How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves | Page 2

customs, and
even many names of common things. It is probable that these colonists,
well acquainted as they were with nautical affairs, kept up their
practical knowledge of shipbuilding, and formed a mercantile navy to
carry on their commerce with other countries, as well as ships fitted for

warfare to protect their ports from foreign invasion, or from the attacks
of pirates.
Many English nautical terms at present in use are clearly of Phoenician
origin. Davit, for instance, is evidently derived from the Arabic word
Davit, a crooked piece of wood, similar in shape to that by which the
boats of a vessel are hoisted out of the water and hung up at her sides.
The word Caboose was the name given by the Phoenicians to the
temple dedicated to the god of fire, whom they worshipped, built on the
decks of their vessels; when a purer faith was introduced, it being
found convenient to cook dinners in the no longer sacred Caboose, the
name being retained, Blackie the cook took the place of the officiating
priest. Caboose is at the present day the name of the kitchen-house on
the deck of a merchant-vessel. Many other terms even now used by
seafaring people are derived directly or indirectly from the same
far-distant origin, as are several of the customs observed at the present
day. I may mention some of them by-and-by.
SHIPS OF THE ANCIENTS.
The ancient Greeks and other Eastern nations had ships of
considerable size many hundred years before the Christian era. The
earliest mythical stories describe long voyages performed by vessels of
far more complicated structure than the simple canoe. The ships
engaged in the Trojan war each carried a hundred and twenty warriors,
which shows that at the period referred to they could not have been of
very small dimensions. Although they might have been open, they had
masts and sails, and were propelled by rowers sitting on benches, while
the oars were fastened to the sides of the ship with leathern thongs.
Some were painted black, others red. When they arrived at their
destination, the bows were drawn up on shore; or when on a voyage,
they at night anchored by the stern, with cables secured to large stones.
At an early period they had round bottoms and sharp prows. We hear
of ships with three ranks of rowers, called triremes, B.C. 700, and long
before that time biremes, or ships with two ranks of oars, had been
introduced. In the time of Cyrus, long sharp-keeled war-ships were
used, having fifty rowers, who sat in one row, twenty-five on each side

of the ship. About B.C. 400, the practice of entirely decking over ships
was introduced; Themistocles induced the Athenians to build a fleet of
two hundred sail, and to pass a decree that every year twenty new
triremes should be built. The Greeks even at that period, however,
seldom ventured out into the open sea, steering in the daytime by
headlands or islands, and at night by the rising and setting of different
stars.
The Greeks possessed ships of war and merchant-vessels. That a
war-galley was of large size may be inferred from the fact that she
carried two hundred seamen, besides on some occasions thirty
Epibatoe-- literally, marines, trained to fight at sea. These war-vessels
moved with wonderful rapidity, darting here and there with the speed
of a modern steam-vessel. The ordinary war-ships were triremes, or
had three banks of oars. The merchant-vessels or transports were much
more bulky, had round bottoms, and although rowers were employed
on board, yet they were propelled chiefly by their sails. After the time
of Alexander, vessels with four, five, and even more ranks of rowers
became general, and ships are described with twelve and even thirty
ranks of rowers and upwards--but they were found of no practical use,
as the crew on the upper benches were unable to throw sufficient power
into the immensely long oars which it was necessary to employ.
Fully B.C. 500, the Carthaginians invented the quadremes, and about
B.C. 400, Dionysius, first tyrant of Syracuse, whose ambition was to
create a powerful navy, built numerous vessels of the same description,
unused till that time by the Greeks. The rowers in these ships, with
numerous banks of oars, could not have sat directly one above another,
as some suppose; but the feet of those on the upper tier must have
rested on the bench or thwart on which those immediately below them
sat. Thus the tiers of oars were probably not more than two feet, if so
much, one above another; and supposing the lowest tier was two feet
above the water, the highest in the quadremes could not have been
more than ten feet, and even then the length of the oar of the