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.

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.

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.

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.

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."