HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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their superiority in dimensions, of no higher description than open boats; decks*it is well known, being an addition of much more recent date. T he man-ner in which the voyage was executed, with the shortness of die passage fromone country to another,, occasioned by the frequency of islands- in those seas,rendered the want of covering no material impediment to the service in which,they were occupied. Improvement and addition caused, in process- of time,the diminution of numbers, in proportion as the science became- more complex.A fleet of eighty triremes became as formidable an armament as that, had beforebeen considered, which amounted to eight hundred. The Athenians, when incontest with the Persians, built two hundred triremes at one time, owing tothe'advice of Themistoelesand the fleets equipped by tha-t single, republic,,not unfrequently exceeded three hundred gallies. In later times, however,,an armament of thirty or forty was considered of material moment, and one ofeighty, as demanding the utmost exertions the state was capable of making.Yet all these vessels, different as their description might be, were indiscrimi-nately stiled, in the different languages, peculiar to the countries which pos-sessed them, what answered to the Latin, term, naves, as observed at the com-mencement of this chapter. , Such was the appellation bestowed on the rudediminutive vessels of Stabrabates, as well as on those which Athens possessedwhen in its zenith of power, and the arts were cultivated to the utmost heightof what was then supposed perfection.

Exclusive of timber, which- was certainly of the first necessity, the differentmaterials used by the ancients in the, construction, both of,their war gallies,and all other vessels built by them, are no less.worthy of attention than isthe peculiar method and form, in which those materials, taken conjunctively,were put together. The nails, or bolts, certainly possess an interesting claim tonotice, the mode by which, the beams and t .planks were confined to their re-spective places, or duties, being scarcely less consequential to the formation ofa vessel than the timber itself. Iron, on account of its abundance,, was firstapplied to this purpose ; but the ancients, as has since been the case with themoderns, experimentally found, that, applicable as M it really is, on many ac-counts, to th*s purpose, its use is not.unattended with disadvantages,, on others.While the cheapness with which bolts and nails were forged out of iron,proved an incentive on one band, its propensity to rust, and early decay,more than counterbalanced the encreased expence occasioned by the .substitu,-

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