Ancient War-ships
"Piracy was the exercise, the trade, the glory, and
the virtue of the Scandinavian youth. Impatient of a
bleak climate and narrow limits, they started from the
banquet, grasped their arms, sounded their horn,
ascended their ships, and explored every coast that
promised either spoil or settlement." GIBBON.
"Outlaw and free thief,
My kinsfolk have left me,
And no kinsfolk need I
Till kinsfolk shall need me.
My sword is my father,
My shield is my mother,
My ship is my sister,
My horse is my brother."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
IF we take the dimensions of the actual Viking boats that have been
unearthed, as I have related in the last chapter, we shall have an
excellent foundation upon which to form an idea of the bigger and more
important ones. Now the Gokstadt boat is nearly 80 feet long and 16 feet
6 inches wide at her greatest beam, and carried mast and sail. The Nydam
ship is 75 feet in length, with a beam of 10 feet 6 inches, and had no
mast. Both are very flat amidships, and have very fine or sharp ends,
but it is evident that in proportion to her length the Gokstadt boat had
a much greater beam.
[Illustration: A Viking Double-prowed "Long Serpent" or "Dragon-ship"
Observe the well-supported outer stem, the Dragon Head, the embroidered
sail decorated with a variation of the "Swastika" design, which was much
used by the Vikings on arms and ornaments; the vane at the masthead, the
"shield-row" protecting the rowers, and the steersman guiding the ship
by means of her "steer-board".]
That was because she was a sailing-ship and the Nydam vessel was not.
The latter may fairly be assumed to have been a "Skuta", and the
Gokstadt ship a rather small "Serpent". Now in all the "sagas" that have
come down to us the different war-ships which occupy so prominent a
place in them are distinguished as to size by the number of oars they
pulled. From the Nydam ship, which had fourteen oars a-side, we are
thus able to judge the dimensions of famous Viking war-ships like the
"Long Serpent" of King Olaf and others, if we allow for the slightly
wider space between the rowers' benches necessitated by the greater
length of the oars in the larger vessels. Of course, the whole length of
the ship was not occupied by the benches. In the Nydam ship, for
instance, they took up 46 feet of her length; the remaining 15 feet at
each end were required for fighting- and steering-platforms, stowage of
stores, &c. In this way it has been calculated that the "Long
Serpent"--you must remember that this was a _special_ "Long Serpent",
and probably bigger than the usual run of the war-vessels so-called--was
180 feet long, while the still bigger ship belonging to our King Canute
works out at no less than 300 feet in length. The beam or width it has
not been found possible to estimate exactly, but my own opinion is that
the lines, or contour, of these very much bigger ships were much deeper
and fuller than in the smaller types.
There is an old manuscript in the Bodleian Library, at Oxford, dating
from about A.D. 1000, in which appear three pictures of Noah's Ark (see
p. 26). The house part of the design is frankly impossible--it would
capsize the ship--but the hull in each case--the boat part--is not at
all unlike the well-known Bayeux-tapestry ships, but of a better and
more seaworthy shape, though in some of them the big dragon figure-head
is unduly exaggerated. The space between the benches was called a
"room", and the port and starboard portions of this were known as
"half-rooms". The crew were all told off to these half-rooms as their
stations, except those quartered forward and aft. Thus the "Long
Serpent" had eight men to each "half-room", and from this item of
information it has been estimated that she carried a crew of something
between six and seven hundred men. Goodness knows how many King Canute's
big "Dreadnought" carried.
Some of these Viking ships were very smartly decorated. Armorial
bearings had not then been invented, but their sails were worked with
the most beautiful emblematic and intricate embroidery, and were not
infrequently made of velvet, though generally of a coarse woollen
material called "vadmal." Some of the most elaborate ones were actually
lined with fur. Not only the ships themselves, but also their sails,
like the swords of their warriors, were given poetical sounding names:
"The Cloth of the Wind", "The Beard of the Yard", and "The Tapestry of
the Mast-head", are some of them. Along their gunwales, above the oars,
which worked through holes in the ship's side, ran the "shield-row",
composed of circular wooden shields or targets, with big shining bosses
of brass or other metal in the middle. Each shield overlapped the next
till it touched its boss, and so gave a double protection to the rowers.
This was a very ancient custom, as shields were carried in this way by
Phoenician ships as far back as 450 B.C. As a general rule, the
Norsemen's shields were black and yellow, the Danes' red, and the
Saxons' white with red or blue edges.
[Illustration: A "Dragon" Figure-head
There was a law that ships must not approach the land with their
figure-heads in position with "gaping heads and yawning snouts."]
It is rather curious that, with the exception of black, these colours
are conspicuous in the flags of the corresponding nations of to-day. But
the King of Norway presented our King Athelstan, in 931, with a ship
fitted with a complete row of _golden_ shields.
A whole chapter might be written about the figure-heads of the Viking
ships, for they were much more than mere ornaments. They each had some
special signification, and were certainly connected with a most
extraordinary superstition which prevailed among the Scandinavian
peoples. It is best explained by an example from the saga of which one
Egil was the hero. Pursued by a king answering to the suggestive name of
Blood-axe, he escaped from Norway and took ship to Iceland. Before he
set sail over the North Sea he determined to take it out of his enemy,
Blood-axe, by a species of what we may call "wireless" witchcraft.
Landing on an islet, he erected what was known as a "Nithstang", a
"contraption" considered very pleasing to the Norse gods. The idea
probably had something in common with the "lifting up" of the brazen
serpent in the _Book of Numbers_. His installation was a very simple
one: a hazel pole with a horse's head stuck on the top. He stuck it up
in a crevice of the rocks, saying that he did so "as a curse" on
Blood-axe and his Queen. Then he turned it round so as to point to the
mainland, and announced that he also "fired off" his curse at the
"Guardian Spirits" of the country, who were to get no rest till they had
hustled King Blood-axe out of it. Finally he inscribed his curse in
Runic characters on the pole, and continued his voyage to Iceland as
pleased with himself as a German hero who had dropped a floating mine in
the track of passenger vessels.
[Illustration: A Dragon-head and a Representation of a "Nithstang". From
a Saxon MS.]
Now it appears that these same guardian spirits were extremely
susceptible to this sort of "wireless", not only in Norway, but
everywhere. And it also seems that--how or in what way I am unable to
explain--the figure-heads of the Viking ships had much the same
properties as the "Nithstangs". So it was that in Iceland, at any rate,
there was a law that ships must remove their figure-heads before
approaching the land, "and not approach it with gaping heads and
yawning snouts", lest they might scare the guardian spirits of the
land.[3] Having carried out this regulation, it was customary for the
seamen to hoist a polished shield to the masthead and so flash the
signal that the guardian spirits need not now be alarmed. That some
connection existed between these "heads" and the "Nithstang" is further
shown by a drawing in an old manuscript of that period, which depicts a
human head set on a pole, which is fastened to a dragon figure-head. And
again, in a wall-painting in the church of Tegelsmora in Upland, in
which the famous King Olaf is seen waging a desperate battle with our
old nursery friends the "Trolls", the bowsprit of his ship is adorned
with the skull of an ox.
But we must leave the ships and come to their crews. To begin with, they
were all "soldiers and sailors too"! They were equally at home on the
battle-field ashore and in handling their cherished "long-ships" afloat.
The Scandinavians believed that the soul of a warrior killed in battle
went at once to Valhalla, which represented their idea of heaven.
There they confidently expected that the brave fighter would spend a
happy eternity of fighting and feasting. It is said that their remote
forefathers had brought this weird form of belief from the depths of
Central Asia--but that must be a very old story. But fighting was the
breath of their life. They revelled in it, though they did not despise
the plunder which was generally the reward of victory. Many of these
fierce warriors were subject to and even cultivated a species of
madness, almost amounting to demoniacal possession, which induced them
to tear off their clothes and hurl themselves almost naked into the
fray, feeling endued with the strength of seven men.
These "Berserkers", as they were called from this custom, were doubtless
most dangerous opponents in their "Berserk" fury. Nowadays it is
generally accepted that the braver the man the more modest he is about
his deeds of valour; the boaster is considered likely to be but a broken
reed in the day of battle. But it was quite otherwise with the Viking
warriors. They gloried in boasting aloud of their prowess, of the deeds
they had done, and of those that they were ready to perform.
The tactics of the Vikings, if they failed to ram their opponents, was
to lash the bows of as many friendly and hostile vessels together as
possible, so as to form a floating battle-field. The fighting-platforms
were not, apparently, raised above the bows, as later on in mediæval
times. They were somewhere about the level of the gunwale, and when
several ships were lashed together, all these platforms provided a
battle-ground upon which the Berserker and his emulators could indulge
in the furious hand-to-hand combats which were their delight. If they
could do this they were probably more than pleased that they had failed
to ram their enemy. I doubt if every ship was built with a ram, but, on
the other hand, it is certain that some ships were specially built for
use as rams, and even strengthened by iron plating. So that we see that
the armour-clad is no new invention.
[Illustration: "Showing his Teeth"
Figure of a Berserker from a set of ancient chessmen found in the island
of Lewis. The Berserkers always bit their "shield-rims" on going into
battle.]
In the larger "long-ships" a fighting-gangway ran along behind the
shield-row, connecting the fore and after platforms. Beneath the latter,
which was somewhat elevated so that the steersman could look ahead, was
the sleeping-place for the commander of the ship. Other sleeping
accommodation was provided under the foremost platform, while, if at
anchor, those of the crew who were not on watch slept under awnings or
tents, set up on framework which could be erected for the purpose in the
centre of the vessel. The men slept in leather bags, which were equally
useful either ashore or afloat. In short, these ancient war-vessels were
so well and scientifically built, so well arranged and equipped, and so
well manned that we cease to wonder at the long voyages they were able
to perform by taking advantage of the summer months.
[Illustration: A WAR-GALLEY IN THE DAYS OF KING ALFRED
The Dragon or other figure-head has been unshipped, possibly because the
galley is going into port.]
There is not the slightest doubt that the Vikings discovered the
continent of America long before Columbus did. They went by way of
Iceland, and so were able to touch land more than once on their journey,
but they got there all the same. They established a colony in Greenland
about A.D. 985. From there they made several expeditions to the
southward, and discovered a densely wooded country which is supposed to
have been some portion of Nova Scotia. The climate of Greenland must
have been very different from what it is at present, for the Viking
colony lasted for 400 years, till, in the fifteenth century, an enormous
mass of ice was swept down by the Arctic current, piled itself up along
the coast, and entirely cut off the settlement--which at that time
consisted of thirty villages with their churches and monasteries--from
the rest of the world, so that before long every trace of it
disappeared.
It seems possible that some of you may say: "This is all very
interesting, but I thought we were going to read about the British Navy,
and it seems to me that the Saxons and their ships represented the
British navy of those days". That is a fair argument, but for my part I
do _not_ think that we can accept the Saxon Navy as the ancestor of the
British Navy of to-day.
The Saxons were no seamen, and apparently but poor soldiers. When King
Alfred built a navy of ships, which are stated to have been superior in
every way to those of the Frisians, Scandinavians, and Danes, and by
means of which he succeeded in securing more than one victory, he could
not provide them with seamen. The Saxons were no good, and he had to
hire Frisian pirates to man them. The Saxons fought well at Hastings,
but, though there was a strong infusion of the Danish element by this
time, they lost the battle through lack of discipline and military
experience. It is difficult, therefore, to recognize in these Saxons the
progenitors of men like Lieutenant Holbrook, who navigated his submarine
through and under rows and rows of deadly mines, knowing that the least
touch would bring annihilation, or of Private Pym of the Berkshires,
who, _alone_ and "on his own", rushed into a house held by a detachment
of German soldiers and succeeded in killing the whole of them but three,
who "made their escape".
No. For the ancestors of the British seamen and sailors of Elizabethan
and modern times I think we should rather look to the Danes, who, it
must be remembered, between 870 and the Norman Conquest, were not only
continually invading England, but established themselves in a great part
of it, especially in the east and north, and to those of the Conqueror's
followers who traced their descent directly from the Northmen or
Vikings. It is their spirit which has brought us victory both by land
and by sea, but more especially by sea, and not the spirit of Alfred's
Saxon subjects, who had to pay others to fight for them. Again, take
such pre-eminent commanders as Drake and Nelson. Is not the former name
one which takes us directly back to the "Draakers", the "Dragon-ships"
of the Vikings, and has not Nelson a distinctly Danish sound about it?
The ships of King Alfred "were full-nigh twice as long as the others;
some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were both swifter and
steadier, and also higher, than the others. They were shapen neither
like the Frisian nor the Danish; but so it seemed to him that they would
be most efficient."
FOOTNOTE:
[3] I am indebted to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould for the following very
interesting note, which indicates that there was some affinity between
the ancient Grecian and the Viking ideas with regard to figure-heads:
"The Greeks never allowed an image of an entering ship to arrive
un-removed, and then it was conveyed to the shore to salute the Goddess
of the port. The altar 'to the Unknown God' St. Paul saw _was actually
to any unknown Deity of an approaching vessel_."