The evidence that we possess, in order accurately to judge, of the early ships that sailed the seas of the Baltic, German Ocean, Bay of Biscay, and English Channel, is both conclusive and diverse. We have in the writings of Cæsar and Tacitus, many details of ships that are of considerable interest. This literature is supplemented by the old Sagas[23] of Scandinavia, which, though highly informative, err on the side of exaggeration. Rock sculptures existing in the land of the Vikings, though somewhat the subject of controversy, are, in the writer’s opinion, of real, valuable help in the study of sailing ships. There is also some evidence of later ships in the old coins of Northern Europe. But it is when we come to the important excavations that have revealed—nearly always accidentally—the ships of a bygone age, many hundreds of years old, that we are confronted with the most undeniable and complete source of information that one could desire.
These excavations have revealed discoveries of two kinds, which we shall deal with as we proceed. In Great Britain, and in Germany, various examples of the prehistoric “dug-out” have been unearthed. The Museums of Edinburgh, York, Bremen, and Kiel, happily contain these interesting craft, preserved for the wonder of future generations. The second class is more valuable still, and far more picturesque, for thanks to the burial customs of the old sea-chiefs, there have been excavated from certain mounds in Norway, wonderful old Viking ships in a state of preservation that is remarkable when we consider how many centuries they have lain under the earth. Therefore, fortunate as we deemed ourselves in being able to have such sources of information as models and reproductions of the ships of Southern Europe, we are far more happy in our present section for we can go to the fountain head direct—the ships themselves.
To us members of the Anglo-Saxon race, the importance of the forces at work during the period we are about to consider cannot be lightly estimated. The influence of the Viking, or double-ended type of ship, dominated the whole of the coast-line from Norway to the land as far south as the northern shores of Spain, right from the period that followed the construction of mere dug-outs, until almost the close of the fifteenth century of our era. That is to say, as soon as ever the North European became sufficiently civilised to build rather than to hew his craft: as soon as he undertook the making of ships rather than of boats—he came under the power of that naval architecture, which we see illustrated in the ships of the Veneti and Scandinavians; and, irrespective of geographical position, of language, of tribe or of nation, the civilised inhabitants living on that vast stretch of littoral, from the North Cape to the southern boundary of the Bay of Biscay, continued in the same conventions of design and build for many hundreds of years. It is a striking proof of the accurate knowledge in shipbuilding and ship-designing possessed by these early Northerners when we remember that, even to this day, that influence, far from disappearing, shows a strong tendency to increase, at any rate, in the architecture of yachts and fishing boats. Thus, the Egyptians, who moulded for ever afterwards the lines of the ships of the Mediterranean, have in Northern Europe, their counterpart in the Norsemen. What the galley was to the south, the Viking ship has been to us living in colder climes.
The obvious question occurs at this point as to what, if any, is the connection between the Mediterranean galley and the ship of the North Sea. That there is some similarity will be realised when we collect the following characteristics. And first, the very shape of both kinds of vessels—long, narrow, flat-bottomed; then the arrangement of the large squaresail with its braces and rigging; the mode of steering at the side; the pavisado that ran round the ship to protect the men from the enemy; the spur with which they rammed the enemy’s ships; the girdle that went round the ship to prevent damage caused by ramming; the ornamentation of the head of the vessel; their very methods of naval warfare, and finally, their adoption later of fore-castles and stern-castles—what else do these similarities show but that there existed a common influence? With such evidence before us, it becomes somewhat difficult to find agreement with those who contend that between the two classes of ships there is no connection whatever, except such as chance might have brought about. I am not denying that there are important differences between the ships of the two seas, but I contend that such important resemblances to each other need an explanation more scientific than can be ascribed to chance.
But assuming that we are right in our surmise, by what means were these early Norwegians affected by the southern design? Were they influenced by Roman civilisation? That they certainly were not. Then the southerners came to them?[24] Here is our contention. Though we have no actual proof, it seems justifiable to suppose that those great travellers and sea-folk, the Phœnicians, who, we have seen, were unsurpassed in their time for seamanship and shipbuilding; who have been said to have voyaged to the setting sun as far as America, and to have crossed the Bay of Biscay to Ireland and Cornwall, might have taken advantage of the prevailing westerly wind which blows across our land and have held on until they had touched the shores of Denmark or Norway. But why should they, do you ask? We have seen that the Phœnicians were not merely great sailormen, not merely adventurous, not merely eager explorers, but practical business-men, merchants, traders. If they had found ore in Cornwall, would they not have been inclined to seek other lands for what they could barter or wrest ere returning to their own homes? Even supposing the Phœnicians never crossed to South America, we know that they circumnavigated Africa. A land that bred seamen of that daring and ability would not be lacking in the kind of men to discover Norway.
And there is still another reason, it seems to me, why the Phœnicians might have felt tempted to go eastward after Cornwall. Ignorant as they were of the world’s geography, might they not have thought that, just as by sailing round always to the starboard they had encircled Africa, so having performed roughly a semi-circle from the Mediterranean to the English Channel, if they kept their course over the wilderness of sea in front of them, they would ultimately find that Europe, like Africa, was an island, too, and that the nearer they approached the rising of the sun the sooner would they see their homes again?
And if we are told to explain the differences between, on the one hand, the ships of the Phœnicians or their later descendants the Greeks and Romans, and on the other, those of the Vikings, it is but natural that, given a general design which has originated in the smoother waters of the Mediterranean, it must necessarily be somewhat modified for the nasty seas of the Baltic and German Ocean, where sudden changes of wind are but the harbingers of the rapid approach of bad weather. Cæsar, when he came north into Brittany, was struck, in comparing the ships of the Veneti with his own, by the superior seaworthiness of the former, and adds significantly that “considering the nature of the place and the violence of the storms, they were more suitable and better adapted.”[25] There is to-day a far greater difference in England between the sailing ships of one port and another than there was between the old Viking vessels and those of the Phœnicians. If you cruise round from one coast of Great Britain to another, you will find in the Scotch fishing craft, the Yorkshire cobble, the Yarmouth fishing smack, the Lowestoft “drifter,” the Thames “bawley,” the Deal galley, the Itchen Ferry transom-sterned cutters, the Brixham “Mumble Bees,” the Falmouth Quay-punt, the Bristol Channel pilot, and the Manx lugger, a wonderful complexity of designs and rigs, but the reason is always that that particular design and rig have been found to be the most suitable adaptation for each particular coast.
So it was with the Vikings. They modified the Phœnician design to their local requirements, without, nevertheless, neglecting those features essential to a good ship. After they had been shipbuilders for some time they would rapidly learn for themselves the values of length and beam, of draught and sweet lines, of straight keel, with high stem to breast a wave, and high stern to repel a following sea. Double-ended as they were, there was a reason for this essential difference from the Phœnicians. Such seas as they had in the North would not suffer their ships to be beached always in fine weather. So in order that they could be brought to land with either end on, and in order, too, that in sea-fights they might easily manœuvre astern or ahead, the Viking ships were built with a bow both forward and aft.
But long before ever the Phœnician ships came to the shores of Northern Europe there were boats and sailing ships. No doubt the prehistoric man in the north was driven to finding some means of transportation across the fjord by the same stern mother Necessity that first induced that primitive whom we saw learning his elementary seamanship on the Tigris or Euphrates. That ancient Northerner of the Stone Age made a wonderfully historic discovery when he found that he could make an edge to his stone, and that thereby he was able to cut both flesh and wood. “For,” says Mr. Eiríkr Magnússon in his interesting essay,[26] “on the edge, ever since its discovery, has depended and probably will depend to the end of time the whole artistic and artificial environment of human existence, in all its infinitely varied complexity.... By this discovery was broken down a wall that for untold ages had dammed up a stagnant, unprogressive past, and through the breach were let loose all the potentialities of the future civilisation of mankind. It was entirely due to the discovery of the edge that man was enabled, in the course of time, to invent the art of shipbuilding.”
The monoxylon—the boat made from one piece of timber—as fashioned by the early sailorman of the Stone Age, is even still used in parts of Sweden and Norway. Indeed it still bears the name which is the equivalent of “oakie,” showing that it was originally made out of the oak-trunk, which is the thickest and therefore the most suitable trunk to be found in the forests of the North Sea coast, a region, that in the time of the Stone Age was densely wooded with oak trees. Afterwards, this monoxylon or dug-out, in order that she may be made so strong as to carry as many as forty men, is strengthened with ribs, and the flat bottom has the modification of a keel added. The vessel that was found at Brigg in Lincolnshire in May 1886 (see Fig. 25) is of this kind. A similar kind of boat was found in the Valdermoor marsh in Schleswig-Holstein during the year 1878, and is now in the Kiel Museum. As there are other similar boats in existence, perhaps it may interest the reader if we deal with these discoveries a little more fully.
The Valdermoor boat has the following dimensions: length 41 feet, greatest width 4.33 feet, depth inside 19 inches, depth outside 20½ inches. The thickness of the wood is 1½ inches at the bottom and 1¼ at the top. The boat had eleven ribs, of which nine now exist. On the gunwale between the ribs, eleven holes were made for inserting oars. Both the stem and stern are sharp. The keel, 6½ feet in length, is worked out of the wood at both ends of the boat, leaving the middle flat. I am sorry not to be able to present an illustration of this before the reader, but the director of the Kiel Museum informs me that the boat is in such a position as to prevent it being photographed.
However, the Brigg boat is very similar to the Valdermoor and may serve the purposes of illustration equally well. This craft was found by workmen excavating for a new gasometer upon the banks of the river Ancholme, in North Lincolnshire. It had been resting apparently on the clay bottom of the sloping beach of an old lagoon. It was obviously made out of the trunk of a tree, and perfectly straight, its dimensions being: 48 feet 6 inches long, about 6 feet wide, 2 feet 9 inches deep. The stern represents the butt end of a tree with diameter of 5 feet 3 inches. The cubic contents of the boat would be about 700 cubic feet. The prow is rounded off as if intended for a ram, and a cavity in the head of the prow appears to have been intended for a bowsprit, whereby the forestay could be made fast. In fact, a piece of crooked oak suitable for this purpose was found adjacent to the prow. Whilst the bottom of this dug-out is flat, the sides are perpendicular and there is a kind of overhanging counter at the stern.
The boat was formerly in the possession of Mr. V. Cary-Elwes, F.S.A.,[27] to whom I have to express my thanks for his courtesy in supplying me with some information regarding the boat here reproduced. The ship was offered by this gentleman to the British Museum, but was declined as being too big. It therefore remains in a small provincial town difficult of access and for the most part unknown. It would be impossible to remove the craft now, without risk of total destruction, but is it not a little humiliating that continental and provincial museums should see fit to harbour similar relics as this Brigg boat, while our great national store-house refuses a gift of such importance? I make no apology to the reader for giving in detail the result of this Brigg discovery, for it is one of the finest if not the most instructive of any craft of this kind that has come to light in Northern Europe. An interesting account has been written by the Rev. D. Cary-Elwes, son of the above, and to this I am indebted for some of the following facts.[28]
The boat is hollowed out of one huge oak log, which, from the dimensions given above, would necessitate a tree 18 feet in circumference, and of such a height that the branches did not begin until 50 feet from the ground. Such a tree would be gigantic. The bows are almost a semi-circle when viewed from above, and are rounded off gradually to the bottom and sides, the latter being about two inches thick and the bottom four inches. The stern, however, is no less than sixteen inches. The transom has had to be fixed separately on to the trunk, and the difficulty was to perform such a piece of shipbuilding so as to make this part of the vessel as strong and water-tight as the sides and bottom. The caulking of the joints has been done with moss, the transom fitting into a groove across the floor. In order that the sides of the ship might not give, in bad weather, Mr. Cary-Elwes thinks, a tight lashing was thrown across from one side to the other, coming round abaft of the stern, and so keeping both sides and transom tightly together. This transom was found a little distance away from the boat and is 4 feet wide at the top and 2 feet 5¾ inches deep, there being a projection some 2 feet aft, beyond the transom, so as to form an overhanging counter.
Along the whole length of the boat, close to the upper edge, holes, 2 inches in diameter, have been pierced at irregular intervals of about 2 feet. It is uncertain what these were intended for. Although there are no such evidences as a step for the mast, to indicate whether she was a sailing boat, it is not safe to condemn her as having merely been propelled by paddles. There are evidences of decks and seats, and the primitive man would, no doubt, after he had learned to harness the wind, maintain his mast in position perhaps by thongs to the seat or by means of the decking. It has even been thought that the fragment of rounded wood found with the boat and already alluded to as a probable bowsprit, was a mast. To me this latter supposition seems more likely than the theory of a bowsprit. It has also been surmised that the holes running along the boat were either for lacing to keep the ship’s sides from coming asunder or for receptacles of pegs to hold washboards in bad weather. Personally, I think the latter is the more probable, for it was a very early custom. We have, in a former chapter, mentioned it as being a practice on the Mediterranean in classical times, and we shall see presently that the Vikings also used this method for keeping out the spray. It happens also to be the custom among modern savages.
Evidently during her career of activity this vessel had the misfortune to spring a leak, for she has been patched, and the work of the boatbuilder is most interesting to us of to-day. On the starboard bilge a rift of 12 feet long has been made. To repair this, wooden patches and moss have been used. The biggest patch is 5 feet 8 inches long and 6½ inches wide in the middle, tapering gradually to a point at either end, and is of oak. The patch was let into the rift from the outside until perfectly flush with the outer part of the boat. On the inner side of the patch, three cleats a foot long and four inches deep, with a hole in the centre of each, have been attached. Wooden pins were passed through these holes, so that pressing firmly against the solid wood on either side of the rift, they kept the repair in position. Besides this, holes three-eighths of an inch in diameter were made along the outer edges of the patch, corresponding holes being also made in the fabric of the boat by means of which the patch could be sewn to the ship with thongs. This custom, it seems to me, would have survived in the most natural manner from the time when the shipbuilder sewed the seams of his skin boat. Finally, all holes and crannies were caulked with moss. Mr. Cary-Elwes has carefully preserved a small portion of this lacing material, which appears to be of some animal substance, and probably twisted sinews. He has also taken some of this caulking moss from the boat and finds that it is of two kinds, both of which grow on sandy soils in woods, and are now largely used in the manufacture of moss-baskets and artificial flowers.
The important fact must not be lost sight of that while all the repairs have been made either by wood pegs or thongs, not a trace of metal was found in the fabric of the boat. This coincides with the argument that we have been proceeding on, viz., that such ships as these belong not to the age of metals but to that of stone. And, as if to convince those who scoff at the possibility of being able to fell trees—and oak trees especially—by means of stone implements, Mr. Cary-Elwes refers to the interesting fact that the Australian aborigines, a type of humanity as low and primitive as one could wish to find, had all their tools of agriculture, war and forestry, made of stone or wood, iron being unknown to them; yet indeed they knew how to fell the giants of the forest, such a tree as the Jarrah red gum, now used for paving London streets, being every bit as hard as our oak. “Within quite recent times,” adds the same author, “the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands worked exclusively with stone implements. I came across a good collection of these old time weapons in New Zealand, and what is more to the point here, sundry canoes and boats hollowed by their means. My father, who was with me, and who is a member of the Society of Antiquaries, and not unlearned in these matters, pointed out to me not only the similarity that existed between these stone weapons and the prehistoric adzes and axes of the stone age, but also the interesting fact that the canoes hollowed out by fire or stone tools were as cleanly cut and as cleverly wrought as the old Brigg boat.” The same writer, from the evidence of the geological strata where she was found, concludes that the age of the Brigg boat must be between 2600 and 3000 years, which would bring the date to between 1100 and 700 B.C.
In addition to the Brigg boat other dug-outs have been found in various parts of our country. In 1833 one was discovered near the river Arun in Sussex. Her length was 35 feet, breadth 4 feet, depth 2 feet. Her sides and bottom were between 4 and 5 inches thick. There are also other similarities to the Brigg boat. In 1863 a smaller, but similar boat, 8 feet 2 inches by 1 foot 9 inches, was also unearthed. She had washboards like those we have attributed to the Brigg boat. Another craft a foot smaller still was found near Dumfries in 1736, containing a paddle. In 1822 near the Rother in Kent an immense ship of this class measuring 63 feet long, and 5 feet broad was unearthed also. It is interesting to remark that it was caulked with moss in the manner already described. On the south bank of the Clyde another of these craft was found having an upright groove in the stern similar to that in which the sternboard of the Brigg boat was fixed. There is also a twenty-five footer in the Museum at York.
This Brigg Boat, and the Valdermoor one, probably belong to the class ascribed by Tacitus[29] in 70 A.D. to the Batavians and Frisians. Some have also thought that it was in such boats as these that the Romans crossed from Gaul to Britain. At any rate there can be no doubt that boats of this kind were to be found at this time still existing in Britain and along the shore washed by the English Channel and North Sea.
In addition to those dug-outs already enumerated, a similar craft was found in 1876 in Loch Arthur, about six miles west of Dumfries. She is 42 feet long and like all the others is hollowed out of oak. Her width and other characteristics show her to resemble very closely the Brigg boat, and accentuate still more the existence of a prevailing type of craft in Northern Europe during prehistoric times. The prow, like that of the primitive Koryaks, is shaped after the head of an animal. Unfortunately not the whole of this relic is preserved, but at least one third of her, and that the bow end, is to be found in the Museum of the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh. More than twenty canoes of this same class have also been found in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. Almost all were formed out of single tree-trunks of oak and afford evidence of having been hollowed out by blunt tools such as the people of the Stone or Bronze Age would possess. Two obviously later boats were dug up in 1853 and were found to be of more elaborate construction, planks having now been introduced. The prow resembled the beak of an ancient galley, the stern being formed of a triangular piece of oak. For fastening the planks to the ribs oak pins and metallic nails had been used. For caulking, wool dipped in tar had been employed. Boehmer in his exceedingly valuable and careful paper on “Prehistoric Naval Architecture of the North of Europe,”[30] to which I am greatly indebted for some important facts, points out that in the bottom of one of these canoes a hole had been closed by means of a cork-plug, which Professor Geikie remarks could only have come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy. The inference is, of course, that notwithstanding their island home, even the very early inhabitants of Great Britain were in communication with distant parts of the Continent.
There can be no doubt that, at any rate among the least progressive peoples of Northern Europe, this dug-out, monoxylon type of boat lasted till very late, for an account is given by Velleius Paterculus, who about the year 5 A.D. served under Tiberius as prefect of cavalry. He distinctly refers to the Germanic craft as dug-outs, “cavatum, ut illis mos est, ex materia.” Pliny the elder speaks of the piratical ships of the Chauci, one of the most progressive of the coast tribes of Northern Europe, as having visited the rich provinces of Gallia. These ships were dug-outs and carried thirty men. This fact is interesting, as being the first time the Teutons had ventured on the open sea.
During the years 1885 to 1889, while excavations were being made at the port of Bremen at the mouth of the Weser, as many as seven of these dug-outs were found in the alluvial land at depths of from 6½ feet to 13 feet below the present level of the surface. They were made of oak-trunks, and had apparently been fashioned by axes. They were as usual flat-bottomed, without keels, but with prow cut obliquely and with holes for the insertion of oars. Of the seven four were entirely demolished, but of the remaining three the dimensions were respectively: 35 feet long by 2 feet 6 inches wide; 33 feet 4 inches long by 3 feet 6 inches; 26 feet 7 inches by 3 feet 3 inches. The height varied from 1 foot 5 inches up to 2 feet 2 inches. Several specimens of this type are preserved in the municipal museum of Bremen.
So much, then, for the earliest type of craft. We have seen that the dug-out in the course of time became strengthened with ribs. The next stage in the advancement of the prehistoric shipbuilder is to dispense with the strenuous work which necessitated the hollowing out of a whole tree trunk of hard oak. The affixing of ribs has given him an idea. So, utilising the hides of the wild animals which he has shot whilst hunting, he stretches these over the same framework that he had used for strengthening his oak-trunk. He is still in the Stone Age, so nails are not yet invented. The skins have to be sewn together to fit the framework, and the result is precisely that of the coracle even now used in Wales and off Connemara. If the reader should happen never to have seen one of these, a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum will quickly clear up any misunderstanding. Though we have no actual specimens of ancient skin-ships existing—and indeed we should not expect such a relic—yet the interesting survival of the boat-building language of that primitive time is found both in the Norwegian and English language of to-day. Thus, when you have allowed a ship to lie high and dry in the summer sun so that the planking warps and daylight can be seen through, what is the expression you would use to express this? Would you not remark that she has opened her seams? Now “seam” is an Anglo-Saxon word connoting the joining together of two edges of some texture by means of a needle. But let us take a further instance. Do you not constantly hear shipbuilders and designers refer to the planking that covers a ship’s ribs as her skin? Thus we have still in common use the very words which our sires employed in reference to the sewn hides of their primitive craft. Indeed, when one considers that all through history, even until now, shipbuilding has been an industry apart from ordinary occupations, and that both ships and seamen are, as we said in our introductory chapter, the most conservative of all peoples or created things, this survival is not so unnatural as might seem at first. We could continue to give other examples in the pertinacity of ancient seafaring expressions, but that would only be to digress from the immediate subject before us. We need only make reference to the interesting fact that Cæsar during his first Spanish campaign in the civil war, when he required some boats at the banks of the river Sicoris to get across, ordered the soldiers to make boats of the build that they had learned in former years from the British use. Thus first the keel was obtained and ribs were fashioned of light stuff; the rest of the boat’s body being then woven together of osiers and finally covered with hides.[31] According to Pliny the Britanni also in the first century of our era put to sea in wicker vessels done round with a covering of ox hide. In such vessels they would take a six days’ voyage to the Island of Mictis, whence the tin came.
We come now to the Bronze and Iron Ages. With the advent of metals we find a revolution scarcely inferior to that caused by the discovery of the edged stone. For whereas the latter could cut, yet its efforts were confined within narrow limitations. It was capable of felling a tree and of hollowing out its trunk with the expenditure of considerable labour and tediousness, yet that was its highest achievement in the department of shipbuilding. But now that the introduction of metals, of iron and bronze, is made, the primitive man finds that his sphere of energy is vastly widened. Instead of hollowing out the tree he cuts it up into planks. Instead of having to sew the outside together with thongs of hide, he has metallic nails as fastenings. To the same kind of ribs that framed his skin-boat, he can now nail down planks of oak and fir. He has a lighter and more easily propelled boat than the dug-out, and a stronger and more seaworthy ship than that made of stretched skins, although it is only fair to observe that the hide-boat was capable of far more than one would suppose. Mr. Jochelson in the account of the Jesup Expedition already referred to, relates his experience of being taken for a sail in one of the skin-boats of the Koryak. He was delighted by the endurance which the skins (of seal) exhibited. Not the least remarkable feature was the fact that the skin was capable of sustaining enormous weights without bursting. But in Europe our ancestors must have been glad to be able to discard the hide for that of wood, since the wear and tear in beaching on rock, pebble, or snag, exposed them to instant uselessness.
Although shipbuilding proper comes with the Metallic Age, we must not assume that the change was made universally or at once. The transition would be made rapidly or but slowly in proportion as the tribe or nation were enthusiastically maritime or otherwise. In some parts of Europe the skin-boat or even the dug-out would be in use, while other shores were seeing built vessels of planks and ribs. The first historic account that we possess of these more modern vessels is to be found in Cæsar’s account of the Naval Campaign against the Veneti in the year 54 B.C. From this narrative we learn that the ships of the Veneti were somewhat flatter than those of the Romans, so that they could more easily encounter the shallows and ebbing of the tide.[32] The prows, we are told, were raised very high, and the sterns likewise—“proræ admodum erectæ atque item puppes”—so that they were suited for the force of the waves and storms which they had been constructed to sustain. We have, then, here a new design in naval architecture recorded—the Viking type of ship—although it had been in existence for a considerable time in the North. The high prows and sterns would immediately impress those who had come from the more peaceful waters of Italy. Further it is said that these ships were built of oak throughout and designed to be enormously strong. The crossbeams, made of logs a foot thick, were fastened by iron spikes as thick as a man’s thumb. The anchors were made fast by iron chains instead of cables, while their sails were made of skin and dressed leather. These were used because they lacked canvas or the knowledge to apply it to such a use, or more probably because they thought canvas would be of too little strength to endure the tempests of the ocean and violent gales of wind, and that ships of such great burden could not be managed by them. Perhaps in the use of hides for sails, we have the parent of the practice of using tanned sails so common in our fishing fleet and barges. The relative character of the two kinds of ships Cæsar points out, as we mentioned earlier in the chapter, was that the Roman fleet excelled in speed alone and in oarsmanship. Otherwise the ships of the Veneti were, considering the nature of the place, and the violence of the storms more suitable and better adapted on their side. Nor could the Roman ships injure severely the ships of the Veneti by means of their beaks, so strong were they. And further, so high were these ships that the Romans found great difficulty in hurling weapons at them. Whenever a storm arose and the ships of the Veneti ran before the wind, they could weather it more readily and heave-to safely in the shallows, and when left by the tide feared nothing from rocks and shelves, for—“the risk of all such things,” ends the account pathetically, “was much to be dreaded by our ships.”
Those who are familiar with the terrible tides and treacherous coast of northern France[33] will readily understand how such able Viking-like ships as the Veneti possessed, appealed to the Romans with their fast but unsuitable craft. The difference would be that between the smart Thames skiff and the tubby though seaworthy dinghy of a North Sea fishing smack. For we know pretty accurately now, thanks to the Althiburus mosaics referred to in the previous chapter, just what Cæsar’s craft were like. Hitherto we have known them as naves actuariæ—that is, light vessels of surpassing speed. But if the reader will refer back to Fig. 24 he will find that the navis actuaria, whilst propelled both with oars and sail, was nevertheless not much of a ship to be caught in off the rocks and narrow channels in a breeze of wind. Although these actuariæ were neither freight ships (onerariæ) nor war-vessels properly speaking, yet they still possessed rams and were used on this expedition for a war-like purpose. There cannot be much doubt that the Veneti had obtained their design and ideas of shipbuilding from the Norsemen who relentlessly swept down from their colder climes and plundered and pillaged from one end of the coast of Northern Europe to the other. As we shall see presently, this design was prevalent for many years before Cæsar came, and as we shall also see from the following chapter it had altered but little at the time when William the Conqueror left the French shores for England in the eleventh century.
In the year 15 A.D. we learn from Tacitus[34] that Germanicus had built near the mouth of the river Rhine a thousand ships with sharp bows so as to be able to resist better the waves. Some had flat bottoms to enable them to take the ground with impunity. Some had a steering apparatus at both bow and stern in order that thereby they could be rowed in either direction. Many were decked for the accommodation of throwing machines. They were equally useful as rowing and sailing ships, and just as in the mediæval times ships were built with towering decks for “majesty and terror of the enemy,” so as early as this period these vessels were imposing as to their size whilst inspiring confidence to their own soldiery. Good serviceable ships as they were, yet after defeating the Cherusci at the mouth of the Ems they were shipwrecked in a storm although the wind blew from the south. It is only fair to add, however, that the ancients, especially the Romans, were wont to build their vessels very quickly[35] and consequently they erred, no doubt, in constructing them too slightly. The Saxons who, after the death of Alexander the Great, came to the mouth of the Elbe and subjugated the Thuringians, and who are said to have possessed the art of tacking, already referred to, had such light vessels as belonged to the stone age. They were wonderfully light, made out of willows and covered with skins, but had a keel of knotty oak; yet these daring navigators, without compass or chart, and with but a feeble knowledge of the stars, managed to find their way to the Orkneys.
We pass now from the English Channel and the Rhine to consider that land which has given birth to a long line of robust, vigorous ships and men, who after the Phœnicians are the finest race of seamen that ever sailed a sea. A little clumsy like their ships the Scandinavians have always throughout history stood for manliness and strength. And if we were right when we submitted that a nation’s character exhibits itself in a most marked degree in its ships, surely of no people could this remark be made with greater truth than concerning the inhabitants of that Northern peninsula who, in the early days of our own country, harassed our forefathers beyond all endurance, but left behind to us the heritage of a love of the sea.[36] There is in the Viking ship and its descendants not so much beauty as nobility, not prettiness but power. The first mention of these Northerners is by Tacitus[37] who refers to them as the Suiones. (Tacitus died A.D. 108.) As Cæsar was struck by the difference between the Roman ships and those of the Veneti, so Tacitus remarks that the ships of the Suiones differ from the Romans’, too. Although these were not sailing ships—nec velis ministrantur—yet they were of the same design as those which were fitted with mast and sail. Double-ended, they could easily be beached and in battle could the more rapidly manœuvre ahead or astern.
But we have much earlier information than the writings of the Roman chronicler. We have history written in stone, obvious, illustrative and imperishable. In many parts of the Scandinavian coast, beginning as far north as Trondhjem and extending right round to the isle of Gothland, are to be found many rock sculptures depicting the forms of both ships and men. A few have also been found in Denmark as well as on the shores of Lake Ladoga in Russia. These rock-carvings are really history set forth in picture language, primitive yet intelligible. In spite of all the hundreds of years that have rolled by, and the winds and rains that have dashed against them, they are still quite decipherable. Professor Gustafson in his book on Norwegian antiquities[38] gives several interesting pictures of these rock-carvings, and I am able here to reproduce one for the reader who will no doubt agree that the evidence here afforded is exceptionally striking. Fig. 26 shows the Viking-like ship beyond all doubt. Frequently these carvings are represented in groups and it has been thought that they record naval battles fought in the vicinity, the several representations of ships denoting fleets. The human figures perhaps are there as an eternal memorial of their admirals who perished or distinguished themselves in the fight. There are two kinds of craft in these carvings, Magnússon[39] points out. First there is the ship with the very high stem, and stern, and there is the other kind of vessel which lacks just these features. The former appears to have a double keel which makes it look as if the ship were put on a sledge. There is at the bow end a structure which is most probably a ram. As to the sledge-like formation below the body of the ship, I am inclined to think it may have been a removable keel to be attached to the ship when sailing and so give her flat-bottomed hull greater stability. In an old-fashioned part of the world, which is not so very far removed from Norway and which was in earlier times over-run by the Norsemen, in whose inhabitants to-day the flaxen hair and blue eyes and the Norwegian name are still to be found—in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk—the trading wherries have just such an arrangement as this. When they have a full cargo on board and come to a shallow part of the river, they unhook the whole length of keel which is attached to bow and stern by an iron band, and leave it on the bank until they return down stream. Until quite recently not much change has taken place in the craft of this neighbourhood for ages, and it is quite possible that this double-ended wherry was as much swayed by Norwegian as by Dutch influence.
On some of these carvings a mast amidships is shown and their date belongs either to the Stone or the Bronze Age, though more probably the latter. Professor Montelius discourages the idea that the Phœnicians established themselves on the Baltic for the reason that the bronze culture found its way up to the North overland from the shores of the Mediterranean and especially the Adriatic. But in spite of this argument these sculptured forms show many points of resemblance to those of the Phœnicians’ ships as the reader will not fail to notice. Many northern archæologists think that these sculptures have been wrought by the hands of foreigners, and Mr. Magnússon suggests that in that case they may have been the work of the Veneti. Be that as it may, and let it be disputed whether they belong to the year 1500 B.C. or as late as 50 B.C., whether they were carved by the Vikings or the enemies of the Vikings, there they are still to be seen, admittedly of great antiquity and corresponding to the description of the ships of the Suiones as given by Tacitus.
But long before this latter date the Suiones must have been afloat. They could not suddenly have become owners of a mighty fleet—classibus valent. The very prefix “Nor” which is so common in this region—in the words “Norge,” “Nordheimsund,” “Norse,” to give but the first instances that come to one’s mind—signifies ship. It is the same stem that is found in the Greek ναυς and the Latin navis. In the Irish language noe also means ship and is found in the oldest tractates of the ancient laws of Ireland. We have already mentioned the important fact that Pytheas of Marseilles led an expedition in the fourth century B.C. by sea to Norway in the interests of the commercial community of Marseilles. This rather goes to show that the Gauls and Scandinavians had met on trading terms before and that one or both of the parties had journeyed to each other’s shore previously.
We know that the Norsemen sailed in early times frequently along the Eastern shores of the Baltic. We know that they voyaged to Denmark, Jutland, Germany and Russia, for they have left behind them unmistakable relics. For just as we are indebted to the funeral customs of the Egyptians for so much important knowledge of their ships, so to the burial rites of these hardy Northerners we owe a great debt of thanks for information as to their vessels. There were three kinds of burials adopted by the Norsemen. First, and this is the one we wish to draw immediate attention to, there was the custom of cremating the deceased Viking. His ashes, together with his personal property, were buried on land in a boat-shaped grave. The outlines of long, narrow, pointed shapes formed by a single line of stones in the countries just mentioned indicate the ship-shape resting places of these men who were so faithful to their vessels, who revered them so highly for having carried them during their lives safely across the turbulent sea, that even in death they desired not to be separated from them. Thus on land the very design of the stones was after the lines of that which is the noblest and most beautiful of all the creations of man.[40]
But there were two other modes of burial, each in its own way magnificently impressive and in keeping with the vigorous character of the Viking spirit. Of these two the first consisted in placing the body of the deceased in his own ship, then, setting the whole thing ablaze, the ship and its owner were carried out to sea a red, glaring mass, flaming up against the dark background of the horizon. This kind of obsequies, magnificently as it appeals to our imagination with its suggestion of colour, of grandeur and solemnity, has been inimical to the pursuit of historical knowledge. But even in spite of this, remains of unburned ships have been found among both the outer and inner shores of Trondhjem Fjord.[41]