224 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



Moreover, another vicious development took place 

 which was bad in every way, and yet possessed such 

 a fascination for those early ship -constructors that 

 they persevered in it until they had made many of 

 their craft entirely unseaworthy. I allude to the 

 extraordinary camber they gave their craft. A slight 

 curve downward to the waist, from bow and stern, 

 seems to a seaman an absolute necessity in every 

 ship; he cannot imagine a hogged ship, i.e. one that 

 rises instead of sinks in the middle as seaworthy, 

 to say nothing of being beautiful. But these early 

 ships were made to sag so much that while in the 

 waist their deck-line was almost awash at the bow 

 and stern, especially the stern, it rose until it seemed 

 almost a miracle that they could stand upright at all. 

 It is a problem I have often discussed with modern 

 seamen, how in the name of common sense did those 

 extraordinary craft keep right way up, and how with 

 that enormous after-erection holding the wind did 

 they ever manage to steer? We always gave it up 

 after coming to the conclusion that their seamanship 

 must have been of a superlative order, and their 

 patience far exceeding that of the Patriarch of Uz, 

 to handle those vessels at all. That they ever did 

 or could tack or beat to windward appears so eminently 

 impossible that we always dismissed the idea as not 

 worth discussing. 



Another matter that seems puzzling, but may be 

 explainable on the ground of want of means, is why, 

 after deep-sea voyaging had become the vogue, the 

 size of the vessels which were appointed to that service 

 did not more speedily increase. People ashore may 

 not take much notice of the fact, but to sailors of our 



