Part 109

GEORGE BANCROFT, the distinguished American author and historian, was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in the year of 1800. His father, who was himself an author and a doctor of divinity, gave to his son’s mind the bent and disposition which in after-years conducted him to celebrity, position, and power. Not yet seventeen, Mr. Bancroft graduated at Harvard college, with honors, and soon entered upon a course of literary pursuits, having as their ultimate end the profession of a historian. In 1818, he went to Europe, and there studied at Göttingen and Berlin, enjoying the high advantages of the most thorough system of instruction and the society of distinguished and cultivated men. After an absence of four years, during which he traveled in England, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, he returned to the United States. His first sphere of labor was naturally in accordance with his previous life, and he was appointed tutor of Greek in Harvard college. A love of intellectual independence and the desire to engraft upon the academic system in New England the German method of instruction, led him in company with a literary friend, to separate labors in the field of instruction, which were pursued for some time in the interior of New England, but afterward abandoned for duties of a more public and permanent character. During the interval of severer labors, Mr. Bancroft made many contributions to American literature, especially from the stores of German thought and intellect, then comparatively sealed, even to educated men in the United States. He early adopted decided political opinions, attaching himself to the democratic party, in whose behalf his first vote was cast. In 1826, in a public oration, afterward published, he announced as his creed ‘universal suffrage and uncompromising democracy;’ and in the ranks of the liberal party he rose to political preferment and distinction rarely attained by one whose career at the outset was so purely that of a scholar. In 1834, Mr. Bancroft published the first volume of his ‘History of the United States,’ a work to which he had long devoted his thoughts and researches and in which he laid the foundation of a reputation at once permanent and universal. The first and two succeeding volumes of the work, comprising the colonial history of the country, were hailed with the highest satisfaction, as exhibiting for the first time, in a profound and philosophical manner, not only the facts but the ideas and principles of American history. In January, 1838, Mr. Bancroft received from President Van Buren the appointment of collecter of the port of Boston, a post of more responsibility than profit, which he occupied until the year 1841, discharging its duties with a fidelity which proved that a man of letters may also be a man of business, in the strictest sense of the term. In 1844, he was the candidate of the democracy of Massachusetts for the office of governor of the state; and though the party was in the minority, his unusually large vote, greater than that which any other democratic candidate has since received, attested his popularity. In the spring of 1845, Mr. Bancroft was called by President Polk to a seat in the cabinet, and the administration of the navy department, over which he presided with an energy and efficiency which, notwithstanding the short period of his connection with it, perpetuated themselves in numerous reforms and improvements, of lasting utility to the naval service. In 1846, he was appointed minister-plenipotentiary to Great Britain, and there represented the United States, until succeeded by Mr. Abbott Lawrence, in 1849. In England, the _prestige_ of Mr. Bancroft’s literary reputation and his high social qualities contributed to enhance the popularity and respect which attached to him during his entire diplomatic career, which was one of complete satisfaction to the government which he represented and to that to which he was accredited. On his return, he fixed his residence in the city of New York, and resumed more actively the prosecution of his historical labors. The fourth volume of his history appeared early in 1852. It includes the opening scenes of the great drama of American independence, and amply sustains the interest and dignity of the work by which Mr. Bancroft has inseparably linked his name with the annals of his country.

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.

William Hickling Prescott, an eminent American historian, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1796, the son of an able lawyer, and grandson of that Prescott who commanded our troops at Bunker’s Hill. When he was twelve years of age his family removed to Boston, where Prescott has since resided, and where his classical training, begun in the place of his birth, was continued with success by Dr. Gardiner, a pupil of Dr. Parr. In 1811 he entered Harvard college, and was graduated there in 1814, with honors appropriate to his favorite studies, and with an intention to devote himself to the legal profession. But the great misfortune of his life had already befallen him. Before he had been graduated, an accidental blow had deprived him of the sight of one eye, and the natural consequences soon followed. The other became weakened by the increased labor thrown upon it; and, after a severe illness, during which he was entirely blind, he found the sight of his remaining eye so much impaired, that he was compelled to give up his professional studies and his hopes of success at the bar. The next two years he spent in Europe, traveling for his health in England, France, and Italy, and seeking the aid of the great oculists of London and Paris. He returned to America with renovated health, but for his misfortune found no relief. Still he was not disheartened, but turned with alacrity to those studies which remained yet within his reach. He resolved to become, in the best sense of the word, a historian, and freely gave himself ten years to prepare for the task, by a course of the classical reading he had always loved. He then selected his subject, and, having done this, gave ten years more to his ‘History of Ferdinand and Isabella,’ one of the few important periods in the affairs of modern Europe that seemed to invite the hand of a master. With this great work, in 1838, at the age of forty-two, he appeared before the world as an author, publishing simultaneously in London and Boston. It was received on both sides of the Atlantic, with unhesitating applause. It has since run through many editions, and been translated into German, Italian, French, and Spanish. During his labor on this work, Mr. Prescott’s vision had been somewhat improved by a diminution of the sensibility which had led to earlier inflammations, and which had compelled him to live in a darkened apartment, relying entirely on a reader when collecting his materials. His ‘Conquest of Mexico,’ therefore, first printed in 1843, though prepared largely from manuscript documents, was perhaps a work of less troublesome toil than his first had been. The prompt honors that it received were even more brilliant than those paid to the ‘Ferdinand and Isabella,’ and having before been admitted to several of the distinguished academies of Europe, he was now elected a member of the French institute. His ‘Conquest of Peru’ appeared in 1847. It is marked by the same striking events which distinguished its predecessors, and is, with the exception of a volume of collated miscellanies, his last work. It is understood that he is now engaged in writing a ‘History of Philip II.’ In 1850 he made a short visit to England, where he was received with marked kindness and respect by whatever is most distinguished in society and letters, and where the ancient university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor in the civil law.

HIRAM POWERS.

Hiram Powers, sculptor, was born in Woodstock, Vermont, July 29, 1805. He was the eighth child of a family of nine, and his parents were plain country people, who cultivated a little farm. He acquired such education as the district school afforded, and he also found leisure to get some knowledge of divers kinds of handicraft, among which was the art of drawing. His father finding it difficult to maintain his family upon his farm removed to Ohio, where he shortly after died, and the future artist was thrown upon his own resources. He set out for Cincinnati to seek his fortune, and found employment in a reading-room connected with one of the principal hotels of the city, and afterwards became clerk in a produce store, where he remained until his principal failed. He then found a situation with a clockmaker, by whom he was employed in collecting debts, and afterwards in the mechanical part of the business; but, although this employment was not disagreeable to him, he aspired to some higher branch of the arts. In Cincinnati, he made the acquaintance of a Prussian, who was engaged upon a bust of general Jackson, and with some little instruction in the art of modeling obtained from him, Mr. Powers was soon able to produce busts in plaster of considerable merit, in fact one of his earliest he has declared, himself, to have been unsurpassed in likeness and finish by any of his later works. He then felt that his vocation was the arts, and he formed a connection with the Western Museum at Cincinnati, where, for about seven years, he superintended the artistic department, such as wax-work shows etc. After leaving this place he visited Washington in 1835, hoping to gain some reputation as an artist, which would enable him to increase his business, and furnish him the means of visiting Italy. In this he was not disappointed. After spending some time in the capital engaged in taking the busts of the most eminent men of the day, he was enabled, by the liberality of Mr. N. Longworth, to accomplish his long-cherished scheme; and in 1837 he landed in Florence. For some time after his arrival he continued to devote himself principally to busts, but he soon determined to employ his spare time on the production of an ideal work; the subject determined upon was ‘Eve.’ Just before the model of this statue was completed, Mr. Powers received a visit from the celebrated Thorwalsden, who was then passing through Florence. He expressed himself in terms of high admiration of the artist’s busts; and, in reference to these, declared Powers to be the greatest sculptor since Michael Angelo. The statue of ‘Eve’ also excited his admiration: and to the artist’s apology that it was his first statue, he replied that any man might well be proud of it, as his last. When the model of ‘Eve’ was completed, he began the ‘Greek Slave,’ which was finished in eight months. This, the best known and most admired of all Mr. Powers’ works, has been exhibited throughout the United States, and at the Great Exhibition at London. There are two copies in existence besides the original, one of which recently formed one of the prizes distributed by the Western Art-Union. Among some of his finest works are portraits of Jackson, Webster, Adams, Calhoun, Chief-Justice Marshall and many persons of less eminence. He has also produced some ideal busts; the ‘Proserpine’ is one of the finest.

DEPARTMENT OF TRAVEL.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF NAVAL ARCHITECTURE.

From the semi-barbarous epoch of the middle ages to the present century, which has seen the birth of steam navigation, the form and rig of vessels have undergone many modifications. We are about to give a rapid historical sketch of these, quoting, as far as possible, those types of naval architecture celebrated in preceding centuries. Still, we are hardly permitted to go back farther than the ninth century, where we find some certain ideas respecting the Scandinavian vessels. Before this period all is confusion, and leaves us full of uncertainty. We know well that the ancient _Trireme_ gave birth to a sort of row-galleys known in the fifth century by the name of _Dromons_; but we have no positive details respecting the precise form of these vessels. In the sixth century, the Emperor Maurice, in a treatise on the military art, spoke of them as vessels particularly contrived for battle. Three hundred years later, the Emperor Leo, who wrote on the same subject, said that the dromon was long, and broad in proportion to its length, and that it carried on each side two banks of oars, one above the other, of twenty-five each; but nothing further to enlighten us. As for the Norman vessels from the ninth to the twelfth century, we know the _drakar_ (dragon), which was as much of a dragon as the ancient _Pristis_ was a whale――that is to say, that at the summit of her prow rose a figure carved into a dragon, and that her form had something that resembled a serpent. All of the dragons were not of the same size. The dragon of Alaf Tryggrasson is spoken of in cotemporary histories as the giant of Scandinavian vessels.

Never was one seen larger, finer, or more imposing in bulk and decoration. She had thirty-four oars on each side. If the tradition is accurate, she must have been as long as the galleys of the sixteenth century. It was, it will be seen, a vessel of considerable importance; for galleys with twenty-six oars only were about one hundred and thirty feet long. The dragons were built to resist a sea more stormy than the Mediterranean. Consequently they had broad sides and a vast stern, so as to have a firm seat on the water. They were flatbottomed, and drew very little water. Besides the draker, the Scandinavians had the _sekkar_, or serpent vessel, which had twenty benches of rowers. Its form differed little from that of the dragon. It was only shorter, shallower and narrower. All Norman vessels were alike in bow and stern. But some war vessels had a little building on the poop called the castle. This castle was a little embattled platform, where the archers and slingers were placed. It would be difficult to tell precisely what the internal arrangements of the Scandinavian vessels were. The smallest were not probably decked. As for the larger ones, they doubtless had a deck like the galleys; and beneath this deck a hold, apportioned according to their wants, to rooms, magazines and stables for their horses. The Scandinavian vessels had only one mast, with a vane and four or five shrouds. The sail was square, attached to a yard, furnished with sheets at its lower angles, and managed by two braces that belayed aft. The yard had a halyard passing through a block at the mast head. As for the rudder, it consisted of two blades, large, crutchhandled oars, near the stern, on the right, and also left of the vessel. The anchors of the Normans were like oars, but they did not have that cross-bar of wood we call the stock. In the twelfth century we see the galleys, according to Wenesalf, which were only little light dromons, built particularly for speed, and having only one tier of oars. The following is a textual passage from this writer relating to them:――‘What the ancients called _liburnus_, the moderns have named galley. It is a ship of no great depth, armed at the prow with a motionless piece of wood, vulgarly called calcar (spur), an instrument with which the galley pierces the enemy’s ships that she strikes.’ A diminutive of the galley was the galleon, which, being shorter and swifter, was better suited for discharging the Greek fire. For the rest, starting from this invention, the action of the shock of the calcar was by degrees replaced by the hand to hand struggle.

Among the galleys, which afterwards gave birth to the _galea grossa_, in assuming more capacity and more amplitude, some were manœuvred by two oars to the bench, others three. It is even certain that, at a later period, in the sixteenth century, the strongest ones had as many as five oars, which appears incredible. The galleys possessed only one mast, which was stepped rather forward――that is, in the first third of the vessel. In the thirteenth century, the fleet which St. Louis took with him towards the Holy Land, gives proof of the thorough modifications which naval structures have undergone. St. Louis could only collect the eighteen hundred vessels which composed his fleet, without recourse to the marine of neighboring states――Genoa and Venice among others. Now, the contracts for hire he exchanged with Venice for many vessels, give us information with respect to one called the St. Mary, represented in the engraving. This vessel had two decks and two masts. It possessed two poops, placed above each other, two platforms, an upper deck, and a fighting gallery of four or five feet overhanging the poop. This ship, manned by one hundred and ten sailors, was one hundred feet long. The same contracts give us also information concerning another vessel, called the Rochefort. Although not so long as the St. Mary, she was stronger and broader. She had two rudders; one to starboard, and the other to larboard. Her sparring consisted, also, of two masts; one at the prow, and the other amidships. The mainmast was smaller and lower than the foremast. It had only twenty-six braces, while the other had twenty-eight. The sails of almost all the fleet were of cotton. All the sails were rectangular triangles with the hypothenuse attached to the yard, and were called _antennal_. Still, it is proper to mention the assertion of some authors, that the sails of St. Louis’ vessels were square. Their assertions were only founded on the form and dimensions of the yards, which all the documents of the time represent as very long and slung by the middle. We ought to observe that, in speaking of the St. Mary and the Rochefort, Venetian ships, we have indirectly spoken of naval constructions coming from the ports of France and those of other European countries. At this period, all vessels, Genoese, Castilian, French, etc., resembled each other; and to be acquainted with one was to know all. The galleys of the thirteenth century were thus somewhat changed. Lighter, sharper than those of the preceding century, in the fourteenth, the kind called ‘subtle galleys,’ were observed to preponderate. These galleys, extremely light and swift, were furnished on each side with from twenty-four to twenty-six oars, and might have been from one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty feet in length. Still, in the fourteenth century, and even in the fifteenth and sixteenth, the most celebrated ships were the _carracks_. Their tonnage may be estimated by their cargoes, which sometimes amounted to fourteen hundred casks.

In 1359, the Castilians took a Venetian carrack, which had three ‘covers’ (decks), and must consequently have been as high as the great storeships of the seventeenth century. In 1545, a French carrack, the Carraquon, which passed for the finest ship and fastest sailer of the western ocean, was of eight hundred tons burthen, and had one hundred pieces of artillery of all calibers for armament. The carracks of the fourteenth century had only two masts; in the fifteenth, they took three, and afterwards four. At first three-decked, they finally reached as high as seven decks. The poop and prow were the height of three or four men above the deck, and looked like castles raised at each of the extremities. The castles mounted each from thirty-five to forty guns. In the galleys, the employment of fire-arms did not effect material changes; the prow alone, somewhat shortened, was armed with a gun mounted on a mass of wood destined for its recoil, and extending amidships through the whole length of the vessel. This piece of wood was called the _coursie_, and the gun placed upon it the _courser_. At the sides, upright carriages supported a few falconets and other pieces of small ordnance. The _galeass_, originating in the _galea grossa_, as the latter did in the galley, carried, as well as the carrack and other ships, a castle at the bow and a castle at the stern. In the former, there were twelve guns in three tiers; in the latter, ten only in two tiers. She had thirty-two benches of rowers, and between each of her benches rose a swivel on a point. This, it will be perceived, was a formidable armament. The galeass had three masts and lateen sails. The Venetians made great use of this vessel. Their famous Bucentaur belonged to this class. At the end of the fifteenth century, when Christopher Columbus armed his vessels at Palos, he formed his little flotilla exclusively of _caravels_. Now, this name of caravel, which in the outset belonged only to a common barque, was at this time borne by a vessel of considerable, but not extraordinary size. The caravel had four masts; the forward one with a square sail surmounted by a topsail, the three others each carrying a lateen sail. These sails enabled the caravel to manœuvre well, and she was as prompt to handle as the French _tartane_, much renowned at that epoch. She came about as quickly as if she had been a row-boat. She had but one deck, and very little carrying capacity. Still, if the caravels of Christopher Columbus were smaller than those of a later period, at the close of the sixteenth century, they were large enough to contain ninety seamen and the provision necessary for a long voyage. The flag ship of Columbus was called the Santa Maria; the two other, La Pinta and La Nina. A passage in the journal of Columbus himself, gives a detail of the canvass of the Santa Maria. ‘The wind,’ says he, ‘became mild and manageable, and I set all the sails of the vessel――the mainsail with the two studding sails, the foresail, the spritsail, the mizzen and the topsail.’ The caravels then had, like all the great vessels of the period, a castle at the bow and a castle at the stern. They made, on an average, six knots an hour. Columbus was only thirty-five days in going from Palos to San Salvador――an ordinary passage even in these days of quick sailing. The sixteenth century was an epoch of progress for the marine; England particularly gave it the onward impulse. Meanwhile, an important invention, that of gun-ports, was due to a Frenchman, of Brest, named Descharges. The system then adopted for the arrangement of batteries has never since been changed, and exists to the present time. Historians and antiquaries have taken great pains to arrive at a knowledge of the forms of ships of war at this period. The documents written and drawn are, some so confused, others so deficient in proportion and perspective, that it is difficult to understand them.