Man on the Ocean: A Book about Boats and Ships. Robert Michael Ballantyne
about that ships were built, and men were found bold enough to put to sea in them for days and weeks together.
The ark is the first ship of which we have any authentic account. We now leave the region of conjecture; for the ark was built by Noah under the immediate direction of the Almighty, and we have a minute account of it in the Bible.
More than two thousand three hundred years before our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ came to earth, man’s wickedness had attained to such a height that God resolved to destroy the inhabitants of the world by a deluge. But, in the midst of wrath, God remembered mercy. He spared Noah and his family, and saved them from destruction by placing them in the ark along with pairs of the lower animals.
Every reader of the Bible knows the story of the deluge; but everyone may not be aware that traditions of this deluge are found in every part of the earth. East, west, north, and south—civilised and savage—all men tell us of a great flood which once covered the world, and from which only one family was saved, in a boat, or a canoe, or an ark.
What the barbarous and savage nations know dimly from tradition, we know certainly and fully from the inspired Word of God. The ark was built; the flood came; Noah with his family and two of every living creature entered into it; and for months the first ship floated on a sea whose shoreless waves flowed round and round the world.
What the ark’s form was we cannot precisely tell; but we know its dimensions pretty accurately.
Although it was not intended for voyaging, the ark must necessarily have been a perfect model of a vessel, meant to float upon the waters. To some extent, too, it must have been fitted to ride upon turbulent billows; for it “went upon the face of the waters” for upwards of seven months, and before it rested finally on the top of Mount Ararat, “God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged.” In regard to its size, the most interesting way to consider it, perhaps, will be to compare it with the Great Eastern, the largest ship that has yet been built by man. Assuming a cubit to be about 18 inches, the length of the ark was about 450 feet, its breadth about 75 feet, and its depth about 45 feet.
The Great Eastern’s length is 680 feet, its breadth 83 feet, and its depth from deck to keel 60 feet.
The ark was built of gopher-wood, which is thought by some to be pine, by others cedar. It consisted of three stories, and had a window and a door, and was pitched within and without. But it had neither masts nor rudder; and it is evident that, although it was man’s refuge, the ark was not designed to be managed by man, for after Noah and his family had entered in, God took on himself the guidance and preservation of their vessel. Thus our Saviour—of whom the ark was a type—specially guides and protects those who flee to him for refuge.
But although we have noticed the ark as being the first ship, we cannot with propriety place it in the front of the history of navigation. After the flood the ark seems to have been soon forgotten, or at least imperfectly remembered, and men reverted to their little canoes and clumsy boats, which sufficed for all their limited wants. It was not until about a thousand years later in the world’s history that men built ships of considerable size, and ventured on prolonged coasting-voyages, for the purposes of discovery and commerce. Navigation had been practised, and the art of ship-building had made very considerable progress, long before men dared to lose sight of the shore and venture out upon the mysterious bosom of the great unknown sea.
To the ancients the Mediterranean was the ocean; and among its bays, and creeks, and islands, maritime enterprise sprang into being and rose into celebrity. Among the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and Hebrews, we find the earliest traces of navigation and commerce. The first of these nations, occupying the narrow slip of land between Mount Lebanon and the Mediterranean, rose into fame as mariners between the years 1700 and 1100 before Christ—the renowned city of Sidon being their great sea-port, whence their ships put forth to trade with Cyprus and Rhodes, Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, Gaul, and Spain. Little is known of the state of trade in those days, or of the form or size of ancient vessels. Homer tells us, in his account of the Trojan War, that the Phoenicians supplied the combatants with many articles of luxury; and from Scripture we learn that the same enterprising navigators brought gold to Solomon from Ophir in the year 1000 B.C.
A short time previous to this the Phoenicians ventured to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar, and for the first time beheld the great Atlantic Ocean. Proceeding along the coast of Spain, they founded Cadiz; and, not long after, creeping down the western coast of Africa, established colonies there. But their grandest feat was achieved about 600 years B.C., when they sailed down the Red Sea and the eastern coast of Africa, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, sailed up the western coast, and returned home by the Strait of Gibraltar. Bartholomew Diaz must hide his diminished head before this fact; for, although he gets all the credit, the Phoenicians of old “doubled the Cape” at least twenty centuries before him!
That long voyages were made by the men of old, before authentic history began, seems highly probable. The expedition of the Argonauts to Colchis in the year 1250 B.C., in search of the “Golden Fleece,” is the first ancient voyage that lays claim to authenticity. What the Golden Fleece was is uncertain; some think it was a term used to symbolise the mines of precious metals near the Black Sea. Whatever it was, the Argonauts went in search of it: whether or not they found it is unrecorded in history. Jason, son of the King of Thessaly, was the leader of this expedition, which consisted of one ship and fifty men. A man named Argus built the ship, which from him was named the Argo, hence the name of Argonauts.
In treating of ancient vessels, we may as well proceed on the principle suggested by a sagacious child, who, when his mother was about to tell him a story, usually begged of her to “bedin at the bedinning.” We shall begin at the beginning.
Chapter Three.
Rafts and Canoes
Rafts, as we have already remarked, must undoubtedly have been the beginning of navigation. But they have not, like many other species of ancient craft, been altogether superseded by modern inventions. True, we do not nowadays carry on war on rafts, but we still carry on trade with them in many parts of the world. How the rafts of ancient times were formed we cannot tell precisely, though we can easily guess; but one thing we know, and that is, that the first improvement made in such craft was the thrusting of a few thick planks down into the water, to the depth of three or four feet, between the logs which composed the raft. These acted the part of a keel, and, by pressing against the water side-ways when a side wind blew, prevented the raft from making much of what is called leeway—that is, drifting in the direction in which the wind happened to be blowing. Some sorts of Dutch vessels use lee-boards for this purpose at the present time.
The rafts now in use on the great rivers of America are exceedingly curious in many respects. One peculiarity of many of them is that they float themselves, not goods, to market—the pine logs of which they are constructed being the marketable commodity. Some of these “lumber-rafts,” as they are called, are of great size; and as their navigators have often to spend many weeks on them, slowly floating down the rivers, they build huts or little cottages on them, cook their provisions on board, and, in short, spend night and day in their temporary floating-homes as comfortably as if they were on the land.
When these rafts approach a waterfall or a rapid, they unfasten the lashings and allow several logs tied together to run down at a time. After the rapid is passed, the loose logs are collected together, the raft is reconstructed, and the voyage down to the sea continued. Of course, huts are built only on rafts which navigate the largest rivers, and are not thus liable to be taken to pieces.
When the logs reach the sea, they are shipped to various parts of the world where timber is scarce. Large quantities are imported into Great Britain from Canada and other parts of America.
A bold thing has occasionally been done. Instead of shipping the logs in vessels, enterprising and ingenious men built them into a solid ship, leaving a small space to serve as a cabin and a hold for provisions; then, erecting masts, they