Man on the Ocean by Robert Michael Ballantyne (web ebook reader TXT) 📕

and who visited the South Sea Islands nearly half a century later than Cook, tells us that the _single canoes_ used by some of the islanders are far safer than the _double canoes_ for long voyages, as the latter are apt to be torn asunder during a storm, and then they cannot be prevented from constantly upsetting.

Single canoes are not so easily separated from their outrigger. Nevertheless they are sometimes upset in rough seas; but the natives don't much mind this. When a canoe is upset and fills, the natives, who learn to swim like ducks almost as soon as they can walk, seize hold of one end of the canoe, which they press down so as to elevate the other end above the sea, by which means a great part of the water runs out; they then suddenly loose their hold, and the canoe falls back on the water, emptied in some degree of its contents. Swimming along by the side of it, they bale out the rest, and climbing into it, pursue their voyage.

Europeans, however, are not so indifferent to being overturned as are the savages. On one occasion Mr Ellis, accompanied by three ladies, Mrs Orsmond, Mrs Barff, and his wife, with her two children and one or two natives, were crossing a harbour in the island of Huahine. A female servant was sitting in the forepart of the canoe with Mr Ellis's little girl in her arms. His infant boy was at its mother's breast; and a native, with a long light pole, was paddling or pushing the canoe along, when a small buhoe, with a native youth sitting in it, darted out from behind a bush that hung over the water, and before they could turn or the youth could stop his canoe, it ran across the outrigger. This in an instant went down, the canoe was turned bottom upwards, and the whole party precipitated into the sea.

The sun had set soon after they started from the opposite side, and the twilight being very short, the shades of evening had already thickened round them, which prevented the natives on shore from seeing their situation. The native woman, being quite at home in the water, held the little girl up with one hand, and swam with the other towards the shore, aiding at the same time Mrs Orsmond, who had caught hold of her long hair, which floated on the water behind her. Mrs Barff, on rising to the surface, caught hold of the outrigger of the canoe that had occasioned the disaster, and calling out loudly for help, informed the people on shore of their danger, and speedily brought them to their assistance. Mrs Orsmond's husband, happening to be at hand at the time, rushed down to the beach and plunged at once into the water. His wife, on seeing him, quitted her, hold of the native woman, and grasping her husband, would certainly have drowned both him and herself had not the natives sprung in and rescued them.

Mahinevahine, the queen of the island, leaped into the sea and rescued Mrs Barff; Mr Ellis caught hold of the canoe, and supported his wife and their infant until assistance came. 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 to space, and nailed the planks along.
These formed the sides; the deck he fashioned last;
Then o'er the vessel raised the taper mast,
With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind:
And to the helm the guiding rudder joined
(With yielding osiers fenced to break the force
Of surging waves, and steer the steady course).
Thy loom, Calypso, for the future sails
Supplied the cloth, capacious of the gales.
With stays and cordage last he rigged the ship,
And, rolled on levers, launched her on the deep."


The ships of the ancient Greeks and Romans were divided into various classes, according to the number of "ranks" or "banks," that is, _rows_, of oars. _Monoremes_ contained one bank of oars; _biremes_, two banks; _triremes_, three; _quadriremes_, four; _quinqueremes_, five; and so on. But the two latter were seldom used, being unwieldy, and the oars in the upper rank almost unmanageable from their great length and weight.

Ptolemy Philopator of Egypt is said to have built a gigantic ship with no less than forty tiers of oars, one above the other! She was managed by 4000 men, besides whom there were 2850 combatants; she had four rudders and a double prow. Her stern was decorated with splendid paintings of ferocious and fantastic animals; her oars protruded through masses of foliage; and her hold was filled with grain!

That this account is exaggerated and fanciful is abundantly evident; but it is highly probable that Ptolemy did construct one ship, if not more, of uncommon size.

The sails used in these ships were usually square; and when there was more than one mast, that nearest the stern was the largest. The rigging was of the simplest description, consisting sometimes of only two ropes from the mast to the bow and stern. There was usually a deck at the bow and stern, but never in the centre of the vessel. Steering was managed by means of a huge broad oar, sometimes a couple, at the stern. A formidable "beak" was affixed to the fore-part of the ships of war, with which the crew charged the enemy. The vessels were painted black, with red ornaments on the bows; to which latter Homer is supposed to refer when he writes of red-cheeked ships.

Ships built by the Greeks and Romans for war were sharper and more elegant than those used in commerce; the latter being round bottomed, and broad, in order to contain cargo.

The Corinthians were the first to introduce _triremes_ into their navy (about 700 years B.C.), and they were also the first who had any navy of importance. The Athenians soon began to emulate them, and ere long constructed a large fleet of vessels both for war and commerce. That these ancient ships were light compared with ours, is proved by the fact that when the Greeks landed to commence the siege of Troy they _drew up their ships on the shore_. We are also told that ancient mariners, when they came to a long narrow promontory of land, were sometimes wont to land, draw their ships bodily across the narrowest part of the isthmus, and launch them on the other side.

Moreover, they