THE SCANDINAVIAN PIRATES. 



British oysters were exported to Rome, as American oysters are now-a-days to England. 

 Martial also mentions another trade in one of his epigrams, that of basket-making 



" Work of barbaric art, a basket, I 

 From painted Britain came ; but the Roman city 

 Now calls the painted Briton's art their own." 



The smaller description of boats, other than galleys, employed by the Romans for 

 transporting their troops and supplies, were the kiula, called by the Saxons ceol or ciol, 

 which name has come down to us in the form of keel, and is still applied to a description 

 of barge used in the north of England. Thus 



" Weel may the keel row," 



says the song, and on the "coaly Tyne," a small barge carrying twenty-one tons four 

 hundredweight is said to carry a "keel" of coals. The Romans must also have possessed 

 large transport vessels, for within seventy or eighty years after they had gained a secure 

 footing in this country, they received a reinforcement of 5,000 men in seventeen ships, 

 or about 300 men, besides stores, to each vessel. 



Bede places the final departure of the Romans from Britain in A.D. 409, or just 

 before the siege of Rome by Attila. Our ancestors were now rather worse off than 

 before, for they were left a prey to the Vikings those bold, hardy, unscrupulous 

 Scandinavian seamen of the north, who began to make piratical visits for the sake of 

 plunder to the coasts of Scotland and England. They found their way to the Mediterranean, 

 and were known and feared in every port from Iceland to Constantinople. Their galleys 

 were propelled mainly by means of oars, but they had also small square sails to get 

 help from a stern wind, and as they often sailed straight across the stormy northern 

 seas, it is probable that they had made considerable progress in the rigging and 

 handling of their ships. A plank-built boat was discovered a few years since in Denmark, 

 which the antiquaries assign to the fifth century. It is a row-boat, measuring seventy- 

 seven feet from stem to stern, and proportionately broad in the middle. The construction 

 shows that there was an abundance of material and skilled labour. It is alike at bow 

 and stern, and the thirty rowlocks are reversible, so as to permit the boat to be 

 navigated with either end forward. The vessel is built of heavy planks overlapping each 

 other from the gunwale to the keel, and cut thick at the point of juncture, so that they 

 may be mortised into the cross-beams and gunwale, instead of being merely nailed. 

 Very similar boats, light, swift, and strong, are still used in the Shetlands and 

 Norway. 



Little is known of the state of England from the departure of the Romans to the 

 eighth century. The doubtful and traditionary landing of Hengist and Horsa with 1,500 

 men, "in three long ships," is hardly worth discussing here. The Venerable Bede, who 

 wrote about A.D. 750, speaks of London as " the mart of many nations, resorting to it 

 by sea and land ; " and he continues that " King Ethelbert built the church of St. Paul 

 in the city of London, where he and his successors should have their episcopal see/' 

 But the history of this period generally is in a hopeless fog. Still we know that London 

 was now a thriving port, Caesar, ill his "Commentaries." distinctly states that his reason 



