HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

gesture. Two steersmen were stationed at the helm, and two officers at, ornear the bow : to one of the latter the care of the anchor was entrusted, and tothe other the management of the tube of Greek fire, which supplied, and per-haps with more dread effect, the place of modern ordnance. The remainderof the crew performed, in conformity with the custom of ‘the early ages, thecompound office of mariners and soldiers, being alternately or jointly employedin directing the course of the vessel, annoying their foes, or defending them-selves from the attack.

Independent of that tremendous mode of annoyance just mentioned underthe name of the Greek fire, the arms of offence were long pikes, nothingvarying from the modern implement bearing the same name, together withbows and arrows. The latter supplied the place of musquetry: the archersbeing stationed on the upper deck, while the pike was equally engaged in theannoyance of the foe, through the row ports of the lower tier. Although thebulk of the fleet is unequivocally said to have been composed of vessels of theabove description, yet it is not contended but that there were a few gallies ofmore enlarged dimensions, whose crews consisted of three hundred persons,seventy of whom were soldiers, and the remainder mariners. These vesselswere probably intended, (a practice which has never since been discontinued)for the admiral gallies, their numbers being so inconsiderable, as to cause themto be esteemed rather as an excrescence from the science, than as an exampleof its established rules. Necessity appeared indeed to have prescribed to themarine architects of that time, the limits to which they were permitted toextend their art, in regard to the dimensions of vessels. Not only the art ofnavigation, considered as a science, but that more common branch of it, themethod of managing a vessel in case of storms, or contrary winds, was littleunderstood, the gallies themselves being calculated only for a tranquil sea.Hence it was, that the navigation round the Peloponnesian Cape was farmore dreaded by the ancients than that round the southernmost point ofSouth America, and the dreadful seas which washed its shores, was by Eu-ropeans two centuries since. To avoid the fearful horrors, it is said to havebeen customary to draw the imperial fleet across the Isthmus of ancientCorinth, a point of information that might either stagger modern belief,©r sink the .opinion of an ancient fleet to a mere assemblage of boats,did not a similar practice, which took place in America, under the conduct

of