37 



rest on a fulcrum eleven feet above the water level (see Diagram B), as 

 must be the case with the top row of oars, if the theory be admitted of 

 the rowers being one above the other, in tiers or decks, could not even 

 reach the water, unless it were thirty-two feet overboard, to balance which 

 you cannot allow less than twelve feet inboard. ISTow, such a long oar as 

 forty-four feet would be quite beyond any man's handling, even if he stood 

 up, as you see the London lightermen doing; besides, Virgil uses the 

 expression " considunt transtris ;" and a standing attitude would be far 

 too fatiguing for rowing any long distance, or at any rapid rate, no matter 

 whether in a large Galley or a small boat. Then, to use oars of any such 

 length, you must suppose a Galley to be twenty-six feet wide, which is 

 entirely inconsistent with any degree of speed under oars. 



DIAGRAM B. 



Scale, -^th of an inch to a foot. 



Sir "Walter Raleigh, as thorough a seaman as he was an able and 

 gallant soldier, observes, in a note to chapter i., book v., of his " His- 

 tory of the World," that " Some have thought that quinqueremes had 

 5 ranks of oars, one over the other, and the triremes 3 ; but had this been 

 so, they must then have had 5 decks, each over other, which hath 

 seldom been seen in ships over 1000 tons ; neither could the 3rd, 4th, 

 and 5th ranks have reached unto the water with their oars" 



But, as we are met by so many difficulties in endeavouring to discover 

 the arrangement of the oars in the Galleys of the Greeks and Romans, 

 will it be deemed unreasonable to suggest, that, after all, the Maltese 

 Galley of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries was 

 probably a sample of the vessels of that class which had for hundreds of 

 years been the common war vessel of the Mediterranean ? No doubt, many 

 improvements may have been made upon those of the Greeks and Romans ; 

 but it certainly is the universal opinion of scientific and experienced 

 seamen who have frequented Malta, that, with all our present skill in 

 construction, it would be impossible to produce a swifter or better vessel 

 for propulsion with oars than the Maltese Galley, a very elaborate model 

 of which was transferred some years back from that island to the United 

 Service Museum in London. She is twelve feet long, and every detail is so 

 accurately executed, that the most fastidious naval critic can discover 

 nothing faulty in her construction. The form of the hull is exqui- 

 sitely moulded for speed ; and it is curious how closely it resembles, 



