HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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collected by his Brother Tosti, aided by Halfager , King of Norway , whoheaded his own Division of the Fleet—Harold attacks their Fleet , which havingdefeated , and killed both its Chiefs, he makes himself Master of their wholeArmament—Harold permits Olave , Son to Halfager , to depart without ransom ,taking with him ^Twenty of his Vessels—William the Norman disembarks hitArmy at Hastings in Sussex—Causes which favoured the Undertaking—theDefeat and Death of Harold.

H ISTORIANS have remarked, and with the strictest propriety, that thesystem of naval war had received no improvement subsequent to thetime of the Peloponnesian and Punic contests, so that as a natural consequence,the science of Marine Architecture was to be considered as stationary. Someauthors, suffering their ideas of excellence to be absorbed in the accounts ofthose immense vessels, of which the almost incredible histories of the earlyages have transmitted an unintelligible description, have supposed it very ra-pidly on the decline ; and as an incontrovertible proof of the justice of theiropinion, have observed, that the method of constructing vessels, fitted evenwith three or four tiers of oars only, rising above each other, was as muchunknown to the artificer of the eastern empire, as it is to the modern ship-wright. This is certainly taking the subject in the most modest point of view,triremes and quadriremes being undoubtedly as much inferior to the accounts-given of some of the vessels constructed by the ancients, as a modern sloop ofwar is to a first rate. The gallies composing the Constantinopolitan fleet, in theninth and two succeeding centuries, were stiled Dromones: they were fittedwith two tiers of oars only, each tier containing twenty-five benches, on whichwere seated fifty rowers, making in the aggregate one hundred men, whoworked the oars on both sides of the vessel; so that the number of oars wasequal to that of the persons employed to manage them, which could not havebeen the case, had the tiers been multiplied so as to render the oars otherwisethan extremely short and light. To the persons already mentioned, whowere to be considered in the lowest class of mariners, was to be added thocaptain, or commander, who in the hour of engagement took his station onthe poop, as well for the purpose of viewing the occurrences which might takeplace during the encounter, as for that of directing the efforts of his people to-any particular exertion, and also that of encouraging them by his voice and

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