E. Keble Chatterton

“ There is a continual clashing of shield and sword, a slatting of canvas and a splashing of oars, as the long-ships leap over the cold, silvery seas. The air is full of the deep-throated shouts of the sea-kings; the horizon is bright with the coloured sails and the gilded prows. Every man is a picked fighter and seaman; every craft a thing of beauty and of strength. ”

“ Think of the subsequent effects on the history of the world—the establishment of new trade routes consequent on the discovery of new continents, the impetus to enterprise, the peopling of new lands, the rise of young nations, the growth of sea-power, the spread of Christianity, the accumulation of fortunes and the consequent encouragement given to the arts and sciences. It is indeed a surprising but unhappy fact that humanity, because normally it has its habitation on land, forgets how much it owes to the sea for almost everything that it possesses. ”

“ He has no literary power of expression, but in the plain, staccato language of a hard merchant sailor and privateer he makes one jealous of the sights which he saw with his own eyes and can never be seen again. There is not to-day—certainly as regards British waters—any such craft as a brig, unless there is one small training ship still cruising about Plymouth Sound. But in his day one sometimes saw a fleet of 300 of them all turning to windward, having every one of them come out of the Tyne on the same tide. ”

“ We shall see the ships, at last afloat, having their masts stepped and their rigging set-up, their inventory completed, and then finally, we shall watch them for the first time spread sail, bid farewell to the harbour, and set forth on their long voyages to wage war or to discover, to open up trade routes or to fight a Crusade. And then, when once they have cleared from the shelter of the haven we are free to watch not merely the ship, but the ways of ship and men. We are anxious to note carefully how they handled these various craft in the centuries of history ”

“ He was the discoverer of at least most of Great Britain, the Shetlands, and Norway as far as the Arctic Circle. And as he voyaged he studied the phenomena of the sea—collected invaluable data as to tides and their origin. Himself a Greek and unaccustomed to tidal movements, he was the first of his race to connect this systematic flowing and ebbing of the sea with the moon. Dr. Nansen, himself the greatest explorer of our times, has not hesitated to describe Pytheas as “one of the most capable and undaunted explorers the world has ever seen.” ”

“ Just as the monastic finds it desirable to withdraw from the hurly-burly of his age; just as the scientist in search of some new invention applies himself to no other study and lets every other consideration slide, so Prince Henry the Navigator, as he came to be called, thrust aside the attractions of Court life and wedded himself to a work which has benefited humanity to an extent that it does not yet and perhaps never will appreciate. ”

“ And so it was but natural that the zealous French went to Holland, lived there for some time in order to learn shipbuilding, translated the best Dutch authorities on this subject into French, and returned home to build on even more scientific lines. Therefore in the eighteenth century the French could build vessels as no one else in the world. It was from the latter, in turn, that the English at last acquired so much skill that the old rule-of-thumb methods of ship construction were for ever banished and the era of scientific shipbuilding entered upon. ”

“ But the finest and, in fact, the only way to make good seamen is to take them for long voyages. And so, in spite of the fact that less than a century and a half later the type of ships had scarcely changed, yet there is an evident improvement in the seaman’s skill. For everyone must concede that to take a fleet of over a hundred twelfth-century ships on such a long voyage as from Dartmouth to the Holy Land was in itself a very fine feat of endurance and skill. ”

“ In this will be noticed a ship with no fewer than thirty different sails. Hutchinson declares that in a light air—when he needed all the canvas he could spread—he turned to windward with all the sail drawing. As an ingenious piece of seamanship it is worthy of note, and surpasses the achievements of the clippers with their reputation for skysails and moonrakers. He speaks of the sail on the aftermost mast as the mizzen, and that curious-looking canvas right at the stern as a large driver with a light boom to make it set properly. ”

“ One cannot emphasise too strongly the fact that in the minds of the people of the Middle Ages India was the prize of the world, the depository of the greatest wealth. India, then, was the inspiration, Sagres the medium by which the countries of the globe outside Europe have been discovered and developed. ”

“ Oh, but ’tis said by several, our men are better seamen than the French. But the management of a private ship and a fleet are as different from each other as the exercising of a firelock and the conducting of an army.... The men who are best disciplined, of whatever country they are, will always fight the best.... In fine, if you will neither give an internal discipline for your ships, nor a system of tactics for the evolutions of your fleet, I don’t know from what you are to expect success.... ”

“ Boxhauling, insisted Hutchinson, is the surest and best method of getting a ship under command of helm and sails in a limited space. “There is a saying amongst seamen,” he adds, “if a ship will not stay you must ware her; and if she will not ware, you must box-haul her; and if you cannot box-haul her, you must club-haul her—that is, let go the anchor to get her about on the other tacks.” Every maritime officer to-day has written across his mind in imperishable letters the five L’s—“log, lead, look-out, latitude, and longitude.” ”

“ There had, indeed, been in use for some time a land astrolabe for finding the latitude of a place, and it was but a natural advance that this instrument should be adapted for use on board ship, so that the mariner might be able to ascertain his position on the vast expanse of trackless ocean. We are all most ready to admire and extol the men and the ships which made such daring voyages and discoveries in the past; but I submit that nothing like adequate recognition has been paid to the essential value of the astrolabe and cross-staff, or their successor, the modern sextant. ”

“ Had you passed one of the biggest of the Stuart ships at sea you would have seen a three- and sometimes a four-masted craft with topsails and t’gallants above her courses. On such a ship as the Sovereign of the Seas, if we are to judge by a perfectly authentic engraving, royals were also set sometimes. On the mizzen you would have observed the lateen sail still in existence. What especially would have struck you would have been not merely the elongated beak, but the very long bowsprit. ”

“ You will remember that important campaign of 1587, when Drake took an expedition out to Cadiz, sunk and burnt an enormous quantity of the enemy’s tonnage, repulsed the attacks of the Mediterranean galleys—completely beating this type of craft at her own special game and in her own waters—captured large quantities of supplies intended for the Armada, and demonstrated himself to be no man of medieval conceptions, but a modern strategist by waiting at Cape St. Vincent, where he held the real key to the situation—able to prevent the fleets from Cartagena and Cadiz from reaching Lisbon. ”

“ Thus it came about that the man who could work an astrolabe was a person of some importance. He was held in high honour by the crew, since he alone was able to state the ship’s position and her course thence to her nearest port. Naturally, therefore, those Arabian pilots and Oriental astronomers who had been brought to the Iberian peninsula would go swaggering along the streets of Lisbon wearing these sea-rings conspicuously both as their badge of office and as indicative of their dignity. ”

“ They had the real ship-love, which is the foundation of all true seamanship; they were in sympathy with the life and work, and they knew how to build a ship well. They furnished themselves with the finest timber from Lebanon and surpassed the Egyptian inland sailors by making their craft stronger, longer, more seaworthy, and more able to endure the long, daring voyages which it delighted the Phœnicians to undertake. Similarly, their crews were better trained to sea-work, were more daring and skilful than the Nile-dwellers. ”

“ It is a little difficult just at first to place6 oneself in the position of those navigators of the early centuries. To-day we are so accustomed to modern navigational methods, we have been wont so long to rely on them for finding our way across the sea, that it requires a great effort of the imagination to conceive of men crossing the Atlantic and other oceans—not to speak of long coasting voyages—without chart or compass, sextant or log-line. There are many names in history which very rightly have won the unstinted applause of humanity irrespective of national boundaries. ”

“ Before he has allowed the canvas to be unfurled, and before the anchor has been broken out from the ground, a couple of trumpeters mount the top of the stern-castle and blow their notes to warn any incoming craft that they are emerging. It is exactly analogous to the blowing of a modern steamship’s syren when the big liner is clearing from her port.
The thirteenth-century ship, then, puts to sea. She has both oars and a sail, she has an able crew, she has a good, strong hull of a healthy seaworthy type. She is ready for anything that comes along. ”

“ Almost you can see the strong arms being drawn up to the breast and thrust smartly away again. The blue Scylla wins, but it is a splendid struggle. The little touches of the ship which was “swifter than wind or flying arrow speeds towards land,” and of the disabled galley which moves slowly (like to a snake which has been run over) , yet hoists her canvas and enters the harbour’s mouth “with full sails,” are pencilled in by a man who must have often watched a galley doing her work. ”

“ But what were the results of Henry’s great organisation and activities? Indirectly he was the cause of Columbus finding the New World when looking for India in 1492; of Da Gama reaching India in 1498; of Magellan encircling the globe in 1520–2: less directly still to him may be traced the round-the-world voyages of Drake and Anson. To Prince Henry the Navigator may be ascribed at least half the honour in conquering the islands of the Atlantic and the western coast of Africa, the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, the founding of transoceanic empires and magnificent cities. ”

“ In the schools of Sagres, the shipyards of Lagos, and the voyages of Prince Henry’s ships, we have one of the finest combinations of theory and practice which the mind of man could ever devise. It must indeed have been a most fascinating institution. From this school graduated a fearless race of sailors, who for their daring and enterprise have never been surpassed either in Elizabethan or Nelsonian times when we consider the limitations of their equipment. ”

“ Therefore if we note carefully the ways of the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and Nina, we are really focussing the most expert seamanship and navigation of the fifteenth century. There were certainly ships afloat as good as, if not better than the Santa Maria; but what is to be remembered is that those illustrious explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were really expert navigators, and not merely daring seamen, astute traders, or courageous soldiers. ”

“ Just to the right of this comes Sagres, and a little further east is Lagos. In the year 1415 Prince Henry settles at Sagres, a cold, barren, dreary, inhospitable promontory, but one singularly suitable for quiet study and research, with the whole extent of the Atlantic to look out upon, and the fresh sea breezes to invigorate the mind away from the insincerities of civilised life. The fifteenth century has always been regarded as the last of the “Dark Ages,” but few more wonderful things happened either then or after than the activities which emanated from the Sagres community. ”

“ Before going into action a ship would sometimes coil her cable round the deck breast high and hang thereon mattresses and blankets as a kind of protection. And here we must say a word concerning the development of naval tactics. As in other maritime departments, so in regard to this England owed a great deal to Spanish influence. Naval warfare in the Mediterranean was already a science, and learned treatises had been written thereon. If the Spaniards were not a race of seamen by nature, at least they had developed the scientific side of the sailor’s life in advance of the English. ”

“ It makes but little difference whether its possessor commanded a Viking ship or a Spanish galleon. To-day in any foreign port, granted that both parties have a working knowledge of each other’s language, you will find that there is a closer bond between shipmen of different nationalities than there is between, say, a British seaman and a British landsman. For seamen, so to speak, belong to a nation of their own, which is ruled not by kings or governments, but by the great forces of nature which have to be respected emphatically. ”

“ The whole project is so intimately bound up with the development of seamanship and navigation, that we cannot well afford to omit this sketch from our purview. It was not by one single effort, but by a series of attempts that the task was performed. The doubling of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama in 1497 was notable not merely in itself—not merely because of the long voyage and the attainment of Africa’s southern cape—but because it showed that that ancient instinct was right: there was a sea route to India for those who had the daring to venture. ”

“ And the account of the bad weather encountered successfully, the use of stellar navigation, the good seamanship employed, and the proof of the corn-ship’s seaworthiness are all too interesting to be lightly dispensed with. In the present days of accurate charts, ingenious nautical instruments, and big, sound ships, one is a little too apt to imagine that the ships and the ability of their crews in ancient times were scarcely worthy of serious consideration—deserving of little more than ridicule. ”