The Mighty Deep 



to other Continents and Islands, and partly for 

 the purpose of catching fish. Those early 

 vessels were crude and ramshackle affairs, from 

 a modern point of view. 



Unclothed and woad-stained Britons, ancestors 

 to the Welsh of our day, had their boats, wood- 

 ribbed and skin -covered, or osier- framed and 

 hide-clothed. Rickety constructions at the best. 

 Yet in them half-savage sailors went over the 

 stormy Channels, to Ireland and to France, and 

 even ventured into the Bay of Biscay. 



Enterprising Romans, with better ships, did 

 more ; and before the close of the First Century 

 they had made their way round Great Britain. 

 No light feat this, in days when lighthouses and 

 buoys existed not ; when the geography of sand- 

 banks and rocks was unknown. 



The boats in which our Saxon and Viking 

 ancestors came to invade the wild little Island 

 of Britain, though of light structure, were 

 superior to the primitive British skiffs ; and in 

 the contest which followed they had the upper 

 hand. 



Later on the Danes, with vessels sixty or 

 seventy feet long, built of heavy timbers and 

 rowed by thirty men apiece, proved in their turn 

 too much for Saxon resistance, at a time when 



262 



