THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 265 



The men who formed the motive power could not 

 fight, had they wished, being chained to the oars, 

 nor could they either defend themselves or escape. 

 In fact, as I have before pointed out, these vessels 

 were merely the means whereby huge masses of men 

 were brought into close contact with each other in 

 order that they might fight hand to hand as they did 

 on shore. Of course, it would not be long before it 

 was discovered that a whole shipload of men might 

 be disposed of at once by the summary process of 

 ramming, and that to effect this a certain amount 

 of manipulative skill must be acquired in order to 

 thrust the beak of one ship into the bowels of another. 

 But, with that sole exception, any approach to sea- 

 manship was absent, and remained so until it was 

 found that sails might usefully be employed in naval 

 warfare, and the first crude attempts at artillery, in 

 the shape of ballistae, hand-slings, arrows, and fire-pots, 

 came into use. Unhappily, the desecration of the sea 

 by warfare, having been thus bloodily commenced on 

 a large scale, soon became general, and for many 

 centuries the Mediterranean waters were the scene 

 of constant battles, every nation on its borders taking 

 a hand in the infernal game. 



Throughout the next fifteen hundred years the 

 history of naval warfare remains practically the same. 

 Vessels grew little, as far as mere size is concerned, 

 although the shape altered greatly, and gradually the 

 equipment of sails grew in complexity and complete- 

 ness. But still the galley held her own as the most 

 deadly and efficient seafaring engine of war in those 

 narrow seas held . it, too, long after the invention of 

 gunpowder had made it possible for men to slay each 



