How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves | Page 9

as likewise from the strange appearance which they

presented to their enemies, Alfred's commanders were not afraid of
attacking twice or thrice their own number of the enemy, and
invariably came off victorious. Indeed they had nearly the same
advantage over the Danes which a steamer at the present day has over
a fleet of Chinese junks. Alfred, it is said, caused surveys to be made of
the coasts of Norway and Lapland, and sent out ships to the polar
regions in search of whales.
I have met with an old writer, who describes a far more remarkable
achievement than any of these. He was a monk, of course, and his
knowledge of geography we may suspect was rather limited, when he
tells us that in the reign of Alfred a voyage was performed to the Indies
by the way of the north-east--that is to say, round the north of Asia--
under the command of a certain monk, Swithelm, who, as his reward,
was made Bishop of Sherburn. The mission was undertaken to aid the
Christians of a place called Saint Thomas, on the continent of India,
and we are assured that the curiosities which were brought back, and
are fully described, are exactly like the productions found in India,
when it became more fully known. The expedition, if it ever took place,
must have proceeded down the African coast and round the Cape of
Good Hope. If so, the seamen of Britain, with a monk as their
commander, succeeded in an enterprise which, having been totally
forgotten, immortalised Bartholomew Diaz as the discoverer of the
Stormy Cape full six centuries afterwards. We must not place more
faith in the narrative than it deserves, but one thing is certain, that if
any long or perilous voyages were performed, the prints of ships
pretending to be those of the days of King Alfred found on tapestries,
old illustrated histories and other works are not slightly incorrect.
When a boy, I used very strongly to suspect that if a ship had ever been
built after the model of the prints exhibited in the History of England,
she would either, as sailors say, have turned the turtle directly she was
launched, or have gone boxing about the compass beyond the control
of those on board her; but as to standing up to a breeze, or going
ahead, I saw that that was impossible. I have since discovered, with no
little satisfaction, when examining into the subject, that the verbal
descriptions of the ships of those days give a very different idea to that
which the prints and tapestry work do, which so offended my nautical

instincts.
Large substantial vessels, we may depend on it, existed in those days,
and though encumbered with much top hamper, and rigged only with
square sails, they did not carry the high towers nor the absurdly cut
sails which they are represented to have done in all the illustrated
histories I have seen. The celebrated galleys of King Alfred are
described by an old writer as very long, narrow, and deep vessels,
heavily ballasted on account of the high deck on which the soldiers and
seamen stood above the heads of the rowers. Of these rowers, there
were four to work each oar, and as there were thirty-eight oars on a
side, there must have been upwards of three hundred rowers to each
vessel. Whether these vessels had more than one mast is uncertain.
From their want of beam they would have run much risk of turning
over had they attempted to sail except directly before the wind. They
moved with great rapidity; and in an engagement off the Isle of Wight,
they ran down the Danish vessels in succession till the whole fleet of
the enemy was either sunk, driven on shore, or put to flight.
The navy of England still further increased during the reign of Alfred's
immediate successors, till, in the time of King Edgar (A.D. 957), it had
reached the number of three thousand six hundred ships at least, "with
which," as say his chroniclers, "he vindicated the right claimed in all
ages by the sovereigns of this island to the dominion of the seas
(meaning the seas surrounding England), and acquired to himself the
great title of The Protector of Commerce."
This navy was divided into three fleets, each of twelve hundred sail,
which he kept in constant readiness for service, one on the eastern
coast, another on the western, and a third on the northern coasts of the
kingdom, to defend them against the depredations of the Danish and
Norman pirates, and to secure the navigation of the adjacent seas;
which, that he might the more effectually do, he, every year after the
festival of Easter, went on board the fleet on the eastern