Walter Bradford Woodgate

As parts of human life and practice the out-of-door games and amusements with which Englishmen are familiar have had a long course of development, and each has its own history. To trace this development and history in any particular case is not always an easy task. Most of the writers who deal with these subjects treat the ‘Origines’ in a summary fashion. Not a few ignore them altogether. The Topsy theory, ‘’spects it growed,’ is sufficient.

And yet if it be possible to deal more philosophically with a subject of the kind, the attempt ought not necessarily to be devoid of interest. It involves a retrospect of human life and human ingenuity. It will trace development in man’s ways and means, marking points which in some regions and with some races have determined the limit of their progress, and in others have served as stepping-stones to further invention. It will present facts which will not only not be disdained by the true student of men and manners, but will serve to broider the fringes of serious history, and will give additional light and colour to the record of the character and the habits of men. For indeed the sports and pastimes of a people are no insignificant product of its national spirit, and react to no small degree upon national character. They have not unfrequently had their share in grave events, and the famous and oft-quoted saying of the Duke of Wellington respecting the playing fields at Eton (se non È vero, È ben trovato) contains a truth, applicable in a wider sense to national struggles and to victories other than Waterloo.

Pastimes and amusements generally may be divided into two main classes: (1) those that have been invented simply as a means of recreation, such as cricket, tennis, racquets, etc.; and (2) those that have their origin in the primary needs of mankind. The latter have in many cases, as civilisation has advanced, and the particular needs have been supplied in other ways, survived as pastimes by reason of the natural pleasure and the excitement and the emulation which accompanied them. Of this latter class, those that have appropriated the name of ‘sport’ par excellence, such as hunting, shooting, fishing, etc., hold the field, so to speak, in antiquity, as compared with other pastimes, having their origin in the initial necessities and natural instincts of man, which compelled him to fight with and to destroy some wild beasts, that he might not himself be eaten, and to catch or kill others that he might have them to eat.

The spirit of emulation and the pride of skill, and the desire of obtaining healthy exercise for its own sake, have been among the principal causes which have converted into sports and pastimes man’s means and methods of locomotion. Almost every class of movement which can be pressed into that form of competition which is called a race, or in which a definite comparison of skill is possible, has been enlisted in the host of amusements with which civilisation consoles its children for the loss of the wild delights of the untutored savage.Among these perhaps the most important and the most conspicuous is Rowing, which as a serious business has played no inconsiderable part in great events of human history, and as a pastime is inferior to none of the class to which it belongs. Its votaries will not hesitate to claim for it even the chief place, by reason of the pleasure and emulation to which it so readily ministers, as a healthful exercise, and as a means of competitive effort requiring both skill and endurance.

But the oar, before it ministered to recreation, had a long history of labour in the service of man, which is not yet ended, and itself was not shaped but by evolution from earlier types, of which the paddle and ultimately the human hand and arm are the original beginnings.

Will it be wearisome to speculate on these beginnings, and to try to cast back in thought and research for the first origins of the noble pastime which forms the subject of the present volume? Fortunately, in savage life still extant on the habitable globe we have the survival of many, if not of all, the earliest types of locomotion. Man in his natural condition has to follow nature, and by following to subdue her in his struggle for existence. Climate and race differentiate his action in this respect, and results, under parallel circumstances, similar, though different in detail, attend his efforts in different parts of the world.

A land animal, he is from the first brought face to face with water, deep water of lakes, and of rivers, and of the sea, and in all these he finds bounds to his desires, as well as things to be desired; opposite shores to which he wishes to cross, fish and vegetable growth which he wants for food. Horace tells us that ‘oak and triple brass he had around his breast who first to the fierce sea committed his frail raft,’ but the first man who committed himself to deep water, and essayed the oarage of his arms and legs, must have been free from such incumbrances, and yet have had a stout heart within him. And simultaneously with, or even prior to such adventure, must have been others of a similar character aided by a piece of wood, or a bundle of rushes, or an inflated skin, the elementary boat, the very embryo of navigation. Such beginnings are still in evidence on the western coast of Australia, where savages may be seen sitting astride on a piece of light wood and so venturing forth upon the waters of the sea. Homer, who in the Odyssey delights in making the man of many counsels and many devices, with all his wealth of what was then modern experience, find himself reduced to the shifts and expedients of a man thrown, like the savage, upon his own solitary resources, pictures to us Ulysses seated astride upon the mast of his shipwrecked vessel and paddling with both hands, thus reverting in his distress, as no doubt others have done since, to the very earliest method of navigation, now only practised for choice by savages, whose progress in navigation, as in other things, has been checked at this early stage, and who remain the nearest visible types of primitive man.

But some savages, other than they, did make progress in the matter of locomotion by water, and the next step was the raft, of which the earliest type known is the sanpan, three pieces of buoyant wood tied together. On this construction, which supplied the earliest generic names both in the east and in the west (sanpan, s?ed??, ratis), a man would stand and paddle and move along upon the water, and assert his power of hand and eye with the weapons with which native ingenuity had already supplied him.

In warm climates, where swimming had become a necessity, and the very children from their earliest years had been habituated to the water, the familiarity that breeds contempt of the very danger which at a previous stage acted as a deterrent, would soon encourage attempts to improve, and enlarge, and increase the speed of the rude vessel in common use. These attempts would naturally follow the line of providing the means for conveying in safety other things besides the living freight of the human person. There would also arise the very natural desire to keep things dry, which would spoil if wetted. Hence the enlargement of the raft, and then the protection afforded by platforms raised upon its central surface, or by planks laid edgewise so as to make a defence, a breastwork against the wave.

And no doubt by this time the use of the sail for propulsion had become familiar, and man had already prayed his god for ‘the breeze that cometh aft, sail-filler, good companion.’ But interesting as it would be to trace the effect of the sail upon the construction of vessels and their development, we must leave that pleasant task to those who, in the present series, will treat of the yacht and its prototypes (??at??).

The earliest method of propulsion was with the human hands. In the picture of Ulysses seated on the mast and keel of his shipwrecked vessel, which he had lashed together with the broken backstay made of bullhide, paddling with his hands on either side, Homer, as we have seen, has presented us with the hero of the highest civilisation known to him reduced to the straits of the merest savage; and he has again enforced this idea in his picture of the same hero of many wiles and many counsels devising for himself the means of escape from the island of Calypso, and, not without divine suggestions, constructing for himself, like an ancient Robinson Crusoe, a primitive raft, with certain improvements and additions; a broad raft be it remembered, and not a boat. A boat would mar the conception which presents to us the civilised man driven back to the straits of barbarism by the unique circumstances in which he is placed.

This is the point which ingenious commentators, who have given elaborate designs and figures of Ulysses’ boat and written pages upon its construction, seem to have missed. The poet has added colour to his picture by bringing the new and the old together. And of a truth new and old exist together and continue throughout the ages of man in marvellous juxtaposition. The fast screw liner off the Australian coast may pass the naked savage oaring himself with swarthy palms upon his buoyant log, and almost every stage of modern invention in ship-building and ship propulsion has had alongside it the three-timbered sanpan, and the original types of raft that float in the Malay Archipelago.

But we must follow the development of our special pastime through its embryonic stage to a moment when, all unknown and unseen in the womb of time, like the sudden changes which differentiate the gradual ascents from a lower to a higher being, unseen, unknown, and unwritten in history, that great event occurred, the birth of the first ‘dug-out’ canoe. Unnoticed perhaps at the time, the importance of the event was recognised by the poet in after ages as a real forward step in the onward progress of the arts.[1] ‘Rivers then first the hollowed alders felt.’

[1] Virg. Georg. i. 136: ‘Tunc alnos primum fluvii sensere cavatas.’

To some primitive man or men in advance of their fellow men, the idea of flotation, as apart from the mere buoyancy of the material, had occurred, and suggested the hollowing out of the log. Wherever and whenever this was first effected, it was a great event in the world’s progress. A simple thought had wedded fact destined to be fruitful to all future ages. O prototype of the longboat—of the frail eights which freighted with contending crews speed yearly over Father Thames amidst the cheers and applause of thousands! Where wast thou launched? What dusky arms propelled thee? What wild songs of exultation heralded thy first successful venture? Once achieved, what present benefits, what future triumphs didst thou not ensure to man? In the power of carrying something, or anything beside the living freight, dry and secure, and in the increased facility of movement and of turning, must have been manifest from the first the advantage of the canoe over the raft, where the lapping of the water and the wash of the wave, in spite of all contrivances, could scarce be kept out. How soon must efforts have been made to increase this advantage to obtain greater carrying power and greater speed! The application of the sail was made possible by the ingenious adaptation of the outrigger, a trunk of light wood laid parallel to the side of the dug-out at some feet distance, and attached to it by transverse bars. The oldest type and the type with this improvement still survive, and the ingenious models of such craft which were exhibited at the Fisheries Exhibition in London a few years ago will have been noticed by many of our readers. Twin vessels like the ‘Castalia,’ and, if we are to believe the learned Graser, the great Tesseraconteres of Ptolemy, had their primitive germ, so to speak, in this early stroke of genius. It may appear strange to some boating men who are accustomed to hear a good deal about outriggers, that this outrigger of which we have been speaking has nothing to do with the outrigger with which they are familiar. It never apparently passed into the Western Seas. The Mediterranean knows it not. The Andaman Islands and the Seychelles are its westernmost limits.

But if the invention of the dug-out canoe was a step onward in the general progress of the arts, being the appreciation and application of a principle in nature, a still greater triumph was achieved, and the particular art still more decidedly advanced, by him who first constructed the canoe properly so called. Herein was the real prototype of the species boat. A skin of bark, duly cut and shaped so as to taper towards the ends and be wide amidships, was attached to a longitudinal framework or gunwale all along its upper edges, and this itself was kept apart and in shape by three or more transverse pieces stretching from side to side, while a series of curved laths of soft wood, the extreme ends of which also fastened to the gunwale, served to keep the vessel itself in shape and to protect the bark skin from the tread of men and from the immediate incidence of any weight to be carried. ‘Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coÛte.’ The idea once conceived, whether in one place or in many, and at whatever time or times, could not be lost and must soon have been fruitful in development. Of this class by far the most common is the birch-bark canoe, which, though found also in Australia, is properly regarded as having its home upon the American continent. If not the original of the type, yet it deserves particular attention owing to the peculiarity of the material of the skin, which combines lightness and toughness and pliability. A truly ingenious and original idea to flay a birch tree and make a boat of its skin! In the framework of the canoe we have the embryo ribs and inwale of the future boat, and the three cross-ties may be regarded as the ancestors of thwarts to be born in time to come. As yet no keel. But that was soon to be. Go north, and trees become scarcer and dwindle in size. The birch is no longer of sufficient girth to serve the ingenious savage in the construction of a canoe. But the inventive genius of man was not to be denied. Skins of beasts, or woven material made waterproof, stretched upon a frame would serve for the same purpose as bark. But a stronger framework was necessary for a material thinner and more pliable than bark. And accordingly in all this class (except the coracle) we find stronger and more numerous timbers, including a longitudinal piece from stem to stern, and uprights at each end acting as stempost and sternpost respectively. The rude canvas-covered vessels of Tory Island, off the west coast of Ireland, still preserve one development of this type, close at home to us; while the cayaks of the Esquimaux and the larger fishing canoes of the Alaskans and the Greenlanders exhibit the skin-clad variety in many forms. In one of the models exhibited at the Fisheries Exhibition the framework showed in great perfection the ingenuity of the savage, to whom wood was a very scarce and precious article, short pieces being made to serve fitted together and fastened with thongs of hide, the whole being covered with a stout walrus skin. Even outriggers (as understood by the English oarsman) made of double loops of hide just long enough to cross each other and enclose the loom of the oar, were attached to the inner side of the gunwale.

Not only bark and skin and canvas-covered canoes exist and seem to have existed from an unknown antiquity, but a similar cause to that of which we were just speaking, viz. a scarcity of wood or of suitable wood, led to the construction of canoes of wood made of short pieces stitched together, and approaching more nearly to the type of vessel which may be called a boat. To these belong the canoes of Easter Island made of drift wood, and of many other islands in the Pacific, which are truly canoes and propelled by paddles, and the same peculiarity of build extends to the Madras surf boats, which are more truly boats. Many of these are tied together through holes drilled or burnt through a ledge left on the inner side of the plank or log, a peculiarity noticeable as appearing even in the early vessels of the Northern Seas. The stitched boat has not a nail Or a peg in her whole composition, but the structure, though liable to leak, is admirably suited for heavy seas and surf-beaten coasts, and owing to its pliability will stand shocks which would shatter a stiffer and tighter build. This being so, it is not surprising that vessels larger than canoes or boats were constructed (some authorities say even as large as 200 tons burden) upon this principle, which is certainly one of very great antiquity.

There is also a curious analogy in the progress of construction of these sea-going craft with the natural order in the construction of fishes, that is to say, if the ganoids are to be considered antecedent to the vertebrates among the latter. For in the case of the stitched vessels the hull is the first thing in time and construction, the ribs and framework being, so to speak, an afterthought, and attached to the interior when the hull has been completed, whereas the later and modern practice is to set up the ribs and framework of the vessel first and to attach the exterior planking afterwards. But the invention of trenails and dowels must have preceded the later practice, and have led the way to the building of such boats as those described by Herodotus (ii. 96), the ancestors of the Nile ‘nuggur’ of modern times. Ulysses, as a shipwright well skilled in his craft, uses axe and adze and auger, and with the latter makes holes in the timbers he has squared and planed, and with trenails and dowels ties them together. The wooden fastenings, be it remarked, are in size and diameter severally adapted, the first to resist the horizontal, the second to resist the vertical strain to which the raft would be exposed upon the waves. All this, we may observe, points to a stage anterior to that in which the use of metal nails and ties in ship- and boat-building had been introduced. Trenails and dowels are however still in use, and have a natural advantage over iron in the construction of wooden vessels, owing to the absence of corrosion, which in early times must have caused difficulties as to its employment for boat-building. Copper, on the other hand, though free from this objection, would be less available by reason of expense and the great demand for it for other purposes.

And now we have reached a point where we enter upon the borders of history. No doubt, if we knew more about the venerable antiquity of China, we might be able to add interesting facts, showing the development from the earliest sanpan to the great river boats, and the growth of that curious art which produced the Chinese junk, a vessel undoubtedly of a very antique type. But this knowledge is not ours at present, and so we must turn to the equally venerable civilisation of Egypt for information upon the subject. In Egypt fortunately the tomb paintings have preserved to us a wealth of illustration of boats and ships, some of which, if we may trust the learned, take us back to dates as early as 3000 b.c. In turning over the interesting plates of such works as Lepsius’s ‘DenkmÄler,’ or Duemichen’s ‘Fleet of an Egyptian Queen,’ we are struck by the reflection that, if at that early date boats, and ships, and oars, and steering paddles, and masts, and sailing gear had all been brought to such a stage of perfection, we must allow many centuries antecedent for the elaboration of such designs, and for the evolution of the savage man’s primary conception of canoe and paddle.

FLEET OF EGYPTIAN QUEEN.

However this may be, the lovers of our pastime, if they will consult the pages of the works above mentioned, will find rowing already well established as an employment, if not as an amusement, in the hoar antiquity of Egypt. Not only the Nile water, whether the sacred stream was within his banks or spread by inundation over the plain within his reach, was alive with boats, busy with the transport of produce of all sorts, or serving the purposes of the fowler and the fisherman, but the Red Sea and the Mediterranean coasts were witnesses of the might and power of Pharaoh, as shown by his fleets of great vessels fully manned, ready with oar and sail to perform his behests, ready to visit the land of Orient, and bring back thence the spices and perfumes that the Egyptians loved, together with apes and sandal wood, or else to do battle with the fierce Pelesta and Teucrians and Daunians who swarmed in their piratical craft upon the midland sea, entering the Nile mouths, and raiding upon the fat and peaceable plains of the Delta.

The Egyptian boats present several noticeable features. Built evidently with considerable camber, they rise high from the water both at stem and stern, the ends finished off into a point or else curved upwards and ornamented with mystic figure-heads representing one or other of the numerous gods. The steering is conducted by two or more paddles fastened to the sides of the boat in the larger class, and sometimes having the loom of the paddle lengthened and attached to an upright post to which it is loosely bound. A tiller is inserted in the handle, and to this a steering cord fastened, by which the helmsman can turn the blade of the paddle at will. The paddles vary but little in shape. They are mostly pointed, and have but a moderate breadth of blade. In some of the paintings they are being used as paddles proper, in others as oars against a curved projection from the vessel’s side serving as a thowl. But whether this is solid or whether it is a thong, like the Greek t??p?t??, against which the oarsman is rowing, it is not easy to say.

The larger vessels depicted with oars have in some cases as many as twenty-five shown on one side. In others the number is less. But it is quite possible that the artist did not care to portray more than would be sufficient to indicate conventionally the size of the vessel. In some of the vessels there are apertures like oar-ports, though no oars are shown in them, which raise a presumption that the invention of the bireme, the origin of which is uncertain, may with some probability be attributed to the Egyptians. The larger vessels are all fitted with sailing gear, and the rowing is evidently subsidiary to the sail as a means of locomotion. The wall paintings of Egypt give us ample details of Egyptian ships and boats extending over a period, as we are told, of twenty centuries and more. In them we have a glimpse of the maritime enterprise, in which the oar must have taken a principal part, of the races which inhabited the seaboard of the Mediterranean in which piracy had its home from very early times. Teucrians, Dardanians, Pelesta (? Pelasgians), Daunians, Tyrrhenians, Oscans, all seem to have been sea-going peoples, and at intervals to have provoked by their marauding the wrath of Pharaoh and to have felt his avenging hand.

But of all the seafaring races that made their homes and highways upon the waters of the great inland sea, the most famous of early times were the Phoenicians. According to some accounts connected with Capthor (Copts), and according to others emigrants from the coast of the Persian Gulf, their genius for maritime enterprise asserted itself very early, so that already before Homer’s time they were masters of the commerce of the Mediterranean, and had rowed their dark keels beyond the mystic pillars that guarded the opening of the ocean stream.

And yet, though the facts are certain, we know but little of these famous mariners, of their vessels and their gear. The only representation of their vessels is from the walls of the palaces of their Assyrian conquerors, an inland people, not likely to detect or appreciate any technical want of fidelity in the likeness presented. And, accordingly, the pictures are conventional, telling us but little of that which we should like to know about their build, and oars, and oar ports, &c. The date, moreover, is not in all probability earlier than 900 b.c.

Such being the case, we are driven for information to the more ample store of Greek literature, and to Greek vases for the earliest representations of the Greek vessel.

Homer abounds in sea pictures. He has a wealth of descriptive words, touches of light and colour which bring the sea and its waves and the vessel and its details with vivid and picturesque effect before us. His ships are black and have their bows painted with vermilion, or red of some other tone; they are sharp and swift, and bows and stern curve upwards like the horns of oxen. And withal they are rounded on both sides, and well timbered and hollowed out, and roomy, having by the gift of the poet a facile combination of all the opposite qualities, so desirable and so difficult in practice to unite. As yet there is no spur or ram, but round the solid stempost shrieks the wave, as the vessel is urged onward either by the mighty hands of heroes, or the god-sent breeze that follows aft. Nor is the vessel decked, except for a short space at bow and stern, where it had raised platforms. On the quarterdeck, so to speak, of the stern sat the great chiefs, whose warriors plied the oar, and there they laid their spears ready for use. There also was the standing place of the steersman who wielded the long paddle which served to guide the vessel. The thwarts which tied the vessel’s sides together (yokes or keys as they are called) served as benches for the oarsmen; those amidships had the heaviest and longest oars, so that they were places of honour reserved for the heaviest and strongest men, e.g. for Hercules and AncÆus in the Argo. Whether the ‘sevenfoot,’ to which Ajax retreats from the stern deck, when defending the Greek ships against the Trojans and hard pressed by them, be bench or stretcher, it gives us an idea of the breadth of the Homeric vessel at or near the place of the stroke oar. Long low galleys they must have been, with a middle plank running fore and aft, interrupted by the ‘tabernacle,’ in which the mast when hoisted was secured, having fore and back stays. The warriors were oarsmen, the oarsmen warriors. The smallest complement, as Thucydides observes, was fifty, the largest one hundred and twenty.

It is doubtful how far the Alexandrine poets can be relied upon as giving accurate information respecting details of ancient use. Yet we have many lifelike pictures and a great profusion of details, drawn no doubt from the ample stores of antiquarian knowledge which these laborious men of letters had at their service in the great Alexandrine library, and these go to fill up that which is lacking in the Homeric picture. And so when Apollonius the Rhodian paints for us such scenes as those of the building of the Argo, the launching, the detail of the crew, and the starting of the vessel, we cannot help feeling that they are described con amore, not of the sea, or of ships, or of rowing, but of the literary beauty of similar descriptions by earlier poets. In a word, they are at second hand. But better this than none at all.

The ‘bireme,’ or two-banked vessel, does not appear in Homer. But, as we have seen, it was probably in existence before Homer’s time. If of Egyptian parentage, it was adapted for use on the Mediterranean waters by the shipwrights of Sidon or Tyre. It is a curious reflection that this remarkable evolution of banked vessels should, so far as we can judge, have occupied about two thousand years; the curve, if we may use the expression, of development rising to the highest point in the useless Tesseraconteres of Ptolemy, and after Actium declining to the dromons and biremes of the Byzantine Emperor Leo, and finally subsiding into the monocrota or one-banked vessels, the galleys of mediÆval times.

The problem which taxed the ingenuity of those early shipwrights was briefly this, how to get greater means of propulsion by increasing the number of oars, without such increase in the length of the ship as would, by increased weight, neutralise the advantage and still further diminish that facility in turning which was of the greatest moment to the ancient war-vessel. Galleys with fifty oars on either side had already been constructed,[2] and all the speed that a hundred pairs of hands could give had been obtained, when the invention of the bireme exhibited the means of nearly doubling the power without much increasing the weight to be moved, since but little additional height or breadth was required.

The normal adjustment of the horizontal space between the oarsmen was then, as it is now, regulated by that canon of the ancient philosopher, ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ Twice the man’s cubit gives room for his legs when in a sitting posture. Hence the two-cubit standard (s??a ’d?p??a????) which is referred to by Vitruvius as the basis of proportion in other constructions besides ships and boats. Given this as the interscalmium (space between the thowls) or distance between points at which the oars in the same tier were rowed, it is clear that the rowing space of a vessel’s side would be, for a penteconter, or twenty-five a side, seventy-five feet, and for a hecatonter, if there ever was such a thing, 150 feet. To this must be added the parts outside the oarage space (pa?e?e??es?a), for the bows ten feet, and something more, say twelve feet, for the stern. So that a penteconter would be a long low galley of about ninety-seven feet in length. The new invention nearly doubled the number of oars without increasing the length of the oarage space.

It was found that by making apertures in the vessel’s sides at about three feet from the water and dividing the space between the (zyga) thwarts, room could be made for a second row of men with shorter oars, but still handy and able to add to the propulsion of the vessel. For these seats were found in the hold (thalamus), and hence while the upper tier of the bireme took their name from the zyga, benches or thwarts, and were called ‘Zygites,’ the men of the lower tier were called ‘Thalamites.’ These names were continued when the invention of the ‘thranos,’ or upper seat, had added a third or upper tier with longer oars to the system, and so introduced the trireme. If the number of the zygites in the penteconter was twenty-five a side, and the first bireme was a converted vessel of that class, the number of thalamites, owing to the contraction of the bow and the stern, would necessarily be two or three a side less. Thus we may consider a converted penteconter to have been capable of carrying a rowing crew of between 90 and 100 men. Similarly a triaconter would have been capable of adding nearly twenty pairs of arms to her propelling power. When, in consequence of the new invention, vessels were expressly built as triremes, we may imagine that for convenience’ sake the benches or zyga would be a little raised, so as to give more room for the raised seat of the thalamites that was fastened on to the floor of the vessel.

The narrowness of the vessels affected the disposition of the rowers in the Greek galleys in a peculiar way. It is evident from the testimony of the ancients that they adhered strictly to the principle of ‘one man to each oar.’ The arrangement seen in mediÆval galleys was absolutely unknown to them, and would not have suited them. It belongs to a different epoch and a different order of things, when the invention of the ‘apostis’ had made the use of large sweeps rowed by two or three men possible, and a vessel with sets of three rowing upon the same horizontal plane might be called a trireme, though utterly unlike the ancient vessel of that name.

In the ancient vessel the tiers of oarsmen must have sat in nearly the same vertical plane, obliquely arranged, one behind and below the other. Thus in the bireme the zygite, as he sat on his bench, had behind him and below him his thalamite whose head was about 18 inches behind the zygite thwart and a little above it. Moreover, as his seat was now a little raised, the zygite required an appui for his feet, which was formed for him on the bench on which the thalamite next below and in front of him was sitting; on either side of him his feet found a resting-place. As the zygite fell back during the stroke and straightened his knees, there was plenty of room for the thalamite below to throw his weight also on to his oar. There seems to have been but little forward motion of the body. The arms were stretched out smartly for the recovery, as we learn from Charon’s instructions to Dionysus in the ‘Frogs’ of Aristophanes, and then a driving smiting stroke was given (cf. the words ??a??e??, pa?e??, ??a???pte?? ???a p?d?) and the brine tossed up by the blade.

When once the principle had been established, by which additional power could be gained without increasing the length of the vessel, and had been tested by practical experience, its development was sure to follow. What century witnessed the birth of the trireme is not certain, but probably by 800 b.c. the earliest vessels of this description had been launched. The quick-witted sharp-eyed Greek was not slow to copy, and by the beginning of the next century the busy shipwrights of Corinth were building the new craft for Samians as well as for themselves.

It is, however, in the Attic trireme such as composed the fleets of Phormio and Conon that historical interest has centred, and though quinqueremes were commonly in use in the second and third centuries, b.c., and even still larger rates of war vessels constructed till they were inhabilis prope magnitudinis, unwieldy leviathans, such as the sixteen-banked flagship of Demetrius Poliorcetes, yet the interest in the trireme has never failed, and the splendour of its achievements has insured to it an attention on the part of the learned which no other class of vessel has been able to attract to itself. The problem of construction of the trireme, and of the method of its propulsion, has exercised the ingenuity of scholars ever since the revival of letters. It has a literature of its own, and it may fairly be said that if the enigma has not been solved, it is not for want of industry or acumen.

One point we may as well make clear at once, viz., that whatever was the vessel the ancients invariably went upon the principle, One man, one oar. Volumes have been wasted in attempts to prove that the arrangement of the ancient galleys with respect to propulsion were identical with, or very similar to, those of the mediÆval galleys of Genoa or Venice. But the mediÆval galleys were essentially monocrota, or one-banked vessels, though they may have been double-banked or treble-banked in the sense that two or three men were employed upon one oar.

Another distinction that it is necessary to note with reference to the ancient galleys is that they were called Aphract or Kataphract according as the upper tier of rowers was unprotected and exposed to view, or fenced in by a bulwark stout enough to protect them from the enemy’s missiles. The system of side planking is observable as already adopted in some of the Egyptian vessels, though of the Greeks the Thasians are credited with the invention.

In the year 1834, during the process of excavating some ground for new public buildings in the PirÆus near Athens, some engraved stone slabs were found built up in a low wall which had been uncovered. These were happily preserved and deciphered, and were found to be records of the dockyard authorities of the Athenian admiralty in the second and third centuries before Christ. Many interesting details were thus brought to light which were set in order by the illustrious scholar Boeckh in his volume entitled ‘Urkunden Über das Seewesen des attischen Staates.’ His pupil Dr. Graser has carried on his researches by the examination of innumerable coins, vases, etc., and has rescued the subject from much of the obscurity which enveloped it. The following description of the trireme, based upon his labours, is quoted, by permission, from the new edition of the ‘EncyclopÆdia Britannica,’ vol. xxi. pp. 806, 807.

Such, we may believe, was the trireme of the palmy days of Athens. Built for speed, it was necessarily light and handy, and easily turned, so that the formidable beak could be plunged into the enemy’s side, the moment a chance was given. But it required sea room for its manoeuvres, and in a narrow strait or land-locked harbour, such as that of Syracuse, was no match for the solid balks of timber with which Corinthian and Syracusan shipwrights strengthened the bows of their vessels. Against these the pride of Athens was hurled in vain, only to find itself broken up and rendered unseaworthy by the crash of its own ram.

With the defeat of Athens comes in the fashion of larger vessels with more banks of oars, quadriremes, quinqueremes, and so on up to sixteen banks, when the increase of the motive power had been more than overtaken by the increase in bulk and weight. The principles of construction in these larger vessels seem to have been the same as in the trireme. The space for each man was probably somewhat less, and the handles of the upper tiers of oars were weighted with lead, so as to give a balance at the thowl between the parts outboard and inboard.A question difficult to solve has often been raised respecting the pace at which these ancient galleys could be propelled. If five-man power could be taken as equivalent to one-horse power, then for the propulsion of the trireme there would have been available about thirty-five horse power, but that would hardly give a very high rate of speed.

There is a passage in Xenophon[3] in which he speaks of a distance of about 150 nautical miles, from Byzantium to Heraclea, as possible for a trireme in a day, but a long day’s work. Assuming eighteen hours’ work out of the twenty-four, a speed of something over eight knots per hour would be required for this, which may perhaps seem excessive. Still we may believe that by a crew when fresh a pace not less than this could be achieved.

The Romans, though it may be inferred from treaties with Carthage and with Tarentum that they had some kind of fleet in the time even of the kings, yet did not apply themselves readily to maritime pursuits, and made no serious effort to become masters of the Mediterranean till the first Punic War. We hear then of their copying a quinquereme which had fallen into their hands by accident. A fleet was constructed in sixty days from the time that the trees were first cut down, and meantime crews were practised diligently in rowing on dry land in a framework of timber which represented the interior of the vessels that were building. This first essay at extemporising a fleet does not seem to have been very successful. But nothing daunted they persevered, and the second venture under the Admiral Duillius took with it to sea a new invention called the ‘corvus,’ a sort of boarding bridge by which, when it once fell on the enemy’s vessel, the Roman infantry soon found its way on to his deck, and made short work with the swarthy African crew. This revolutionised the maritime struggle, and gave unexpectedly the naval superiority to Rome. The large vessels of war (alta navium propugnacula) continued to be built until the time of Actium, when the light Liburnian galleys, which were biremes, were found to be more than a match for the leviathans, whose doom from that moment was sealed.

From that time, with the exception of the accounts of naumachiÆ, there is very little of interest about galleys to be gathered. The coins and the paintings of Pompeii show us craft degenerating in type. The column of Trajan exhibits biremes as still in vogue. Later on there is a light thrown upon the subject by the Tactica of the Byzantine Emperor Leo about 800 a.d., who gives directions as to the building and composition of his fleet, which is to consist of biremes, or dromones as he calls them, and light galleys with one bank of oars.

From these latter eventually sprang the mediÆval galley, which however differed from the ancient galley in the arrangement of its oars by the use of the ‘apostis,’ a projecting framework which took the place of the ancient ‘parodus,’ and upon which the thowls were placed, against which the long sweeps could be plied by two or three men attached to each. For full and accurate descriptions of these mediÆval vessels the reader who has any curiosity on the subject should consult the ample works of M. Jal. His ArchÉologie Navale and Glossaire Nautique contain the fullest information as regards the build, and fittings, and crews of the mediÆval galley. The sorrows and sufferings of ‘la Chiourme’ were enough to give rowing a bad name, as an employment too cruel even for slaves and fit to be reserved for criminals of the worst description.

It is in England, and in the hands of English free men and boys, that the oar has maintained an honourable name, as the instrument of a pastime healthy and vigorous, with a record not inglorious of struggles in which the strength and skill of the nation’s youth have contended for the pride of place and the joy of victory.