42

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

dinary burthen, that it carried one hundred and twenty thousand bushels of cornmerely by way of ballast.

The olive and oleaster, or wild olive, were much esteemed on account of somequalities they possessed, and rejected in respect to others. It was deemed on onehand too heavy and too flexible for the purpose, but on the other was found ex-tremely durable, being scarcely susceptible of decay. The Egyptians, as it hasbeen necessary to observe already, were extremely fond of using the acantha, oracanthus. Such was its reported durability, that the followers of Alexander theGreat are said to have 7 found at Tylus, in the gulph of Persia, vessels which hadbeen built two hundred years, and were even then fit for the purposes of navigation.

It has been quaintly observed, that the hull of every ship consisted of threeparts, the prow, or head, the poop, or stern, and the body, or midship frame :under the bottom, and along the center of the latter, passed the carina, or keel,so denominated from the Latin verb curro, signifying to run, inasmuch as bydividing the element on which the vessel floated, in an acute angle, it was found tocontribute, in a very great degree, towards encreasing the celerity with which thehull passed through the water. At the same time it produced another good effect;it served as it does in modern use for the foundation of the ribs, or timbers, whichformed the body, bearing no slight resemblance to the vertebrae of the back, in theanimal and human frame ; continuing up the head or bow of the vessel in acurve line, conforming to its shape, it became what is now called the stem:as well adding stability and firmness to the front most opposed to the assaults ofthe sea, as enabling it to divide and pass through the swell of it, with greaterease and velocity than the adoption of any other form would have permitted.

The keel is reported to have been generally omitted during the early ages ofnavigation, in vessels intended merely for commercial purposes. The form ofthese, from the most authentic descriptions, appear to have borne greater simi-litude to those at present employed in the same line among the Hollanders,than to any others now in use. They were flat floored, round, broad, drawinglittle water, and of very great breadth in proportion to their length, so that theymight be capable of containing a larger quantity of commodities, than would bethe case under the adoption of any other practised form. Their floor timbers werecontinuous; and with the addition of one futtock only on each side, (called bythe Greeks lyttohioi, meaning the ribs, or internal part of the animal body) theframe was completed. Some persons, indeed, have gone so far as to assert,that by a peculiar mode, known only to the ancients, the timber was rendered

so