Dragon ship

“ Heedless he dashed through many a foaming rill,
Until he came unto the ship at last
And with no word into the deep hold passed.
Meanwhile the dragon, seeing him clean gone.
Followed him not, but crying horribly,
Caught up within her jaws a block of stone
And ground it into powder, then turned she,
With cries that folk could hear far out at sea,
And reached the treasure set apart of old,
To brood above the hidden heaps of gold. ”

“ ROSE OF EVENING
ON the fifth day of the fifth month the festival of the Dragon Junk is held along the Yangtze-kiang. A dragon is hollowed out of wood, painted with an armor of scales, and adorned with gold and bright colors. A carved red railing surrounds this ship, and its sails and flags are made of silks and brocade. The after part of the vessel is called the dragon’s tail. It rises ten feet above the water, and a board which floats in the water is tied to it by means of a cloth. Upon this board sit boys who turn somersaults, stand on their heads, and perform all sorts of tricks. ”

“ And northward through the dark sea drove the ship—haunted—lost—blind! her slow, discouraged heart beating in heavy rhythm. Northward to her doom.
Almost midnight. On the bridge Captain Ross and Mr. Amyas kept watch. Almost midnight. A new moon. Hard, bright stars. No wind. And the low continuous wash and ripple of following seas as the S. S. Dragon drove on her unguided, crooked course.
In Number 14 on deck A, its occupant moved with quick, uneasy steps. The sinuous grace, the wicked, glancing eyes were changing. ”

“ Easter of this year came late in April, and the Firth had been open for some time. As the procession left the church and wended through the streets of Nidaros to the great hall, a wonderful ship was seen entering the harbor. The prow ended in a dragon's head, the stern in the coils and tail of a dragon; both prow and stern were gilded, shining bravely in the morning sun. The hoisted sail represented a dragon's wings, and the glistening oar blades the beast's legs. ”

“ It was manifestly a ship—but what a ship! The Japanese stared as at some incredible monster. She was covered with an iron roof; a curved deck of iron plates shaped like the back of a tortoise. There was neither sail nor mast; beneath the protecting overhang of the iron deck the oars of many rowers urged her forward at stupefying speed. A hideous dragon’s head, with wide-open jaws, glared horribly above the bows. A raised oar in the stern bore the flaming standard of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the great sea-fighter and inventor of Korea. ”

“ These craft could each row a dozen men a side. They were so96 fast that no ship could overtake them. The dragon type was so called from the dragon’s head at the stem-head, and the animal’s tail which ended the ship as the lotus-bud was wont on the ancient Egyptian craft. The earliest mention of the dragon type dates from A.D. 868.
There was a craft named the Crane, which was a long-ship of the snekkja type. She was high in the stem, not beamy, carried thirty benches for her rowers, and had been constructed for the use of King Olaf Tryggvison during the autumn of 998. ”

“ So is renewed gratitude in the heart of T'ang Min, who will not forget.
"'How auspicious the day, how gentle the winds, when the golden dragon-ships of T'ang Min set forth! They are laden with the treasures of human desire. The jade and pearls weigh down the dragon-ships; they are bright with silk and gold and fragrant with spices. How vile is the nature of man! The dragon-ships are beset by sea-robbers; these orange sails are the sails of pirates. The greatest of the dragon-ships sinks under the green jade water. ”

“ Thereupon all the other ships followed the lead, and lo, as soon as the men in the Crane began to row, the crew felt no wind whatever. The driving storm was gone. In that sudden calm the fleet rowed quietly the one ship astern of the other, and so they arrived at God Isles. There they came upon Raud the Unchristened, and he was put to death with little enough mercy. His dragon-ship was captured, and Olaf called her the Worm—the Little Worm—“because when the sail was aloft then should that be as the wings of the dragon. The fairest of all Norway was that ship.” ”

“ When we reached the latter vessel it was too dark to observe anything more about her than the fact that she was fore-and-aft rigged, with a long yard on her foremast for bending a big square sail to when running before the wind, and had a broad, clean sweep of deck, with high bulwarks, through whose port-holes several cannon looked out. The Captain was received at the gangway by his chief mate, to whom I was pointed out with the half-laughing remark, "this is our new cabin-boy, who had the good taste to prefer the Dragon to the big ship over yonder." ”

“ The ship was a stolen ship; the stores, either from initial carelessness or ill administration during the voyage, were insufficient to carry them to any port except back to Papeete; and there retribution waited in the shape of a gendarme, a judge with a queer-shaped hat, and the horror of distant Noumea. Upon that side, there was no glimmer of hope. Here, at the island, the dragon was roused; Attwater with his men and his Winchesters watched and patrolled the house; let him who dare approach it. ”

“ The oar tholes were protected inside by round oaken shutters to prevent the water from running in. The large ones found show that no single man could row with one for a long time together; and the oars which propelled the large dragon-ship must have been very heavy.
Every large ship had its boats, sometimes two or more.
“Sigurd took two barkis [131] and dragged them up on the rock above the door of the cave, and fastened thick ropes around the ribs of the ship under the stem and stern” (Sigurd Jorsalafari, [132] c. 6) .
145
Fig. ”

“ In the first place it was forty-two feet long over all, and only three and a half feet beam—the planking was not much above an eighth of an inch in thickness, so that if one of the crew had slipped his foot off the stretcher, it must have gone through the bottom. There was a standing order that no man was to go into it with shoes on. She was to pull six oars, and her crew were the captains of the tops, the primest seamen in the ship, and the steersman no less a character than the skipper himself.
Her name, for I love to be particular, was the Dragon-fly ”

“ When there is a hope of success, Egbert, yes; but you know even the finest bull can be pulled down by a pack of dogs. The Dragon is a splendid ship, and does credit alike to King Alfred's first advice, to the plans of the Italian shipbuilders, and to the workmanship and design of the shipwright of Exeter, and I hope she will long remain to be a scourge to the Danes at sea as they have been a scourge to the Saxons on shore ”

“ Dreki (dragon) , Skeid, Snekkja, Skúta, Buza, Karfi. The herskip (host or war-ship) , 137also called the langskip (long ship) , was their most powerful ship of war. The Dragon was the finest and largest vessel of the North, and derived its name from the prow and stern being ornamented respectively with the head and tail of one or more dragons.
The most celebrated for its beautiful proportions was the Ormrinn Langi (the long serpent) , which, long afterwards, even during the time of Harald Hardradi and Sigurd Jórsalafari, served as a model (11th and 12th centuries) . ”

“ Observe the well-supported outer stem, the Dragon Head, the embroidered sail decorated with a variation of the "Swastika" design, which was much used by the Vikings on arms and ornaments; the vane at the masthead, the "shield-row" protecting the rowers, and the steersman guiding the ship by means of her "steer-board". ”

“ In the mediæval Chronicle of John of Bromton there is mentioned a wonder which happens about once a month in the Gulf of Satalia, on the Pamphylian coast. A great black dragon seems to come in the clouds, letting down his head into the waves, while his tail seems fixed to the sky, and this dragon draws up the waves to him with such avidity that even a laden ship would be taken up on high, so that to avoid this danger the crews ought to shout and beat boards to drive the dragon off. ”

“ They were all highly pleased to see a man they had heard so much talk of, and, after spending some hours very merrily with him, they would have him to try his fortune in that city, but to take care of the mint. Accordingly he went to a place of rendezvous of the brothers of the mendicant order in Temple-street, equipped himself in a very good suit of clothes, and then went upon the Exchange, as the supercargo of a ship called the Dragon, which had been burnt by lightning off the Lizard point. ”

“ There sailed the Red Dragon, of full three hundred tons and forty pieces of ordnance—the admiral’s ship; and there was the Serpent, of not less than two hundred and fifty tons—the vice-admiral’s ship; and the Lion, of not much less tonnage and armament than the Serpent; there was the Lion’s Whelp, a tall ship, and two pinnaces, the Sunshine and Moonshine, the larger ships carrying each from one hundred to one hundred and thirty men, and the pinnaces thirty men each ”

“ There may be something I can learn in other lands. There may be queer people there—if so, I would never laugh at them. Let me go and see how they live!'
"And they put him on board a dragon boat, [pg 49] with lanterns of silver and pearls, and with sails of silk, and carried him to the great hotel on the water, that had come from other lands, which was called a ship. ”

“ In their dragon ships—shallow, clinker-built, half-decked craft, pointed at either end, low in the middle, where the gunwale was protected by a row of shields—they could cross the sea, explore creeks and inlets, and follow the course of rivers far above their mouth. The greater ships might reach the length of seventy-five feet and carry as many as one hundred and twenty men, but these were the largest, and even these offered but a slow means of migration. ”

“ The sun, air, and waves consume it continually, and be it ever so mighty, it must melt away and leave not a trace behind. It is better to live in the poor Northland than to die in the rich Southland. Go on board our dragon-ships, and equip your own, and fill them with all your people; men, women, and children; and with your oxen and horses, and weapons and treasures ”

“ Before we know it, the nose of the boat is in the rapid, which flings it up in the air; the next second we are tossed on the waves. The bow dips, and a heavy wave deluges the cook's domain; we ship a tun or two of water, the dragoman, who stands forward, is wet to his breast; but the boat shakes it off and rises again, tossed like an egg-shell. It is glorious. The boat obeys her helm admirably, as the half-dozen pilots, throwing their weight upon the tiller, skillfully veer it slightly or give it a broad sweep. ”

“ The passage would not be made in the light skiffs that to-day lend themselves to the picturesque and ideal, in quite dream-like motion through an Arcadian land, apart from the hurry and scurry of everyday life, where all seems peace and joy, and the only modern representative of the old dragon is the snorting steam-yacht that churns the water. ”

“ Woe to the man who ever tries to cross a body of water in a boat after having eaten a dish of roasted swallows, for a peculiar fragrance, which dragons are always able to detect, will cling to his person. The man in the boat will be pursued by one of these animals, who will cause a storm to rise, the boat will be upset, and the unfortunate person precipitated into the water, where he will fall easy prey to the ruler of the sea. Under ordinary conditions the dragon shows no fondness for human flesh, but with such provocation we are told that he should be considered entirely excusable. ”

“ Every river or stream, as well as the ocean, is the abode of a dragon spirit, and every village on the banks of a stream has its periodical sacrifice to this benignant power. Not only so, but the freight-boats have their ceremony, and the ferry-boats, fishing-boats and war-boats and boats that carried the annual envoys to China, - all have their special forms of worship toward the great dragon. The great importance of this sacrifice lies in the fact that the dragon has control of the rainfall, and he must be propitiated in order that agricultural pursuits may not be endangered. ”

“ Rudolph, watching this tropic miracle, could make out the white figure of the captain, asleep near by, under the faint semicircle of the deck-house; and across from him, Miss Drake, still sitting upright, as though waiting, with Flounce at her side. Landward, against the last sage-green vapor of daylight, ran the dim range of the hills, in long undulations broken by sharper crests, like the finny back of leviathan basking. ”

“ In one reach, a "war-junk," her sails furled, lay at anchor, the red and white eyes staring fish-like from her black prow: a silly monster, the painted tompions of her wooden cannon aiming drunkenly askew, her crew's wash fluttering peacefully in a line of blue dungaree.
Beyond the next turn, a fowling-piece cracked sharply, close at hand; something splashed, and the ruffled body of a snipe bobbed in the bronze flood alongside.
"Hang it!" complained a voice, loudly. "The beggar was too--Hallo! Oh, I say, Gilly! Gilly, ahoy! Pick us up, there 's a good chap! ”

“ An old sailor brought to my town the news of having seen, in a very distant island, a terrible dragon which guarded an immense treasure. Half of the body of this guardian was a fish, the other half a lion; it moreover had such powerful wings that it could rise to an extraordinary height. Air, water, or land were his elements, and when any ships came near to the coast they were soon attacked by that ever vigilant monster. ”