SHIPS AND SEAMEN 



Long Serpent had thirty, and one of the ships of Canute the Great 

 had sixty. The Gokstad ship, however, which has a length of eighty 

 feet and a beam of seventeen, has sixteen aside only — " Sextensesse " 

 — which meant a crew of sixty-four rowers, and probably a total ship's 

 company in the neighbourhood of eighty. She is clinker built of oak 

 and fastened with withes of tree roots. There were no thwarts for the 

 rowers, and they probably stood to their oars " North Sea Fashion," 

 but on the other hand there are remains of bedsteads, carefully made to 

 unship when necessary, for at least part of the crew. She had very fine 

 lines forward and aft, with a tremendous sheer, and it is an old Norse 

 superstition (although it probably dates from long after this) that the Devil 

 taught a shipowner that extra seaworthiness could be obtained by this big 

 sheer on the stipulation that he should have every seventh ship that was 

 built. The shipowner prospered and lost count, with the result that his 

 children and all that he held dear went down in one of the seventh ships 

 that were lost. A single mast is stepped amidships with a big square sail 

 very much after the same fashion as it was in Phoenician days. The 

 steering paddle is on the starboard side of the ship aft — hence the name 

 — but in bigger vessels there were certainly more than one. 



One nearly always associates the Vikings with war and discovery, 

 but they used their ships for trading, too. The ship which was found at 

 Oseberg was far flatter and broader than the Gokstad ship, and was prob- 

 ably a merchantman. It is recorded how Harek of Thjotta, meeting a 

 Danish ship in 1018 and feeling little inclined to give her the chance of 

 putting up a big light, struck his mast and sail, put a tent cloth over the 

 waist, and hid the greater part of his crew under it : then with a few 

 rowers at either end his craft looked such a tempting morsel that the 

 Dane, who was just as big a pirate as he, came within boarding range and 

 was promptly captured. 

 British Ships. 



The only British ships that are specially mentioned by the ancient 

 writers are the coracles which survived in Wales for an extraordinarily 

 long time. They were as primitive as they well could be, just a sewn 

 skin stretched over a wicker framework, but it is from them that we 

 get many of our shipbuilding phrases of to-day — the skin, the seams, 

 etc. However, it is certain that the neighbouring shores of Gaul had 

 quite fine ships and did a big trade with Britain, so that it would be 

 surprising if the islanders had not copied them to some extent at least. 

 In Cesar's time Britain was in a position to send a fighting fleet to the 

 assistance of her friends the Veneti on the mainland and lost every ship 

 in the process. Where the seamen came from is a mystery, for the 

 Britons do not seem to have taken very kindly to the water, and from 

 their subsequent history they probably hired the men from abroad. In 

 addition to the ordinary warship, C^sar discovered in Britain another 

 type of vessel which, ever quick to adapt other people's ideas to his 

 own military requirements, he added to the Roman fleet as the Picta. 

 It was a long, fast, pinnace of light construction propelled by some score 

 of rowers and carrying the usual square sail. For despatch carrying 



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