THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 261 



nautical history, it seems to have been considered abso- 

 lutely necessary to carry soldiers on board ship to do 

 the fighting; but we shall presently see that they 

 became slaves, and nothing else. The early Phoenician 

 mariners did their own fighting as well as navigation, 

 and consequently attained a high proficiency in the 

 art ; indeed, for centuries they held a monopoly of all 

 that pertained to navigation. 



The first instance on record, however, of their being 

 employed in any great nautical warlike expedition 

 was, according to accepted chronology, about 1500 B.C. 

 According to Diodorus, Sesostris, the Pharaoh of the 

 Exodus, formed a project for the conquest of the 

 world. It is said that he commenced the cutting of a 

 canal uniting the Mediterranean and Red Sea, thus 

 antedating De Lesseps by a trifle of over three millen- 

 niums, but apparently he did not finish it, leaving it 

 to his successors, who did. But whether by transport 

 overland or by building on the coast, he managed to 

 fit out a fleet of four hundred vessels in the Ked Sea, 

 and started them, under the charge of Phoenician 

 officers for the navigation, on their career of conquest, 

 a gigantic piratical expedition, of course. There is 

 little doubt indeed attaching to the despatch of this 

 vast armament, although the chronology is more than 

 doubtful, and we have only the mistiest record of the 

 countries they visited and ravaged. In fact, our know- 

 ledge of that " first fleet " begins and ends with its 

 despatch nine hundred years later (it was a leisurely age, 

 and, as I said, its chronology is more than doubtful). 

 Another sovereign of Egypt, Pharaoh Necho, fitted out 

 a similar expedition, handled as before by Phoenicians, 

 who achieved the feat of sailing round the Cape of Good 



