Man on the Ocean | Page 9

Thus they were all saved.
The South Sea islanders, of whose canoes we have been writing,
are--some of them at least--the fiercest savages on the face of the earth.
They wear little or no clothing, and practise cannibalism--that is,
man-eating--from choice. They actually prefer human flesh to any

other. Of this we are informed on most unquestionable authority.
Doubtless the canoes which we have described are much the same now
as they were a thousand years ago; so that, by visiting those parts of the
earth where the natives are still savage, we may, as it were, leap
backward into ancient times, and behold with our own eyes the state of
marine architecture as it existed when our own forefathers were
savages, and paddled about the Thames and the Clyde on logs, and rafts,
and wicker-work canoes.
CHAPTER FOUR.
ANCIENT SHIPS AND NAVIGATORS.
Everything must have a beginning, and, however right and proper
things may appear to those who begin them, they generally wear a
strange, sometimes absurd, aspect to those who behold them after the
lapse of many centuries.
When we think of the trim-built ships and yachts that now cover the
ocean far and wide, we can scarce believe it possible that men really
began the practice of navigation, and first put to sea, in such grotesque
vessels as that represented on page 55.
In a former chapter reference has been made to the rise of commerce
and maritime enterprise, to the fleets and feats of the Phoenicians,
Egyptians, and Hebrews in the Mediterranean, where commerce and
navigation first began to grow vigorous. We shall now consider the
peculiar structure of the ships and boats in which their maritime
operations were carried on.
Boats, as we have said, must have succeeded rafts and canoes, and big
boats soon followed in the wake of little ones. Gradually, as men's
wants increased, the magnitude of their boats also increased, until they
came to deserve the title of little ships. These enormous boats, or little
ships, were propelled by means of oars of immense size; and, in order
to advance with anything like speed, the oars and rowers had to be
multiplied, until they became very numerous.

In our own day we seldom see a boat requiring more than eight or ten
oars. In ancient times boats and ships required sometimes as many as
four hundred oars to propel them.
The forms of the ancient ships were curious and exceedingly
picturesque, owing to the ornamentation with which their outlines were
broken, and the high elevation of their bows and sterns.
We have no very authentic details of the minutiae of the form or size of
ancient ships, but antiquarians have collected a vast amount of
desultory information, which, when put together, enables us to form a
pretty good idea of the manner of working them, while ancient coins
and sculptures have given us a notion of their general aspect. No doubt
many of these records are grotesque enough, nevertheless they must be
correct in the main particulars.
Homer, who lived 1000 B.C., gives, in his "Odyssey," an account of
ship-building in his time, to which antiquarians attach much importance,
as showing the ideas then prevalent in reference to geography, and the
point at which the art of ship-building had then arrived. Of course due
allowance must be made for Homer's tendency to indulge in hyperbole.
Ulysses, king of Ithaca, and deemed on of the wisest Greeks who went
to Troy, having been wrecked upon an island, is furnished by the
nymph Calypso with the means of building a ship,--that hero being
determined to seek again his native shore and return to his home and
his faithful spouse Penelope.
"Forth issuing thus, she gave him first to wield A weighty axe, with
truest temper steeled, And double-edged; the handle smooth and plain,
Wrought of the clouded olive's easy grain; And next, a wedge to drive
with sweepy sway; Then to the neighbouring forest led the way. On the
lone island's utmost verge there stood Of poplars, pines, and firs, a lofty
wood, Whose leafless summits to the skies aspire, Scorched by the sun,
or seared by heavenly fire (Already dried). These pointing out to view,
The nymph just showed him, and with tears withdrew.
"Now toils the hero; trees on trees o'erthrown Fall crackling round, and

the forests groan; Sudden, full twenty on the plain are strewed, And
lopped and lightened of their branchy load. At equal angles these
disposed to join, He smoothed and squared them by the rule and line.
(The wimbles for the work Calypso found), With those he pierced them
and with clinchers bound. Long and capacious as a shipwright forms
Some bark's broad bottom to outride the storms, So large he built the
raft; then ribbed it strong From space