SHIPS AND SEAMEN 

 Greek Fire. 



Fire has always been the most terrible weapon in fighting at sea 

 from the very earliest ages of naval warfare. Nearly four hundred 

 years before Christ the Greeks had a mixture of sulphur, pitch, char- 

 coal, incense and tow, which they took in wooden vessels, lit and threw 

 •on to the decks of their enemies. In the early decades of the Christian 

 era, however, a very much more terrible weapon came into being, which 

 was known as Greek Fire. Its exact composition was kept a very close 

 secret and is a secret still, but it is understood that in the reign of 

 Constantine, somewhere about the year 650, an architect named 

 Callinicus who had fled to Constantinople, prepared a mixture which 

 enabled the Greeks to throw out a stream of liquid fire and that by its 

 aid the ships of the Saracens were set on fire at Cyzicus and totally 

 routed. The mixture was also known as Sea Fire, and later Wildfire, 

 and the possession of its secret proved to be of very great value to 

 Constantinople on many occasions in its chequered history. It was not 

 the only incendiary mixture of the period but it was by far the most 

 eflfective, and it is believed that its great feature was quicklime which 

 took fire spontaneously when wetted. The mixture was placed in a 

 wooden tube covered with bricks and was projected by putting a hose 

 attached to a pump into the breech. Its use did not really end until the 

 introduction of gunpowder. 



The Norman Period. 



As has already been shown in the military section, the fighting ships 

 •of the Norman period were only an adaptation of the Viking ships of a 

 couple of centuries before, propelled by oars and a single square sail and 

 not even having the topsail which the Romans certainly knew many 

 centuries previously. The merchant ships were beamy and full and 

 were similarly copied from the Norsemen. Little is actually recorded 

 about the seafarers of the time, but it would appear that seamen had 

 to be sought principally among the numerous fishermen of the coasts 

 until the rapidly increasing trade between England and the Continent 

 brought into being a suflScient num.ber of professional merchant seamen. 



The Laws of Oleron. 



The earliest known English eflfort to codify the laws of the sea, early 

 recognised to be necessary owing to the conditions of life on ship- 

 board, are known as the Laws of Oleron and are believed to have been 

 enacted owing to the efforts of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of 

 Henry II. She is said to have got the idea of observing the discipline 

 maintained in Levantine ships on her way to the Crusades. Her son, 

 Richard, in the course of his Crusade realised their value and improved 

 on them, enacting that they should be observed as law. The earliest 

 edition, which is still in existence, preserved in the Guildhall in London, 

 is believed to date from the early part of the fourteenth century, but 

 about one hundred and fifty years later there was a very much bigger 

 collection issued in France. They seem to have thought of everything, 



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