574

SHIPBUILDING.

or carpentry, that our Saviour himself spent 18 years of his pre- icious life from his 12th to his 30th year, in labouring along with Ihis mother’s husband at this honest and industrious employment.But to return to antiquity, whatever perfection the art of ship- ]building had attained before the flood, a very small portion of artor contrivance was seen in the first ships, 1 hat were made after it.They were neither strong nor durable; but consisted only of afew planks laid together, without beauty or ornament, and just socompacted as to keep out the water. In some places they wereOnly the hulks or stocks of trees hollowed, and then consistedonly of one piece of timber. Nor was wood alone applied to thisuse; but any other buoyant materials, as the Egyptian reedpapyrus ; or leather, of which the primitive ships were frequentlycomposed; the bottom and sides being extended on a frame ofthin battens or scantlings, of flexible wood, or begirt with wickers,such as we have frequently beheld amongst the American savages.In this manner they were often navigated upon the rivers of Ethi-opia, Egypt , and Sabsean Arabia, even in later times. But in thefirst of them, we find no mention of any thing but leather or hidessewed together. In a vessel of this kind, Dardanus secured hisretreat to the country afterwards called Troas , when he was com-pelled by a terrible deluge to forsake his former habitation of Sa-jnothrace. . According to Virgil, Charon’s infernal boat was of thesame composition. But as the other arts extended their influence,naval architecture likewise began to emerge from this gloom ofignorance and barbarism ; and as the ships of those ages were in-creased in bulk, and better proportioned for commerce, the ap-pearance of those floating citadels of unusual form, full of livingmen, flying with seemingly expanded wings over the surface of theuntravelled ocean, struck the ignorant people with terror andastonishment -. and hence, as we are told by Aristophanes , arosethe fable of Perseus flying to the Gorgons , who was actually car-ried thither in a ship ! Hence in ail probability, the famous storyof Triptolemus riding on a winged dragon is deduced, only be-cause he sailed from Athens, in the time of a great dearth, to amore plentiful country, to supply the necessities of his people.The fiction of the flying horse Pegasus may be joined with these,•who, as several mythologists report, was nothing but a ship withsails, and thence said to be the offspring of Neptune the sovereignof the sea; nor does there appear any other foundation for thestories of griffins, or of ships transformed into birds and fishes, whichwe so often meet with in the ancient poets. So acceptable to thefirst ages of the world were inventions of this nature, that who-ever made any improvements in navigation or naval architecture,building new ships better filled for strength or swiftness than thoseused before, or rendered the old more commodious by additionalcontrivances, or discovered countries unknown to former travel-lers, were thought worthy of the greatest honours, and often asso-ciated into the number of their deified heroes. IleRce we havein astronomy the designs of Aries and Taurus, which were no otherthan two ships; the one ornamented with the figure of a ram,

f ilded; the other with that of a bull; the former transportedhryxus from Greece to Colchis , and the latter Eurvpa fromPhoenicia to Crete. Argo, Pegasus, and Perseus , were like-wise new ships of a different construction from the former,which being greatly admired by the barbarous people of thosetimes, where supposed to have been once living animals, werethence translated amongst the stars, in commemoration of theirinventors, and believed to be metamorphosed into constellationsby the poets of their own and of succeeding ages. The chiefparts, of which ships anciently consisted, were three, viz. thebelly, the prow, and the stern : these were again composed of othersmaller parts, which shall be briefly described in their order. Inthe description we chiefly follow Scheffer, who has so copiouslytreated this subject, and with such industry and learning collectedwhatever is necessary to illustrate it, that very little room is leftfor enlargement. 1. In the belly, or middle-part of the ship,there was rpirt;, curina, or the keel, which was composed ofwood: it was placed at the bottom of the ship being designed tocut and glide through the waves, and therefore was not broad butnarrow and sharp ; whence it may be perceived that not all ships,but only the fx«x»cu which ships of war were called, whose bellieswere straight and of a small circumference, were provided withkeels, the rest having usually flat bottoms. Around the outside ofthe keel were fixed pieces of wood, to prevent it from being da-maged when the ship was first launched into the water, or after-

wards struck on any rocks; these were called in Latin

cunei. Next to the keel was ynXnif, the pump-well, or well-room,within which was contained the awXiov, or pump; through whichwater was conveyed out of the ship. After this, there was Jtungretjoot;, or the second keel somewhat resembling what is nowcalled kelson; it was placed beneath the pump, and calledXscr&ov, x/iXx'ivs, xxiitictoJiov; by some it is falsely supposed tobe the same with Above the pump was an hollow place,

called by Herodotus xoixs T >ic vuoc, by Pollux xotij and yas-ga, be-cause large and capacious, alter the form of a belly; by the Latinstestudo. This was formed with crooked ribs, with which it wassurrounded, which were pieces of wood rising from the keel up-wards, and called by Hesychius vo/xu-, and by others, tyxoiX>«, thebelly of ihe ship being contained within them : in Latin , costce.;and in English , timbers. Upon these were placed certain planks,which Aristophanes calls ivvijimKit or ivnoumJa. The nxwyu, latera,or sides, of the ship, encompassed all the former parts on bothhands; these were compassed of large rafters extended from prowto stern, and called and because by them the

whole fabric was begirt or surrounded. In botli these sides therowers had their places, called to>x,oi and timXta, in Latin. /bri andtranstra, placed above one another; the lowest was calledA»Xisfiof, and those that laboured therein StakafjMi, the middle%vya, and the men %vyiei ; the uppermost Ajaroi, whence the rowerswere termed Ajxvitoi. In these apartments were spaces throughwhich the rowers put their oars; these were sometimes one con-tinued vacuity from one end to the other, called Tgaipuf, but moreusually distinct boles, each of which was designed for a single 'oar ; these were styled TjxfxttU TotwfxaTa, as also because

not unlike the eyes of living creatures. All of them were by amore general name termed tyxujra-re, from containing the oars ; butlyxwwiv seems to have been another thing, signifying the spacesbetween the banks of oars on each side, where the passengers ap-pear to have been placed. On the top of all there was a passageor place to walk, called w«;ttSo t , and wttjafyavo;, as joining to theAjmoi, or uppermost bank of oars. 2. lljwga, the prow or fore-deck, whence it is sometimes called psTiowv, and commonly dis-tinguished by other metaphorical titles taken from human faces.In some ships there is mention of two prows, as also two sterns ;such was Danaus’s ship adorned by Minerva when he fled fromEgypt . It was usual to beautify five prow with gold and varioussorts of paint and colours; in the primitive times red was most inuse; whence Homer ’s ships were commonly dignified with thetitles of and pomxra«f>j°i, or red-faced ; the blue like-

wise, or sky-colour, was frequently made use of, as bearing a nearresemblance to the colour of the sea ; whence we find ships calledby IIomer xuavowr.iunoi, by Aristophanes xyavi/xS’oxoi. Several othercolours were also made use of; nor were they barely var-nished over with them, but very often annealed by wax meltedin the fire, so as neither the sun, winds, nor waters, wereable to deface them. The art of doing this was called fromthe wax xxOTyjaf 1 ®, from the fire ifxavrix’i, which is described byVitruvius, and mentioned by Ovid . In these colours the variousforms of gods, animals, plants, &c. were usually drawn, whichwere likewise often added as ornaments to other parts of the ships,as plainly appears from the ancient monuments presented to theworld by Baysius. The sides of the prow were termed vdig-t, orwings, and vragia according to Scheffer, or rather rnigiuw ; for sincethe prow is commonly compared to a human face, it will naturallyfollow that the sides should be called cheeks. These are noWcalled bows by our mariners. 3. rijvfxvx, the hind neck or poop,sometimes called *ga, the tail, because the hindermost part of theship; it was a figure more inclining to round than the prow, theextremity of which was sharp, that it might cut the waters; '*■was also built higher than the prow, and was the place where thewilot sat to steer; the outer-bending part of it was called imm*’!answering to our term quarter. They had various ornamentssculpture on the prow ; as helmets, animals, triumphal wreath®#&c,—The stern was more particularly adorned with wings, shield®#&c. Sometimes a little mast was erected whereon to hang rib-bands of divers colours, which served instead of a flag to distin-guish the ship ; the weathercock, to signify the part from whencethe wind blew. On the extremity of the prow was placed a roundpiece of wood called the * rora its bending ; and sometime®

of9ax,u@-, the eye of the ship, because fixed in the fore-deck ; 0*this was inscribed the name of the ship, which was usually taken

from