INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 195 



Kathiawar, the province traditionally associated with early Indian sea-trade, we may 

 be reasonably sure that in 500 B.C. ships built of Indian teak and manned by Arab 

 and Indian sailors were carrying on a brisk trade between India and the Persian 

 coast and equally certainly with Aden and the ports of the Sabaeans. 



Historical evidence indicates that the external sea-trade of India received great 

 stimulus at this period from the far-sighted commercial policy of Darius. This, like 

 that of Alexander, two hundred years later, had for one of its objects the exploration 

 of the seas between India and the West. The great king employed a Greek mercen- 

 ary, Skylax of Karyanda, to test the possibility of establishing communication by sea 

 between the Indus and Egypt. Herodotus states definitely that after the completion 

 of this voyage which took thirty months, and the conquest of the Indus Valley, Darius 

 " made use of the sea in those parts." ' The completion by Darius of the Suez Canal, 

 began by the Pharaoh Necho,^ was doubtless part of an ambitious scheme designed 

 to link up the Mediterranean with the Indian and Persian coasts and to utilize sea- 

 power in maintaining the authority of the central power over outlying seaboard 

 regions difficult to reach by any land route. 



The Grkkks and Arabs. 



With the destruction of Tyre by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. and the pioneer 

 voyage from the Indus to the head of the Persian Gulf of a Greek fleet of galleys 

 built on the river Hydaspes,^ the Greeks, already an enterprising seafaring people, 

 took the place occupied so long by the Phoenicians in sea-trade, and having by Alex- 

 ander's triumphant campaigns obtained what their predecessors had lacked — terri- 

 torial bases on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf — at once were able to develop trade 

 with India upon a scale never before attempted. Now began the era of the Greek geo- 

 graphers who sometimes from personal travel and oftener from the lips of Greek and 

 Arab and Indian traders, put together the first pilot's itinerary of the Indian Ocean 

 and constructed the first rough maps of the Asiatic coasts of which we have any 

 knowledge. Among the foremost events of Greek dominance in Asiatic waters was 

 the opening of the port of Berenice, due east from Assouan, by Ptolemy Philadelphus 



1 Herodotus, IV, 44. 



2 Ihid., II, 158. 



3 Nearchos, the admiral of this fleet, has left an extremely valuable account of the voyage. He enumerates the 

 names of the commanders of 33 galleys — all Greeks with the exception of one Persian — and although several of these 

 appear to have been replaced by others before the Indus was left, we may infer that Nearchos' expedition approximated 

 to this number. The total of Alexander's fleet that left the Hydaspes is given as i ,800, which " included the long narrow 

 war galleys, the round-shaped merchantmen and the transports for carrying horses and provisions to feed the army." 

 The bulk of these were Indian-built river boats collected locally, but as we know that some new vessels were built spe- 

 cially, we may be certain that the sea-going war-galleys were of this number, as river boats would not be suitable for the 

 long voyage projected up the Persian Gulf. Just as Solomon and Sennacherib had to invoke the help of the Phoenicians, 

 so here again their skill as designers and as shipwrights was doubtless invaluable to Alexander ; we are not told so spe- 

 cifically, but as Nearchos states that Alexander provided crews for the vessels by selecting from those Phoenicians, Cyp- 

 riotes, Egyptians and islanders in his army, all " those who were skilled in seamanship to manage the vessels and work 

 the oars," we may be sure he fully utilized the shipbuilding skill of these races to the utmost. We must infer therefore 

 that the sea-fleet consisted solely of war vessels designed after the accepted Phoenician and Greek types of the day ; 

 they were not of local or Indian design. 



