THE BIRTH OF THE NAUTICAL ARTS
Of all the activities of human nature few are so interesting and so
insistent on our sympathy as the eternal combat which goes on between
man on the one side and the forces of Nature on the other. Conscious
of his own limitations and his own littleness, man has nevertheless
throughout the ages striven hard to overcome these forces and to
exercise his own freedom. But he has done this not so much by direct
opposition as by employing Nature to overcome Nature; and there can be
no better instance of this than is found in the art of tacking, whereby
the mariner harnesses the wind in order to enable him to go against the
wind.
Winds and tides and waves are mightier than all the strength of
humanity put together. The statement was as true in pre-Dynastic times
as it is to-day. For a long time man was appalled by their superhuman
strength and capabilities; he preferred to have nothing to do with
them. Those nations which had their habitation inland naturally feared
them most. But as familiarity with danger engenders a certain contempt,
so those who dwelt by the sea began to lose something of their awe and
to venture to wrestle with the great trio of wind, wave, and tide.
Had they not exercised such courage and independence the history and
development of the world would have been entirely different.
It is obvious that the growth of the arts of the sea--by which is meant
ship designing and building, seamanship and navigation--can only occur
among seafaring people. You cannot expect to find these arts prospering
in the centre of a continent, but only along the fringe where land
meets sea. And, similarly, where you find very little coast, or a very
dangerous coast, or a more convenient land route than the sea, you will
not find the people of that country taking to the awe-inspiring sea
without absolute necessity. This statement is so obvious in itself,
so well borne out by history and so well supported by facts, that it
would scarcely seem to need much elucidation. Even to-day, even in an
age which has so much to be thankful for in respect of conveniences,
we actually hear of landsmen looking forward with positive horror to
an hour’s crossing the Channel in a fast and able steamship, with its
turbines, its comfortable cabins, and the rest. If it were possible
to reach the Continent by land rather than water they would do so and
rejoice. So it was in the olden times thousands of years ago; so, no
doubt, it will ever be.
Strictly speaking, notwithstanding that the Egyptians did an enormous
amount of sailing; notwithstanding that they were great shipbuilders
and that their influence is still felt in every full-rigged ship, yet
it is an indisputable fact, as Professor Maspero, the distinguished
Egyptologist, remarks, that they were not acquainted with the sea even
if they did not utterly dislike it. For their country had but little
coast, and was for the most part bordered by sand-hills and marshes
which made it uninhabitable for those who might otherwise have dwelt
by the shore and become seafarers. On the contrary, the Egyptians
preferred the land routes to the sea. It is true that they had the
Mediterranean on their north and the Red Sea on their east, both of
which they alluded to as the “very-green.” True, also, it is that there
was at least one great sea expedition to the Land of Punt, but this was
an exception to their usual mode of life.
At the same time, though they were primarily river sailors rather than
blue-water seamen, yet they had used the Nile so thoroughly and so
persistently, both for rowing and for sailing, that on the occasions
when they took to the sea itself they were bound to come out of the
ordeal fairly well, just as a Thames waterman, accustomed all his life
to frail craft and smooth waters, would be likely to make a moderately
good seaman if his work were suddenly changed from the river to the
ocean. From childhood and through generations they had worked their
square-sailed craft on the Nile and acquired a thorough knowledge of
watermanship, and when the crews of Thebes manned those ships which
carried Queen Hatsopsitu’s expedition to Punt and returned in safety
back to their homes, they were able to put their lessons learned on the
Nile to the best of use on the Red Sea.
[Illustration: “RIVER SAILORS RATHER THAN BLUE-WATER SEAMEN.”]
So also on the Mediterranean the Egyptian ships were seen. We know that
the galleys of Rameses II plied regularly between Tanis and Tyre. This
was no smooth-water passage, for the Syrian sea could be very rough,
and on a later page we shall give the actual experience of an Egyptian
skipper who had a pretty bad time hereabouts in his ship. Even those
skilful seamen, the Phœnicians, found it required a good deal of care
to avoid the current which flowed along their coasts and brought to
them the mud from the mouths of the Nile. Now it was but natural that
when the Egyptians took to the sea they should use, for their trading
voyages to Syria or their expedition to Punt, craft very similar
to those which they were wont to sail on the Nile. In fact, it was
possible for one and the same ship to be used for river and sea. In my
“Sailing Ships and their Story,” the appearance of the Egyptian ships
has been so thoroughly discussed that it is hardly necessary to go
further into that matter at present. It is enough to state that they
were decked both at bow and stern, that short, narrow benches were
placed close to the bulwarks, leaving an empty space in the centre
where the cargo could be stowed, and that there were fifteen rowers
a side. There was one mast about 24 feet high setting one squaresail
which was about 45 feet along its foot, and in addition to the oarsmen
there were four topmen, a couple of helmsmen, and one pilot at the bow,
who gave the necessary instructions to the helmsmen as to the course to
be taken. Finally, there was an overseer to see that the rowers were
kept up to their work and not allowed to slack.
On the whole the Egyptians were a peace-loving nation and not great
fighters; but there were times when they had to engage in naval
warfare, and on such occasions the ship’s bulwarks were raised by a
long mantlet which shielded the bodies of the oarsmen, leaving only
their heads exposed. And there were soldiers, too, placed on board
these Egyptian ships in time of warfare. Two were stationed on the
forecastle, one was in the fighting-top high on the mast, whilst the
remainder were disposed on the bridge and quarter-deck, ready to shoot
their arrows into the approaching enemy.
The navigation of the Egyptian seamen was but elementary. They coasted
for the most part, rarely venturing out of sight of land, fixing their
positions by familiar landmarks. This was by day; but at night they
lay-to until the dawn returned, when they were enabled to resume their
journey. Such methods, of course, demanded a longer time than more able
seamen would have required, but the Egyptians were in no hurry, so it
mattered not. It is patent enough, from the many representations which
we find of craft on the Egyptian monuments which have been unearthed,
that ships and boats played a highly important part in the life and
habits of the Egyptians; but beyond the funereal customs and the
connection which these craft had with their religious ideas, we know
but little, if we except those models and those representations of
their bigger ships seen with sail and mast. It is unquestionable that
the shipbuilding industry was one of the most important activities
which these Nile-dwellers engaged in; and illustrations still exist
which show a shipwright’s yard of the Sixth Dynasty. We can see the
men busily at work, whilst the dockyard manager or superintendent is
carried in a kind of Sedan-chair to see how the work is progressing.
Some are engaged hammering and chipping away at the wood that is to
become a boat; some are fixing the different sections in place; whilst
others are setting up the truss which was employed for preventing the
ship from “hogging.”
But already by the close of the Third Dynasty, Professor Flinders
Petrie says, the Egyptian shipbuilders were using quite large supplies
of wood for their craft. In one year alone, Senofern constructed sixty
ships and imported forty ships of cedar. When we consider that the
Nile was the great national highway of Egypt, it was but natural that
shipbuilding should be one of the most important trades. There were,
first, the light skiffs which could be easily carried from place to
place. There were also the larger freight-carriers which sailed the
Nile and the open sea; and lastly, there were the houseboats, a kind of
modern dahabeeah. The small skiffs were made of reeds for lightness,
and coated with pitch. They were punted along the shallows with a
pole, or paddled. They could carry only a couple of people, and were
practically ferry-boats or dinghies. But the larger boats were built
of wood, and probably sometimes of acacia. The masts were of fir which
was imported from Syria, the sails being occasionally of papyrus, but
probably also of linen.
The lotus plant played a conspicuous part in Egyptian shipbuilding. We
see the smaller craft being strengthened by the stalks of this plant,
bundles of which are depicted being carried down to the yard on the
backs of the shipwright’s men. The tail-piece, even of the biggest
sea-going craft, is shown to be in the shape of a lotus bud or flower.
That they knew how to build ships of great tonnage at these dockyards
is evident from the fact that Sesostris had a sacred barge constructed
that was 280 cubits long. And it was doubtless owing to the great
length of the Nile sailing ships, and their consequent inability to
turn quickly, that we find it unusual for the Egyptian ships to have
only a single steering oar; very frequently there was one each side at
the quarter.
More than this it is difficult to state regarding the manner in which
they employed their ships. There is indeed very much that we should
like to know, and we cannot be too thankful that modern exploration
has actually revealed so many pictorial representations. The Egyptians
were not instinctively seamen as the Phœnicians and the Vikings, and
if there had been no Nile it is probable that the sea and its coast
might have meant even less to them than was actually the case. Nor was
it any different with the Assyrians, whose kings feared the sea for a
long time. They never ventured on its surface without being absolutely
compelled. At a later stage, when their victories brought them to
the shores of the Mediterranean, they were constrained to admire its
beauty, and presently even took a certain amount of pleasure in sailing
on its bosom, but nothing would tempt them far from land or to make a
voyage.
But then there came a new precedent when Sennacherib embarked his
army on board a fleet and went in search of the exiles of Bit-Iakin.
The only ships that were at his disposal were those belonging to the
Chaldean States. These craft were in every way unsuitable; they were
obsolete, clumsy, heavy, bad sea-boats, and slow. During his wars,
however, he had seen the famous sailors of Sidon, and noted alike the
progress which these seafarers had made in actual shipbuilding, and in
the handling of their craft at sea. These were of course Phœnicians,
and among his prisoners Sennacherib found a sufficient number of
Phœnicians to build for him a fleet, establishing one shipbuilding
yard on the Euphrates and another on the Tigris. The result was that
they turned out a number of craft of the galley type with a double
row of oarsmen. These two divisions of newly built craft met on the
Euphrates not far from the sea, the Euphrates being always navigable.
The contingent from the Tigris, however, had to come by the canal
which united the two rivers. And then, manned with crews from Tyre and
Sidon, and Cypriot Greeks, the fleet went forth to its destination;
Sennacherib then disembarked his men and rendered his expedition
victorious.
Here, then, is just another instance of a non-seafaring people
taking to the sea not from choice, not from instinct, but from
compulsion--because there was no other alternative; and all the time
employing seafaring mercenaries to perform a work that was strange
to landsmen, just as in later days at different periods (until they
themselves had grown in knowledge and experience), the English had to
import sailors from Friesland in the time of Alfred, or Italians in the
early Tudor period. The sea was still hardly more than a half-opened
book, and few there were who dared to look into its pages.