HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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in great measure, the same appearance with flax, not improbably what is nowcalled paut, and being properly introduced into the seams, these were payedover, as an additional precaution against leakiness, with a paste made of lime,prepared, most probably, as already stated, and which possessed the peculiarlyuseful property of resisting water.

In addition to all this care and attention, it was customary, in times farremote, to pay or coat over the whole of the bottom with melted wax, orrather pitch, the mode of collecting and preparing which, varied nothing fromthe modern practice. It has been already observed by Maurice, in his volumeof Indian Antiquities, speaking of the vessels belonging to the ancients, “ thatthey were accustomed to use hides, properly prepared and hardened for thepurpose, which being stretched, and firmly attached to the bottom, served asa species of sheathing, which being well payed, or covered with a sufficientcoat of resin, or pitch, proved a very considerable protection to it againstthose injuries which would have arisen from the salt water being in constantcontact with it.” This custom of sheathing, which has been supposed bymany persons to rank among the most modern inventions, was certainly ofvery ancient date, for it is at least nearly coeval with Christianity itself. Theauthenticity of this supposition is fully proved by the discovery and rescueof Trajan’s galley from the lake Riccio, where it had remained under waterfor more than thirteen hundred years. Leo Baptisti Alberti, who records thecircumstance, states, on his own inspection and knowlege, “ that the pine andcypress, of which it was built, had endured and were then in so sound astate, as to be nearly incredible: the bottom was, according to the modern, andeasily comprehended scientific term, doubled : the seams had been evidentlycaulked with linen, and the whole of the external part carefully smeared, orpayed with a coat of Greek pitch, over which was brought an exterior covering,or what is now called a sheathing, formed of lead, rolled or beaten to a properthinness, and closely attached to the bottom by a sufficient number ot smallcopper nails.”

Locke, who has noticed the above circumstance in his History of Naviga-tion, prefixed to Harris’s Voyages, observes, “ here we have caulking andsheathing together above sixteen hundred years ago ; for, (adds our author)

I suppose no man can doubt, that the sheet of lead nailed over the outside w ithcopper nails was sheathing, and that in great perfection, the copper nailsbeing used rather than iron, which, when once rusted in water with the

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