene. Then the black waves were lighted anew by the flash of cannon

and musketry, and the battle went on until daylight before the last of

the French vessels had been conquered, while two of them had managed

to steal away. Of the other eleven one had been burned and sunk, three

had gone ashore, where one burned, and the remainder had been crushed

into surrendering. The English did not lose a single vessel, for even

the dismantled _Bellerophon_ could float, and their loss in men was far

less than that of the French.

[Illustration:

DRAWN BY WARREN SHEPPARD.

THE “THESEUS” ATTACKING THE “GUERRIÈRE.”]

Historians tell us that this victory was the grandest naval success

on record. Nelson himself said that victory was too weak a term—it

was a catastrophe. It put an end at once to Napoleon’s campaign in

Egypt, and to all his designs against India. It gave the command of the

Mediterranean to England, emboldened Turkey and Russia to recover the

Ionian Islands, gave Naples a chance to assert herself, and aroused

Austria and Russia to resist by armies Napoleon’s aggressions, so

that from this battle dates his downfall. Its influence soon reached

the United States, and caused it to break through its neutrality

and begin upon the sea that naval war with France of which we hear

very little nowadays, but which gave to our own naval record such

glorious incidents as Truxton’s battles in the _Constellation_ with

_L’Insurgente_ and _La Vengeance_, and Captain Little’s capture, in the

corvette _Boston_, of the French sloop-of-war _Le Berceau_.

Nelson remained in the Mediterranean for some years, by no means idle,

and then did service of extraordinary value elsewhere, as at the battle

of Copenhagen, which in a single remarkable conflict put an end to

a northern conspiracy against England, and saved her a vast deal of

trouble; but his final service was the most momentous of all, at any

rate for the fortunes of Great Britain alone, and this was the winning

of the battle of Trafalgar.

In 1805 Napoleon had prepared for another grand invasion of England,

and with great skill had gathered a fleet of allied French and Spanish

vessels, which was to protect and coöperate with the strong army he

proposed to land along the Kentish shores. This fleet was commanded by

Admiral Villeneuve, and assembled at Cadiz, where, in October, 1805,

it was being watched by an English fleet, commanded by Nelson and

Collingwood, consisting of thirty-three ships of the line; twenty-seven

of these were present when, on the morning of the 21st, the allies,

twenty-nine battle-ships strong, came sailing out, hoping to avoid

battle if possible. This, Nelson was resolved, should not happen; and

dividing his forces into two columns, he made at them in such a way as

to strike their line (then off Cape Trafalgar) in the middle of its

crescent. The wind was very light, and an hour or more elapsed before

even the heads of the line struck the enemy, so that there was plenty

of time to make every preparation, and there was constant instruction

by signaling from Nelson’s flagship _Victory_. Then at the last moment,

when the first gun was ready to be fired, there rose upon the signal

halyards of the _Victory_ the message that, received with ringing

cheers, has been an inspiration to patriots the world around ever since

since—

ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY.

A few moments later Collingwood in the _Royal Sovereign_, and Nelson

in the _Victory_, were in the thick of the foreign fleet, which

awaited them in disorderly array, but closed about these two, bent

upon destroying them if possible before any others could come up. The

fury of the duels that ensued, where ships were mixed in disorder, and

sometimes three or four against one, passes adequate description. None,

perhaps, fared worse than the _Belle Isle_, a large English two-decker

that was the first to reach the scene after the _Royal Sovereign_, and

to draw off some of the fire that threatened to pulverize Collingwood’s

ship.

[Illustration:

England expects every man will do his D U T Y

DRAWN FROM THE MODEL IN THE GREENWICH MUSEUM.

NELSON’S SIGNAL.]

The wreckage and suffering on other ships were almost as great. The

very first broadside of the _Royal Sovereign_, taking the _Santa Ana_,

struck down 400 out of the 1000 persons aboard; and the _Sovereign_

herself soon lost every mast. The _Santissima Trinidada_, a Spanish

four-decker, and the largest ship then afloat, was reduced to a wreck,

and a dozen others lost a part or all of their masts. As for the

_Victory_, she was always in the thick of it, receiving at one time the

concentrated fire of seven hostile battle-ships, yet was not too much

disabled to be manœuvered. Her captain’s aim was to engage directly

with the French flagship _Bucentaure_, but she was closely attended

by three other large ships, and difficult to reach. Nevertheless, the

_Victory_ finally got across her stern, and from a few yards distance

poured in a broadside which, sweeping the whole length of her interior,

dismounted twenty guns, and killed and wounded 400 men. As she passed

on, returning the fire of the other vessels near by, she was closely

followed by the _Temeraire_, the second English ship, which had already

become almost unmanageable; and a lifting of the smoke showed her

smashing a little French frigate, the _Redoubtable_, which, by and by,

was captured after almost every man had been killed, and she was in a

sinking condition. The astonishing resistance of this little vessel,

and the damage she did by soldiers with muskets crowded in her tops

and firing down upon the decks of the English ships, form one of the

most noteworthy incidents of naval history; and it is not too much to

say that she inflicted upon Great Britain as great harm as all the

rest of the allies put together, for it was a musket-ball from the

mizzentop of the _Redoubtable_ that struck down, early in the action,

the great Nelson himself. He seemed to have had a feeling, even before

leaving England, that he would not survive this campaign, and knew his

wound was mortal the instant it was received. He was carried below,

and remained alive and conscious about three hours, eagerly listening

to reports of the progress of the fight, and rejoicing at last in a

knowledge of victory. His last words, murmured again and again, with

his failing breath, seemed an answer to his signaled injunction, for

they were: “_Thank God I have done my duty._”

Other men [writes Captain Mahan] have died in the hour of victory,

but to no other has victory so singular and so signal stamped the

fulfilment and completion of a great life’s work. “Finis coronat

opus” has of no man been more true than of Nelson. Results momentous

and stupendous were to flow from the annihilation of all sea power

except that of Great Britain, which was Nelson’s great achievement;

but his part was done when Trafalgar was fought, and his death in the

moment of completed success has obtained for that superb victory an

immortality of fame which even its own grandeur could scarcely have

insured.

No such fleet actions as this ever occurred in North American waters

in the time of the “old navy,” though there was plenty of cruising

and fighting up and down the coast and in the West Indies. The United

States had made its new flag respected before the end of the eighteenth

century, but it was done mainly in European waters, where that

marvelous captain, Paul Jones, had been defying enemies to the point of

rashness.

Paul Jones was the first man to hoist our national ensign (the

rattlesnake flag) on an American ship, and again the first to hoist

the stars and stripes, and was the ranking officer of the continental

navy. He records that “in the Revolution he had twenty-three battles

and solemn rencounters by sea; made seven descents in Britain and her

colonies; took of her navy two ships of equal and two of far superior

force,” and so on. It is true that he alone of his day steadfastly

refused to acknowledge England’s supremacy of the seas; that the flag

of the United States alone was never struck to Great Britain except

under force of honorable combat; and that on the ships commanded by

Paul Jones it was never struck at all!

Every Yankee school-boy knows of the terrible fight of the crazy old

sloop-of-war _Bon Homme Richard_ against the _Serapis_, a new English

50-gun frigate in the North Sea, in which a sinking and burning and

shot-riddled vessel, able after the first broadside to bring only

three or four small guns into practice, conquered and captured her

twice-greater antagonist. It is not a story one can tell in a few

words, but it was a deed that is regarded in naval annals as among the

most extraordinary in the history of the world, and it won for the new

republic a credit in Europe that was of vast benefit to it and all its

wandering citizens.

Great Britain, though humiliated, had not been seriously hurt by the

loss of two or three ships out of her six hundred, and she still tried

to enforce against the rising naval power on the west side of the

Atlantic the subservience which she received along its eastern shores.

It took the form of asserting her right to stop and board any American

vessel, governmental or private, and seize and impress into her own

service any British subject found serving in the crew. This always met

with protest and resistance, and at last became so galling that in 1812

the United States declared war against Great Britain’s might rather

than continue to submit to it.

[Illustration:

_Drawn from Life by S. DeKoster Decʳ.8 1800, Engraved by Jd. Stow._

BARON NELSON OF THE NILE.]

This might gradually overcame us, and British fleets sailed up and down

our coasts unhindered, but not until the enemy had been surprised by

many harder knocks than they anticipated, and had learned one thing for

certain,—that while man for man the Yankees were equally good seamen

and fighters, they were better ship-builders, and could teach lessons

in that art which their enemies were not above learning: and finally we

won by sheer force of victories at sea.

I have already spoken of the six frigates which were used in that war,

as admittedly the best of their kind in the world. Except the unlucky

_Chesapeake_, which was rashly carried unprepared into the fatal action

against the _Shannon_, where Lawrence lost his life, but won undying

fame in the memory of his countrymen by his “Don’t give up the ship,”

all did glorious work. Thus, the _United States_ under Decatur reduced

to a wreck off Madeira, and brought as a prize to New York, the British

44-gun frigate _Macedonian_ in October, 1812, itself remaining almost

uninjured,—a victory due to superior seamanship and gunnery.

The same skill, using a ship of superior sailing power, accounted

largely for the splendid victory of the United States sloop-of-war

_Wasp_ (18 guns), a week earlier, near Bermuda, in an encounter with

the British sloop _Frolic_ (19 guns), where in three quarters of an

hour the _Frolic_ was totally dismasted and reduced to a rolling

wreck, with ninety killed or wounded out of a crew of one hundred and

ten, while the _Wasp’s_ loss was only ten. A British seventy-four

then came up and captured both the victor and her prize; but eighteen

months later a second _Wasp_, by reason of her better gunnery, cut to

pieces at different times two other ships with comparatively small

injury to herself. Nor could the _President_ have given so good an

account of herself in her unfortunate encounter with the _Belvidera_,

and again when chased and finally captured by the squadron led by the

_Endymion_, had not her sailing qualities and gunnery been of so high

an order—qualities which also distinguished the American fleets on Lake

Erie and Lake Champlain.

[Illustration: THE “FROLIC” REDUCED TO A WRECK BY THE FIRST “WASP”

(1812).]

But the honors of that brilliant naval war belonged chiefly, after all,

to the _Constitution_—“Old Ironsides,” as the people loved to call

her,—which is enshrined in the history and hearts of the United States

as Nelson’s _Victory_ is in those of Great Britain.

The _Constitution_ was the finest, perhaps, of the United States

frigates, and a favorite ship with commanders, yet her fame began with

her success in running away, Broke’s British squadron chasing her three

nights and two days, only to lose her after all. The winds were so

light that she sent out her boats to help the sails urge her forward.

It was only a few days after that (August 19, 1812) that Commodore

Isaac Hull, cruising in search of the British vessel _Guerrière_ (the

same that had been captured from the French in the battle of the Nile,

and again dismasted at Trafalgar), overhauled her off the coast of

Newfoundland. The London newspapers had not only been sneering at the

_Constitution_ as “a bundle of pine boards sailing under a bit of

striped bunting,” but Captain Dacres had sent a boastful challenge

to Hull to meet him and see what would happen. The vessels, though

nominally of different rate, were actually in close equality, and

both crews were eager for a fair fight. It was already well along in

the afternoon, and the sea was rough, but Hull would not reply to the

enemy’s fire until he was within pistol-shot, then his broadside opened.

“Fifteen minutes after the contest began,” to quote Lossing’s lively

account, “the mizzenmast of the _Guerrière_ was shot away, her

mainyard was in slings, and her hull, spars, sails, and rigging were

torn to pieces. By a skilful movement, the _Constitution_ now fell

foul of her foe, her bowsprit running into the larboard quarter of

her antagonist. The cabin of the _Constitution_ was set on fire by

the explosion of the forward guns of the _Guerrière_, but the flames

were soon extinguished. Both parties attempted to board, while the

roar of the great guns was terrific. The sea was rolling heavily,

and would not permit a safe passage from one vessel to the other.

At length the _Constitution_ became disentangled, and shot ahead of

the _Guerrière_, when the mainmast of the latter, shattered into

weakness, fell into the sea. The _Guerrière_, shivered and shorn,

rolled like a log in the trough of the billows. Hull sent his

compliments to Captain Dacres, and inquired whether he had struck

his flag. Dacres, who was a ‘jolly tar,’ looking up and down at the

stumps of his masts, coolly and dryly replied: ‘Well, I don’t know.

Our mizzenmast is gone, our mainmast is gone,—upon the whole you may

say we _have_ struck our flag.’”

Too completely wrecked to be of any further use, the historic old ship

was set on fire and blown up, and so ended her pride and her story.

Hull lost only fourteen men killed and wounded, while the British lost

seventy, dead, and all the survivors prisoners. This calamity, on the

heels of similar successes elsewhere for the “bit of striped bunting,”

spread consternation throughout Great Britain not only, but in the

other European monarchies, for it presaged the rise of a new power to

be reckoned with, where novel and superior instruments and methods of

warfare opposed uncalculated forces to the old régime.

This conviction was enforced upon Europe anew only four months later

by the _Constitution_ overtaking and crushing in West Indian waters

the 38-gun frigate _Java_, which also was burned to the water’s edge,

because the wreck was not worth saving; and again the British loss was

many times greater than the American. Captain William Bainbridge, who

had distinguished himself in the Mediterranean, was her commander.

[Illustration: THE “CONSTITUTION” CHASED BY CAPTAIN BROKE’S SQUADRON

The ports on the upper deck aft were roughly cut to meet the emergency.

The sailors in the rigging threw water from buckets upon the sails to

make them hold better the faint breeze, and below hose pipe was used to

the same purpose. During the three days’ chase boats were sent out to

tow, and kedge-anchors were used to warp the ship forward.]

Various successes marked her career for the next two years, until,

under the command of Captain Charles Stewart, she had her memorable

adventure off Madeira, in which she engaged with the two British ships

_Cyane_, thirty-six guns, and _Levant_, eighteen guns, and captured

both, with a loss of only three men killed and twelve wounded.

Stewart set sail with his prizes and prisoners for Porto Praya,

whence he purposed sending his prisoners to New York in a captured

merchantman. Reaching there on March 10th, he was next day busy at

these arrangements, when the topsails of several men-of-war were seen

entering the harbor through the prevailing fog. Having no trust that,

if these were British, their commanders would respect the courtesies

of a weak neutral port, Stewart felt that his only chance was to try to

run away in the fog, and made immediate preparations to do so, sending

word to the _Levant_ and _Cyane_ to follow. Being discovered by the

strangers—three large British frigates—at the outlet of the harbor,

their escape immediately became a question of seamanship and sailing.

Here the Americans showed their superiority, and effectually dodging

both the ships and the cannon-balls of the pursuers, the _Levant_ got

back under the protection of the guns of the fort at Porto Praya, while

the _Constitution_ and _Levant_ fairly outsailed the frigates and

escaped.

In 1830 brave Old Ironsides was condemned as worn out, and ordered

to be sold. But, as a similar sad fate overtaking the “Fighting

_Temeraire_” had been made the occasion of an immortal painting

by Turner, and so, perhaps, had caused Nelson’s still more famous

battle-ship _Victory_ to be preserved in the harbor of Portsmouth

as a shrine of naval inspiration, so the obloquy that menaced the

_Constitution_ now fired the heart of a young poet to write a

passionate appeal to patriotism. Who does not know Dr. Holmes’s ringing

stanzas?—

Oh, better that her shattered hulk

Should sink beneath the wave;

Her thunders shook the mighty deep,

And there should be her grave.

Nail to the mast her holy flag,

Set every threadbare sail,

And give her to the God of Storms,

The lightning and the gale!

[Illustration: HOMEWARD BOUND.]

The country caught the spirit, and such a cry of protest went up that

the vandalism was stayed, and Old Ironsides was again repaired—hardly

anything but her ornaments was now left of the original structure—and

took several cruises, one of which was in carrying wheat to

famine-stricken Ireland. Later she was used as a school-ship, but

finally became worthless even for that, and in 1895 the question

arose whether she should be broken up at the Brooklyn navy-yard or

towed around to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there laid up in a

line with the _Macedonian_ and a few other ancient hulks that were

rotting quietly away in honorable age, and have now wholly disappeared.

Sentiment dictated the latter course, and, with a crew aboard, prepared

to take to their boats at a moment’s notice, the leaking and crazy old

warrior, stately even yet, and sadly saluted by every fort and vessel

she passed, crept around to her last berth at Kittery Point. She is the

last and the most glorious representative of the “old navy.”

[Illustration: TYPES OF BATTLE-SHIPS—1890 AND 1800.]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] An example of the so-called forty-bank galley is illustrated, so

far as its forward end will show it, in the picture of the ship of

Ptolemy Philopator, on page 43. The forty “banks” appear to be groups

of oars in a few tiers.

[5] Three other terms of similar sound need explanation. The _galiot_

was a small, fast galley of the Levant. The _gallivat_ was a large,

swift, two-masted, armed sail-boat used by Malay pirates. The _galleon_

was any Spanish ship sailing to and from the Spanish main; hence,

especially a treasure-ship.

[6] It was known later as the Invincible Armada.

CHAPTER VI

(_Continued_)

WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES

PART II—THE PRESENT ERA OF STEAM AND STEEL

The introduction of steam made little difference in naval affairs at

first, so far as either strategy or tactics are concerned, although it

changed the conditions of naval action in two principal ways and in

many minor ones. Ships could now, like the early galleys, be placed

in any position the commander pleased, and, unlike galleys, this

effort could be sustained a long time, for engines do not tire out

like human arms. On the other hand, ships propelled by steam needed to

return to port at frequent intervals to obtain coal, and naval powers

found it necessary to provide, either by possession or treaty, safe

coaling-stations in various parts of the world for the use of their

cruising fleets.

The first steam war-ships were naturally fitted with side

paddle-wheels; but as soon as the screw-propeller came into use the

navy was quick to adopt it. “By its use the whole motive power could

be protected by being placed below the water-line. It interfered much

less than the paddle with the efficiency and handiness of the vessel

under sail alone, and it enabled ships to be kept generally under

sail. Great importance was attached to this, as the handling of a ship

under sail was justly thought an invaluable means of training both

officers and men in ready resource, prompt action, and self-reliance.”

For this reason masts and sails were retained long after they were

admitted to be detrimental to the fighting qualities of battle-ships.

Naval reformers had to wait until the last generation of “old salts,”

trained on “blue water,” had died off, and their scornful sneers at

“tea-kettle” seamanship had been silenced in the only way possible,

before they could persuade governments to build or men to serve in

the new style of vessels. In truth, the transition from the fighting

machinery and methods that prevailed until, say, the bombardment of

Acre, in 1840, to those that decided the inferiority of China in her

struggles with Japan at the Yalu and elsewhere, was rapid enough to

make even a sea-dog dizzy.

[Illustration: THE “KEARSARGE” GETTING INTO POSITION TO RAKE THE

“ALABAMA” AT THE CLOSE OF THE COMBAT.]

Excellent types of the war-steamers, intermediate between the old two-

and three-deckers and the sailless “ironclads” that followed, were

those two actors in that most glorious sea-fight of the American Civil

War—the _Kearsarge_ and _Alabama_.

In this great fight, which took place a few miles off the harbor of

Cherbourg, France, one beautiful summer Sunday (June 19th) in 1864,

much the same tactics prevailed as in any one of the earlier ocean

duels. As the _Alabama_ came on she began firing the two-hundred-pound

pivot-rifle forward, which was her main gun, while the _Kearsarge_ was

yet a mile away. The latter waited a little before replying, but only a

few moments elapsed before both were near enough and hard at it, each

doing its best to get a position ahead of its antagonist for raking,—a

disadvantage which the other steadily avoided; and this caused them

to follow one another about in advancing circles, of which seven were

described before the end came.

We have a story of the battle as seen from the deck of the _Kearsarge_,

written by her surgeon, who had little to do except observe the

conflict.

The _Kearsarge_ gunners [he tells us] had been cautioned against

firing without direct aim, and had been advised to point the heavy

guns below rather than above the water-line, and to clear the deck

of the enemy with the lighter ones. Though subjected to an incessant

storm of shot and shell, they kept their stations and obeyed

instructions.

The effect upon the enemy was readily perceived, and nothing could

restrain the enthusiasm of our men. Cheer succeeded cheer; caps were

thrown in the air or overboard; jackets were discarded; sanguine of

victory, the men were shouting as each projectile took effect: “That

is a good one!” “Down, boys!” “Give her another like the last!” “Now

we have her!” and so on, cheering and shouting to the end.

After exposure to an uninterrupted cannonade for eighteen minutes

without casualties, a sixty-eight-pounder Blakely shell passed

through the starboard bulwarks below the main rigging, exploded

upon the quarterdeck, and wounded three of the crew of the after

pivot-gun. With these exceptions, not an officer or man received

serious injury. The three unfortunates were speedily taken below,

and so quietly was the act done, that at the termination of the

fight a large number of the men were unaware that any of their

comrades were wounded. Two shots entered the ports occupied by the

thirty-twos, where several men were stationed, one taking effect in

the hammock-netting, the other going through the opposite port, yet

none were hit. A shell exploded in the hammock-netting and set the

ship on fire; the alarm calling for fire-quarters was sounded, and

men detailed for such an emergency put out the fire, while the rest

stayed at the guns.

The _Kearsarge_ concentrated her fire and poured in the eleven-inch

shells with deadly effect. One penetrated the coal-bunker of the

_Alabama_, and a dense cloud of coal-dust arose. Others struck near

the water-line between the main and mizzen masts, exploded within

board, or passing through burst beyond. Crippled and torn, the

_Alabama_ moved less quickly and began to settle by the stern, yet

did not slacken her fire, but returned successive broadsides without

disastrous result to us.

Captain Semmes witnessed the havoc made by the shells, especially by

those of our after pivot-gun, and offered a reward for its silence.

Soon his battery was turned upon this particular offending gun

for the purpose of silencing it. It was in vain, for the work of

destruction went on. We had completed the seventh rotation on the

circular track and begun the eighth; the _Alabama_, now settling,

sought to escape by setting all available sail (fore-trysail and two

jibs), left the circle, amid a shower of shot and shell, and headed

for the French waters; but to no purpose. In winding the _Alabama_

presented the port battery with only two guns bearing, and showed

gaping sides through which the water washed. The _Kearsarge_ pursued,

keeping on a line nearer the shore, and with a few well-directed

shots hastened the sinking condition. Then the _Alabama_ was at our

mercy. Thus ended the fight after one hour and two minutes.

One incident of this battle much talked of at the time, and given as

an excuse for their defeat by the Confederates (though without good

reason), was the fact that the waist of the _Kearsarge_, opposite the

engines, was protected by anchor-chains, hung in close festoons on the

outside of the ship, and kept in place and concealed by a boxing of

thin boards. This, however, was not the first attempt at protecting

ships by armor, which had now become necessary to meet successfully

the better guns and projectiles that year by year were increased in

penetrative power. New powders and explosives were constantly being

invented also, each more effective than the preceding; and as these

were not only used in guns but applied to the filling of shells, these

bursting missiles for a time almost displaced solid shot.

Along with this the discovery and perfection of the Bessemer and

other processes of making steel, and methods of adapting rifling to

great cannon, produced a rapid and varied increase in size and an

improvement in quality in the guns supplied to ships as well as in

those used upon shore.

Against these new weapons the old “wooden walls” were of no avail. Oak

and teak, however sound and thick, failed to turn aside the conical

projectiles as they had the old round shot and shell. The ponderous

missiles would crash clear through, smashing everything in their path,

and sending showers of death-dealing splinters right and left. The navy

had to protect itself by a revival of the armor with which knights of

the middle ages guarded against arrows and javelins and sword-points.

By and by, when guns and bullets came, the knights thickened their

armor in an attempt to resist these new missiles, until at last it

reached a weight too great to be carried, and the whole cumbrous

panoply had to be laid aside, and knightly tactics altogether changed.

Many persons believe that this history will be repeated in the case

of the sea-warriors of the world, which, within the memory of many a

grizzled admiral, have changed from buoyant and beautiful ships to grim

and shapeless fortresses afloat.

[Illustration:

THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE “MERRIMAC” BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION INTO

AN IRONCLAD.

Compare with illustration on page 139.]

The Americans, fearless of sea-traditions, were the first to propose

armor for ships, but the French first practically applied it, building

several “floating batteries,” covered with iron 4¾ inches thick, in

1855. The English copied them, in somewhat more ship-shape form; and

then the French began boldly to sheathe some of their frigates with

iron plates and call them “ironclads.” By this time iron hulls had

begun to be used commonly in the British merchant service, but of

course the men-of-war’s men, the slowest class of persons on earth

to accept any change, insisted that iron would by no means do for

war-ships. Nevertheless a few progressive spirits persuaded their

high-mightinesses, the Lords of the Admiralty, to try an experiment

in building one, and, in 1860, the first iron war-ship was launched

and named _Warrior_, while all the old salts wagged their heads and

predicted the end of “Britannia rules the waves,” until there wasn’t a

really _jolly_ tar to be found from Penolar Point to Pentland Firth.

To a certain extent these hardy old growlers were right, though their

idea of a remedy was wrong. It proved a failure to build old-style

battle-ships of iron or even of steel, or to coat them all over with

armor, even when greatly thickened. Not only were they slow and

somewhat unmanageable, but by the time one of them had been built with

thicker walls than its latest rival, somebody had invented artillery

whose projectiles would penetrate it. Ships that are “ship-shape,”

that is, possess masts and sails, but are constructed wholly of iron

or steel, and more or less heavily armored, have survived, and will

always be a part of the world’s navies, no doubt, but their uses will

be subsidiary to heavy fighting; and with the disappearance of the

wooden sailing line-of-battle ship in the Crimean war and of the iron

war-steamer a quarter of a century later, all traditions of the “old

navy” were ended—traditions that went back to the days of Drake.

But who could have foreseen that this swift and momentous upsetting

should come about, not through the efforts of the great sea powers of

Europe,—the giants who had been struggling for the control of the ocean

for three hundred years,—but from the brain and purse of landsmen in a

country of the New World not taken into account as a naval power at all.

You need not be told that it was Ericsson’s invention and Henry

Grinnell’s building and Lieutenant Worden’s courageous fighting of the

little _Monitor_ in Hampton Roads, on that fair March Sunday in 1862,

that brought about this change. When her turret—the “cheese-box on a

raft”—successfully withstood the assault of that heavily armed floating

battery, the _Merrimac_ (or _Virginia_), all the war-ships of the world

felt themselves beaten, too, and wise seamen saw that they must prepare

to face a new foe.

[Illustration: SIDE ELEVATION AND DECK-PLAN OF THE “MONITOR.”]

At once all maritime governments began to build fighting-vessels which

were castles of steel afloat, and smaller ships for various services

that more resembled a Nootka war-canoe in outline than one of the

frigates that used to do their work. So shapeless were they that a

new term had to be used, and we began to call them _cruisers_. All

war-ships, in fact, are now classified by their work, not by their

shape or size or rig.

First, fewest, and heaviest are the harbor-defense vessels—monitors and

massively walled floating batteries, intended to remain in harbors, or

close to the coast, as movable forts.

Second, battle-ships—the strongest, most thickly armored, heavily armed

style of ships that can be made, and still be able to go to sea; but

these are not expected to leave their home ports for a long time, nor

to go to any great distance unless compelled to do so in actual war.

Third, cruisers. These take the place of the old-fashioned lesser

fighting-ships, the seventy-fours, frigates, corvettes, and sloops, and

vary greatly in size, model, speed, and power of armament.

Fourth, small, swift, strongly armed but lightly armored, torpedo-boat

chasers, small gunboats for use in rivers and shallow coastal waters,

despatch-boats, dynamite-cruisers, such as our American _Vesuvius_,

tow-boats, and similar minor craft—the run-abouts of the naval service.

Fifth, torpedo-boats.

The material of all these is steel. Wood is no longer permitted even in

the fittings of their cabins, because wood will splinter and burn.

The great hull of a modern battle-ship, as described by Lieutenant S.

A. Staunton, U. S. N., which supports and carries the vast weights of

machinery, guns, and armor, aggregating perhaps more than ten thousand

tons, is built of plates of rolled steel, varying from 1⅜ inches thick

at the keel to ¾ inch at the water-line. These are closely jointed and

fitted, and bound together with straps, angle-irons, and brackets, so

as to make a strong unyielding structure braced in all directions.

Then, through the central part of the ship, at least, vertical plates

are erected upon the frame and outside plating, which bear a second

or inner bottom, thus forming the “double bottom” as high as the

water-line, having the space between the inner and outer sheathing

separated into a multitude of small water-tight cells, so that an

injury to the outside hull would not cause the vessel to leak unless

the inner bottom were also punctured.

Throughout the whole length of the vessel, reaching from side to

side and from the keel to the main deck, are many steel bulkheads,

sufficiently strong to resist the pressure of the water, and

communicating only by water-tight doors, so that even were an accident,

such as a collision or running upon a rock, or an enemy’s shell, to

open a hole through both bottoms, the ship would still float, because

the inflowing water would be confined to a single compartment, leaving

the rest of the ship dry and buoyant. Nothing less than the blow of a

ram, smashing through everything and throwing several compartments

into one, would be likely to sink such a ship, and this is one reason

why ramming has again become prominent in naval tactics.

[Illustration: THE FIRST SEA-FIGHT OF MODERN WAR-SHIPS.

The Peruvian turret-ship “Huascar” between the fire of the Chilean

ironclads “Almirante Cochrane” and “Blanco Encalada,” October 8, 1879.]

But while safety from sinking is thus reasonably assured, this is more

a precaution of seaworthiness against the accidents of storms than

toward injuries receivable in battle. Passenger and freight steamers

now have the double bottoms and water-tight compartments, and the best

of these have arrangements for mounting light but powerful guns upon

their decks, so that they may be utilized by the government in a war

emergency as light cruisers, as armed transports, as swift scouts, or

in other highly important ways; they will then be coated with a light

protective armor, but will not be expected to engage in a contest with

a real fighting-vessel.

The idea of armor-plate is, as has been said, scarcely half a

century old, and the moment it was put on (amid the jeers of the old

line-of-battle tars, who thought they had done all that the dignity

of the profession permitted when they arranged their rolled-up

hammocks along the bulwarks to catch musket-balls, and spread nettings

to prevent somewhat the flight of splinters) ingenious men began to

improve their powder and strengthen their guns to overcome the new

defenses. To meet these improvements armor has been increased and

perfected, until now war-vessels are no longer “ships” in any proper

sense of the word, but floating fortresses of steel, the names of whose

defensive parts, even, have been borrowed from land fortifications,

such as _turret_ and _barbette_.

[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “MASSACHUSETTS.”]

A limit to this defensive strength is marked in two directions.

First, by the size it is possible to make a vessel, and still keep

her seaworthy and manageable; and, second, by the weight of armor

such a vessel can carry, in addition to the weight of the framework,

machinery, guns, and other things necessary. These limits seemed to be

reached some time ago in some of the monstrous battle-ships built in

Europe, and when it was found that even while they were in construction

rifled guns had been invented that would drive their projectiles

through the thickest wall of wrought-iron or steel that these or any

other vessels could carry, naval constructors began to despair of

keeping ahead of the gun-makers, and there was even talk of abandoning

armor altogether, and fighting battles out with bared breasts as we

used to do.

The percentage of weight which may be allotted to armor in the design

of a ship limits the area which can be wholly protected, but often

permits the partial protection of other areas of less importance to

her vitality and destructive force. Motive power, steering-gear,

and magazines stand first upon the list of those features demanding

complete protection.... The heavy shells from an enemy’s guns may do

many other forms of injury besides sinking a vessel and disabling her

crew. They may strike and disable her engines, or pierce her boilers,

causing disastrous explosions. They may injure her steering-gear,

destroy the mechanism which controls her turrets and guns, or injure

the guns themselves and their carriages. In every feature of offense

which renders her a formidable and dangerous foe—her speed, her

mobility, the fire of her guns—a man-of-war is dangerously vulnerable

unless she be protected by armor, unless the enemy’s shot be rejected

by plates which it cannot penetrate.

Then came an invention that put a new face upon the matter,—the

surface-hardening of plates, composed of a mixture of nickel with

steel,—which, from one of its perfectors, is known as “Harveyizing” it.

Other processes also are known. This gave to the surface of the metal

such a flinty hardness that the heaviest and most highly tempered steel

projectiles would almost invariably break to pieces when they struck

it—the same projectiles that were able to punch a hole clear through a

target-plate of ordinary wrought-steel twenty-two inches thick!

Plates thus surface-hardened are now made in Europe, and as well, if

not better, in the United States, where we have learned and taught the

rest of the world how to make them by rolling—a much better, as well as

cheaper, process than the former method of hammering them into shape.

It was found that with these hard-surfaced plates much less thickness

was required to contend successfully with the great guns opposed to

them than had been the case before; and the great saving of weight

enabled a much larger extent of armor to be borne upon a ship than was

formerly possible, so arranged as to protect all her hull and vital

parts.

Thus, in a typical modern battle-ship, say 360 feet long, 72

feet broad, and drawing 24 feet of water, having an armor of

surface-hardened nickel-steel, this armor is thus disposed: amidships,

and a quarter of her length behind the point of the prow, is built up a

semicircular “barbette,” or wall, of the thickest armor, behind which

is a “turret,” moving to the right or left through an arc equal to half

the horizon, no higher than necessary to cover and work the guns, and

having its motor mechanism fully protected by the barbette. This is the

forward turret—a swinging fort, carrying with it, as it turns, two of

the heaviest guns in the ship.

[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “INDIANA.”]

Half-way from the center to the stern stands the after turret and its

barbette, similarly built of the strongest armor,—ten to twelve inches

thick,—and sweeping with its guns half the horizon.

From a point just in front of the forward barbette two walls of the

heaviest possible armor, reaching vertically from four and a half feet

below the water-line (loaded) to three feet above it, extend diagonally

backward to the sides of the ship, then continue along its side in a

“belt” to points opposite the after barbette, where they bend inward

as before and meet just aft of the after barbette; but hereafter the

increased efficiency of armor, by further reducing its weight, will

probably enable the armor-belts to be carried to the extreme ends of

the ship, which otherwise can be so seriously damaged by an enemy as to

interfere with the speed and control of a ship in action, even if it

does not disable her.

But while these upright walls will resist a direct shot, it is equally

necessary to guard against a plunging fire, and therefore the space

between the turrets, at least, must be roofed over with a steel deck,

two or three inches thick, to deflect shot that come just over the top

of the armor-belt.

In addition to this, on each side of the vessel are erected one or

two smaller turrets, carrying somewhat smaller guns than those of

the forward and after turrets, and also protected by heavy barbettes

which reach down to the armor-belt and thoroughly protect the turning

mechanism, passage of ammunition, etc. These various upper parts are

connected by defenses which may not resist the largest shells, but are

safe against smaller shot.

Now, what is the armament of this fortress which thus protects all the

motive power and interior machinery of the ship, by which she can be

made so terrible an engine of combative force? Well, it is as different

from the bronze “long-toms” and carronades of the old three-deckers,

or even from ten-inch smooth-bore “Dahlgrens” of the days of our Civil

War, as is the ship itself from old-time models. In place of broadside

batteries of forty or fifty cannon hidden in clouds of smoke, there are

now six or eight big rifles, from whose muzzles wreaths of thin gas

only drift to leeward; and, more striking still, in contrast, a ship

is no longer comparatively helpless when headed or turned sternward

to an enemy,—when the “raking,” formerly so justly dreaded, would be

received,—but is rather more able to do damage in that position than by

a “broadside.”

The guns themselves are marvels of structure and power. All of those

used in the United States navy are made by the government in the

gun-shops at the Washington navy-yard, and are “built up.” The methods

and tools required for this are the invention of Americans, as well as

the complicated arrangements for closing the breech, and the carriages

and mechanism for overcoming the tremendous recoil and handling the

ponderous ammunition; the latter, often weighing hundreds of pounds,

is handed up to the gunners from the magazines below by hoists worked

by electricity.

The history of the development of heavy ordnance, especially that

applied to naval uses, is one of the most interesting chapters in

mechanics; and a surprising number of ways of making a ship’s cannon

have been tried and rejected. Out of this two things seem now to be

settled: namely, that a gun composed of steel in separate parts welded

together is best, and that the best missile to shoot from it is a

conical shell, very hard and heavy, yet containing an explosive small

in quantity but exceedingly powerful.

Such guns are built up of a tube or “core” of steel of the required

size, upon which is shrunk a jacket, covering the rear, or breech half

of the core, outside of which are shrunk on several broad hoops. The

cutting out of the bore to exactly the proper caliber and the plowing

of the spiral riflings put the gun in readiness for its breech-closing

and other attachments. This process requires several months, involves

large capital and powerful machinery, and good results imply the very

highest workmanship.

[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES CRUISER “BROOKLYN” (STERN VIEW).]

Such are the guns of modern men-of-war; and a first-class battle-ship

carries four twelve- or thirteen-inch rifles (that is, having a bore

twelve or thirteen inches in diameter), several eight- or ten-inch

rifles, and many smaller guns arranged to be fired with extraordinary

speed, and hence called “rapid-fire” guns; while her upper works

and “military tops” fairly bristle with fierce little six-, four-,

and one-pounders,—revolving magazine rifles, capable of discharging

rifle-balls as fast as a man can turn the crank.

[Illustration: ON BOARD A BATTLE-SHIP GOING INTO ACTION. WORKING THE

RAPID-FIRE GUNS.]

To give some idea of the size and power of one of the 13-inch guns,

whose long muzzles, in pairs, project so far out of the turrets that

hide their mountings and firing-crew, let me tell you that it is 40

feet long, more than 4 feet in diameter, and weighs 60½ tons. “It

requires 550 pounds of powder to load it, and the projectile weighs

half a ton. The muzzle-velocity of the projectile is 2100 feet per

second, with the stated charge, and its energy is sufficient to send it

through 26 inches of steel at a distance of 600 yards. At an elevation

of 40 degrees the range of the gun will be not far from 15 miles.”

In such a ship, deep down within the fortress is the massive and

complicated machinery, steam and electric, upon which the life and

activity of the whole structure depend. The power is generated in four

enormous boilers, seventeen feet in diameter and twenty in length,

their steel shells one and a half inches thick, built to carry a

working-pressure of 160 pounds to the square inch. Each pair of these

boilers, placed fore and aft and side by side, is installed in a

separate compartment, with fire-rooms at the ends. Every boiler has

four furnaces in each end, which give eight to each fire-room, or a

total of thirty-two. The two boiler compartments are separated by a

water-tight bulkhead, and by a deep, broad coal-bunker. At the sides of

the ship are also coal-bunkers, which supplement the heavy armor-belt

by the protection of a mass of coal twelve feet in thickness—in itself

a not inconsiderable earthwork, which might arrest the fragments of a

bursting shell that had succeeded in piercing the armor. No casualty of

naval combat can be worse than the penetration of high-pressure boilers

by heavy shells. Their complete protection is an imperative condition,

quite as important as the protection of the magazines.

Such is a modern battle-ship—a “wonderful and complex instrument of

warfare,” as Lieutenant Staunton has expressed it.

She is filled [he tells us] with powerful agencies, all obedient to

the control of man—the creatures of his brain and the servants of his

will. Steam in its simple application drives her main engines and

many auxiliaries. Steam transformed into hydraulic power moves her

steering-gear and turns her turrets. Steam converted into electrical

energy produces her incandescent and search-lights, works small

motors in remote places, and fires her guns when desired. Every

application of energy, every device of mechanism, finds its office

somewhere in that vast hull, and the source of all the varied forms

of power lies in the great boilers, far down below danger of shot

and shell, under which grimy stokers are always shoveling coal.

Decades of thought and study, experiment and failure, trial again

with partial success, and repeated trials with complete success, have

assigned to each agency its appropriate function, and perfected the

mechanism through which its work is performed.

These modern developments have added one entirely novel and tremendous

adjunct to the fleet, in the torpedo-boat and its terrible weapon.

These take the place to some extent of the fire-ship of a century ago,

which was designed to injure the enemy not by silencing his guns or

overcoming his gunners, but by insidiously destroying his ship itself.

The torpedo is, in its simplest form, simply some arrangement of a

powerful explosive to be set off beneath or against the bottom of a

ship, and shatter or sink it. The idea is as old as gunpowder, but it

is only in recent times that it has been made effective,—how effective

we do not yet know.

Torpedoes are used in two ways: one is by fixing the torpedo beneath

the water, either to be exploded by means of a percussion-cap when the

ship runs against it, or from the shore by means of electricity. Such

arrangements as this, called submarine mines, are regarded as a most

important means of defending harbors against hostile attack. During

our Civil War they were extensively used by the Confederates, and were

sometimes successful, as when one destroyed the monitor _Tecumseh_ in

Mobile harbor, during Farragut’s famous attack there in 1864.

[Illustration: THE MONITOR “TECUMSEH” SUNK BY A TORPEDO AT MOBILE,

1864.]

The former class, for which the word _torpedoes_ is now reserved,

includes explosive agents which are to be placed or sent against a

ship’s bottom at sea and exploded there. Various devices of that kind,

also, have been used for a long time in naval warfare. The Confederates

tried hard to destroy several Northern vessels in the blockading

squadron by devising very small, half-submerged boats, towing torpedoes

astern, or else projecting on a long spar from their bows; and now and

then they succeeded, as when one of the latter kind was made to sink

the _Housatonic_ off Charleston.

[Illustration: THE SEARCH-LIGHT REVEALING THE TORPEDO-BOAT.]

Then there have been invented, during the past fifty years, several

cigar-shaped machines, which, by means of a chemical or compressed-air

engine or clockwork, or some other application of power that might

keep motive machinery within them going long enough, could be launched

from shore or from another vessel and sent under water against a

hostile ship. At first these were made to glide along just beneath the

surface, carrying little flags that could be seen, and trailing two

electric wires, enabling a person, by means of electric currents,

to direct their flight; but latterly ingenuity has devised such an

arrangement of rudders and self-acting balances within the torpedo’s

mechanism that it will continue perfectly straight upon the course

it is aimed for, swerving neither right nor left, up nor down, and

will explode the instant it touches an object hard enough to jar the

delicate cap of fulminate in its snout. This latter kind, called the

automobile (self-moving) torpedo, is now almost exclusively used, and

some modification of the Whitehead is most popular. It is cigar-shaped,

and about twelve feet in length; the forward third is filled with

gun-cotton—in quantity sufficiently powerful, if accurately applied, to

ruin almost instantly the greatest battle-ship afloat.

[Illustration: A SELF-MOVING TORPEDO ON ITS WAY TO ATTACK A MAN-OF-WAR.]

All large war-ships are now fitted with tubes, opening near the

water-line in various parts of the hull, which form gun-like exits for

these terrible weapons, which are set in motion by a puff of gunpowder;

but in addition to this every maritime government now has a number

(Great Britain has more than 250) of small, swift steamers designed

wholly for this purpose and called torpedo-boats. Most of them are a

hundred feet or so in length, and intended to accompany the fleet

wherever it goes and in all weathers; but some are so small that they

may be carried on the deck of a big cruiser.

All are made long, low, and narrow, and the speed of many of them

exceeds thirty miles an hour. There is almost nothing to catch the wind

or show above deck except a pair of short, flattened smoke-stacks, one

behind the other; and the steersman stands, with only his head and

shoulders visible, in a little box with windows that serves the purpose

of a wheel-house. A mere wire railing saves the crew from sliding off

the deck, and in action everybody stays below. No weight is carried

that can be avoided, and the engines, taking steam from two boilers,

are as powerful as can be packed into the space at command. Usually

only coal enough for a few hours’ steaming is carried, and every bushel

of it is carefully selected as to quality, and is so treated and

intelligently fed to the furnaces as to make the hottest possible fire,

although never a spark must escape from the smoke-stack to betray the

vessel in the darkness.

[Illustration: A TORPEDO-BOAT AT FULL SPEED.]

Next to speed the most important quality is ability to turn quickly,

upon which might often depend the safety of the audacious little craft.

Torpedo-boats, however, are designed for a wider service than simply

to carry and discharge the frightful weapon from which they take their

name. They are to the navy what scouts and skirmishers are to a land

army. They form the cavalry of the sea, of which the cruisers are the

infantry, and the battle-ships and monitors the artillery arm. They

must spy out the position of the enemy’s fleet, hover about his flanks

or haunt his anchorage to ascertain what he is about and what he means

to do next. They must act as the pickets of their own fleet, patrolling

the neighborhood, or waiting and watching, concealed among islands or

in inlets and river-mouths, ready to hasten away to the admiral with

warning of any movement of the adversary.

[Illustration: ONE FORM OF SUBMARINE TORPEDO-BOAT.]

It is not their business to fight (except rarely, in the one particular

way), but rather to pry and sneak and run, for the benefit of the fleet

they serve.

But to insure all these fine results, both officers and men must be

taught the art. Constant instruction and drilling are necessary, and

in each navy a regular school of torpedo-practice is maintained, where

the subject is studied in every way. In the United States such a school

is kept at the Newport (R. I.) Torpedo Station, where the torpedoes

themselves are fitted for use and supplied to the ships (the loaded

war-heads are kept separately in the ship’s magazine), and where one or

more torpedo-boats are reserved for drilling purposes.

[Illustration:

COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY C. E. BOLLES, BROOKLYN, N. Y.

THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “MAINE.”

Blown up in the harbor of Havana, February 15, 1898.]

But a worse and more insidious foe than even these sneaking, hiding,

surface torpedo-boats threatens us in the submarine torpedo-boat, which

inventors have been experimenting with since naval warfare first began.

It is said that twenty-five hundred years ago divers were lowered

into the water in a simply constructed air-box, to perforate the

wooden bottom of an adversary’s war-galley and sink it. Again, in our

Revolutionary War, a tiny walnut-shaped boat was made by an American,

which was actually tried. It would hold one man, and air enough for him

to breathe for half an hour. He would close the hatch, let in enough

water to sink him a little way, and then scull himself along by means

of a screw-bladed stern-oar until he got underneath the keel of an

anchored vessel, to which, by ingenious means, he would attach a can of

gunpowder to be fired by clockwork, giving him time to get away. It was

actually tried and nearly succeeded. Robert Fulton, who made the first

success of the steamboat, tried for years to contrive a submarine boat

that would work, and succeeded so far as to scare British blockaders in

1812 very badly indeed; and the Confederates repeated the scare when

the North was blockading their ports in the Civil War.

The great advantage of a submarine boat is, of course, its

invisibility, and its safety from shot even if discovered; but the

difficulties of progress and control as to depth and direction under

water, and at the same time effective appliance of the explosive and

safe retreat, are so many that they have as yet been only partly

overcome. If the thing is ever accomplished, naval warfare will be

demoralized until some adequate means be found to combat this unseen,

destroying agency.

[Illustration: _Vesuvius_ in action.]

The principal agent in submarine attacks would probably be some form

of dynamite, which, inhuman as its use seems, is slowly but surely

taking its place among the weapons of war. The United States has one

vessel primarily designed to employ dynamite by hurling it in the form

of shells. This volcanic craft is suitably named _Vesuvius_, and is

a small, swift vessel having long tubes slanting upward through her

forward deck, as shown in the illustration.

These tubes are the muzzles of great air-guns, through which she sends

darts loaded with dynamite to fall upon a hostile ship or fort. It

would not be safe, to say the least, to fire such bombs with gunpowder;

and therefore pumps and engines in her interior compress air until it

has acquired an expansive force sufficient for the purpose. When one

of the darts has been laid in the breech of the tube, down beneath the

deck, and suitably closed in, a valve is opened, the compressed air

acts like burning powder, and away goes the dart, in a graceful curve

to its target. In this case, of course, it is the vessel rather than

the immovable gun that is aimed, and good marksmanship depends upon

accurate calculation of distance; but remarkable shooting has been

done. This system has never yet been tried in actual warfare, and may

prove valuable chiefly in clearing harbors of mines.