How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves | Page 4

made of skins or wicker-work, and
in bad weather were raised to a considerable height above the
bulwarks. It is said that Anacharsis, upwards of 500 B.C., if he did not
invent, greatly improved the form of anchors, which were already made
of iron. The anchor had generally two flukes or teeth, and was then
called bidens; but sometimes it had only one. We use the same terms as
the ancients, to cast anchor or weigh anchor, whence the latter term is
equivalent to set sail. Each ship had several anchors; that in which the
Apostle Paul sailed, we know, had four, and others had eight. The

largest and most important anchor was denominated "the last hope,"
hence, when that failed, arose the expression "the last hope gone." A
buoy was used fixed to the anchor by a rope, to show the spot where it
lay.
The Romans possessed no war fleets till the year B.C. 260, when a fleet
of triremes was built to oppose the Carthaginians. Many of them
having been sent to the bottom, however, by the quinqueremes of that
people, the Romans built a hundred of the latter-sized ships from the
model of a Carthaginian vessel wrecked on the coast of Italy. The
Romans must have had very large merchant-vessels to enable them to
transport the enormous monoliths from Egypt which they erected in
Rome. These vast stones, also, could not have been got on board and
brought up the Tiber without considerable mechanical appliances.
The construction of their ships differed but slightly from that of the
Greek vessels; they had turrets on the decks of their larger men-of-war,
and employed a variety of destructive engines; so that in battle the
soldiers on board fought much as they did when standing on the walls
of a fortress. Of one thing I am sure, that no correct drawings of
ancient ships have come down to us, if any such were really made;
those on medals, cameos, and such as are painted on walls, are
probably as far removed from the reality as a Thames barge is from a
dashing frigate. They give us, certainly, the different parts of the ship,
and from them we may form a pretty correct idea of what a ship really
was like. Certain it is, however, that ships were built of prodigious size,
and if not equal to a line-of-battle ship of late days, they must have
been as large as, if not larger than, the Great Harry, and probably quite
as well able to encounter as she was the boisterous seas. Long before
the Christian era, ships boldly struck across the Mediterranean, and
even passing through the Pillars of Hercules, coasted along the shores
of Iberia and Gaul, and thence crossed over to Britain, or coasted
round the African continent.
Advanced as the ancients were in architectural knowledge, there is
every reason to suppose that they were equally capable of building
ships to answer all their requirements, either for war or commerce.

They were probably thus not only of great size, but well built, and were
certainly finished and ornamented in an elegant and even a magnificent
manner, far superior to that of many ages later. The mistaken notion as
to the size of the ships of the ancients arises from the supposition that
because merchantmen of the present day are smaller than men-of-war,
that they were so formerly--the reverse, however, being the case.
Men-of-war were generally long, narrow vessels, constructed for speed,
to carry only fighting men, with a small quantity of provisions; whereas
merchantmen were built of considerable beam and depth to stow a
large quantity of cargo. A Phoenician vessel was able to afford
accommodation to 500 emigrants, with provisions for a long voyage,
besides her crew, while her masts were formed of the cedars of
Lebanon.
NAUTICAL CUSTOMS DERIVED FROM THE ANCIENTS.
Among the best-known customs of the ocean is the ceremony that takes
place when ships cross the line. That, however, like many others of
olden days, is getting somewhat into disuse. Few of those who have
witnessed it, probably, have suspected that its origin dates as far back
as the times of the Phoenicians. As the ship approaches the imaginary
band which encircles the globe, a gruff voice hails her from alongside,
and demands her name and nation, whence she is from, and whither
she is bound. These questions being answered, she is ordered to heave
to, when no less a person than old father Neptune himself, with his fair
wife Amphitrite, and their attendant Tritons, climb up over the bows,
and take possession of the fore-part of the deck. Neptune generally
wears a crown formed out of a tin saucepan, with a flowing beard, a
wig of oakum, and a robe composed of some gay-coloured
petticoat-stuff,