Part 110

Still, as some authentic details respecting the Great Harry are known, this ship may serve to give an idea of the navy of the sixteenth century; and we have accordingly presented our readers with an engraving of this formidable vessel. Up to the seventeenth century, one model seems to have prevailed in all naval constructions. The Spaniards and the Portuguese followed the example of the Venetians; the Dutch and the northern nations derived their nautical knowledge from the same sources; the English themselves, so jealous of their naval supremacy, received their lessons in improving and strengthening their embarkations from Italian masters. They were accustomed to place at the extremity of the prow a sculptured figure, which served to distinguish the vessels of one nation from another. The Venetians adopted a bust from preference; the Spaniards, a lion; the English, especially after the accession of the Stuarts, the figures of the reigning monarch, either on horseback, or riding on a lion. The stern, above the cabin windows, presented a plane surface or tablet, with apertures for light and air, starboard and larboard. On Venetian, Spanish and Portuguese stern some saint or hero was placed. Other nations had only the arms of their respective states. Before the end of the sixteenth century, some Portuguese and Spanish vessels carried as many as eighty guns mounted on carriages. At this period, the strongest vessel of the English navy carried but fifty guns or pieces deserving that name. The ‘Sovereign of the Seas,’ built in 1637, at Woolwich, Kent, ‘to the great glory of His Britannic Majesty,’ as a cotemporary description we have before us declares, was decorated in a style of regal magnificence. On her bow was king Edgar, on horseback, trampling on seven kings; on the stern, a cupid on a lion; and grouped together, at the bow, six statues, representing Counsel, Prudence, Perseverance, Strength, Courage and Victory. On the quarter-deck, four figures, with their attributes, Jupiter, with his eagle, Mars, with sword and shield, Neptune, with his sea-horse, and Eolus on a cameleon. On the stern, a Victory displayed her wings, and bore a scroll with this device: _Validis incumbite remis_. This vessel had two galleries on each side. These galleries, as well as the whole vessel, were covered with trophies, emblems and scutcheons, of all kinds. Her length from stem to stern was 232 feet. She carried five lanterns, one of which, the largest, could contain ten persons, standing, with ease. She had three decks running from stem to stern, a forecastle-deck, a half-deck, a quarter-deck, and a poop-deck. Her armament was as follows: thirty ports, with large and small guns, in the lower battery; thirty ports, with culverins, in the second battery; twelve ports in the forecastle, and fourteen on the half-deck; finally, thirteen or fourteen swivels, a multitude of port-holes for musketry, ten bow-chasers, and as many stern-chasers. There were twelve anchors. ‘The Sovereign of the Seas,’ says Charnock, ‘was the first large vessel constructed in England. Splendor and magnificence were particularly kept in view in building her. She was in some sort the occasion of the serious complaints made of the expenses of the navy in the reign of Charles I. Cut down one deck, she became one of the best ships of war in the whole world.’ It is certain that the suppression of this deck, and the lowering of her deck-cabin, gave her more stability than she had at first. Now, for speed, what she gained in strength by these changes was compensated by the length added to her masts. Topsails at this period were an important addition to ships. Old engravings show us the vessels of the sixteenth century sailing generally under their courses. After the building of the Sovereign of the Seas, this only occurred in particular cases and certain conditions of the elements. Captain Phineas Pett directed the work of building and afterwards improving the Sovereign of the Seas. A learned engineer, he deserves the credit of having done more than any one else to give an impulse to the English navy. The artillery was strengthened, and the crews larger, and better lodged. The entire navy felt this progress. The Sovereign of the Seas gauged 1637 tons, a thing which, according to a historian of the time, deserved the attention of the whole world, since it represented exactly the date of her launch. Notwithstanding the thrice-fortunate augury which the historian saw in this coïncidence, the Sovereign of the Seas met with the fate of the Great Harry. She was destroyed, like the latter, by fire, in a ship-yard, where she was being repaired, in 1696, after sixty years’ service. Observe here that Fuller, in his history of the ‘Wonders of England,’ acknowledges that at the commencement of the seventeenth century, the Dunkirkers furnished the models of the best vessels built at this period in the British ports.

When Louis XIV became king of France, there was no French navy, properly speaking. Voltaire asserts that in 1664 a few frigates and a line-of-battle ship, in poor condition, constituted the entire force. After the siege of La Rochelle, Richelieu, jealous of the growth of the English navy, had given a sort of impulse to naval ideas by arming immediately fifty ships and twenty galleys; but the effect of this impulse was merely momentary. Colbert was the true creator of the French navy. Under him, in less than five years, France possessed a triumphant maritime force. The most renowned of the French ships at this period was the Royal Sun. This vessel was constructed partly on French, and partly on Dutch principles. She was 1600 tons, 150 feet long, 48 broad, and 16 deep. She carried three lanterns on the poop. As the flag-ship, she carried at the main the white standard, embroidered with the fleurs-de-lys, and the French coat of arms surrounded the orders of St. Michael and the Holy Ghost. The decorations of the Royal Sun surpassed everything before or since. A model of this ship is contained in the naval museum of the Louvre, at Paris. The Royal Sun mounted 120 guns in three batteries complete, with stern and bow guns.

The seventeenth century was perhaps the most brilliant period in the history of galleys. Those of France were commanded by a general. There were two kinds of them, the ordinary and the extraordinary. The ordinary had only twenty-six oars, and twenty-six benches on each side; the extraordinary had often thirty-two. There was no difference of model between them, their dissimilarity only resulting from their relative sizes. All were extremely long, low and narrow. They carried only two masts and lateen sails. The armament consisted of five guns forward and two swivels. These swivels were attached to the sides of the galley to prevent the recoil. There were generally at least five rowers to each oar, the oars being very long and very heavy. Between the rowers’ benches and the sides of the ship there was a space where the soldiers were stationed. Soldiers to fight, sailors to manœuvre, and a gang composed of galley-slaves, or Turkish prisoners, made up the crews of the galleys.

Naval architecture, in the course of the eighteenth century, advanced in model, sparring and rigging of vessels. Two deckers with fifty guns were superseded by frigates carrying the same number of pieces in one battery. The following were the dimensions generally adopted for the different classes of vessels: For first class vessels, one hundred and sixty four to one hundred and eighty-six feet in length, forty-seven to fifty feet in breadth, twenty-three to twenty-five feet in depth; for second class vessels, one hundred and fifty-six to one hundred and seventy in length, forty-three to forty-seven in breadth, twenty and a half to twenty-three in depth; for third class vessels one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty in length, forty-two to forty-three in breadth, twenty to twenty and a-half in depth; for fourth class vessels, one hundred and thirty-five to one hundred and fifty in length, thirty-five to forty in breadth, seventeen to twenty in depth; for fifth class vessels, one hundred and two to one hundred and thirty in length, thirty-three to thirty-four in breadth, thirteen to seventeen in depth; for sixth class vessels, sixty to seventy in length, eighteen to twenty in breadth, nine to ten in depth. Among the considerable changes in construction, the first that strikes the eye is the enormous augmentation of canvas. Never did ships carry so much sail.

At the same time that ships of fifty guns became frigates, in their turn the light frigates――those, for instance, which carried from ten to twenty pieces of artillery――formed a new class of vessels, under the name of corvettes. The corvettes, at the beginning, had three masts, and their guns under cover. Afterwards, to increase their speed, they carried all their artillery on the upper deck. Later year, the mizzen-mast was abandoned in the smallest. This kind of corvette gave place to the brig-of-war. The bomb-galliot became a bomb-ketch, a sort of three-masted corvette, with platforms between the main and mizzen, and the main and fore masts. Yachts, galliots, gun-boats, armed some with a few light pieces, others with one heavy gun, complete the series of naval forces in use at the eighteenth century, except a few varieties peculiar to different seas and coasts. As for the fire-ship of the first part of the century, no mention is made of it at the close; and if, since that time, certain infernal machines, more or less closely fashioned after the fire-ships, have made their appearance, they have only proved unfortunate attempts, and not answered the expectations of their contrivers. The Turks alone preserved these old warlike contrivances up to the present time; and Navarino offered us, for the last time, the spectacle of a ship――the Scipio――engaged with a fire-ship. Like the fire-ship, the ancient galley disappeared with the eighteenth century. In the Mediterranean, the three-masted barque has become the xebeck; and we find, under the same appearance, all the embarkations spoken of in the preceding ages. The lateen vessels are those the least changed in appearance, because, from the simplicity of their rig, they sooner reached a stage bordering on perfection.

The ship Ocean, represented in engraving (17), is an excellent specimen of the science of the eighteenth century. Presented to Louis XIV, by the estates of Burgundy, nothing was spared to make the frigate worthy of its destiny. Built in 1760, it was modernized, and is still in existence.

EARLY MARITIME DISCOVERIES.

The Portuguese were among the first to signalize themselves in the career of geographical discovery. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Prince Henry, son of John I, was at the head of the marine of Portugal. Under his immediate direction, several voyages were undertaken to the coast of Africa; in one of which the voyagers were driven by a storm out of their usual course along shore, and for the first time the terrified mariners found themselves in the boundless ocean. When the storm abated, they were in sight of an island, to which, in their thankfulness to Heaven for the succor it afforded, they gave the name of Puerto Sancto, or the Holy Haven――the least of the Madeiras. The voyages of the Portuguese now succeeded each other rapidly; and other navigators of this nation, either grown bolder, or again driven off the coast, discovered the Azores. In 1433, the Portuguese passed Cape Nun, hitherto the limit of their courses, and arrived at a cape, which presenting a frightful barrier to the still timid seamen, in the terrible surf that broke on the shoals near it, they named Bojador, signifying its projection into the sea and the consequent circuit it required to double it.

In succeeding expeditions, Cape Verd was reached, and the Senegal arrived at, and Lisbon saw with astonishment a different race from the Moors. Cape Mesurado was the limit of the Portuguese discoveries at the death of Prince Henry in 1463, which damping the ardor of discovery, it was not until 1471 that the Equator was crossed, and the islands in the gulf of Guinea were discovered.

The terrors of the burning zone, and the belief of the union of Africa and Asia being dissipated by these successive voyages, the passage to India round Africa was no longer deemed impossible, and a fleet was fitted out under Bartholomew Diaz for the express purpose of attempting it. The captain coasted Africa to within sight of its southern point, to which he gave the name of Cape of all Torments, from the violent storms he experienced off it, and which, as well as the want of provisions, obliged him to return to Lisbon, after an absence of sixteen months. The name of the Cape of all Torments was changed by the king to that of Good Hope, from the prospect it afforded of accomplishing the passage to India.

Ten years however elapsed after the discovery of the Cape before this passage was attempted; and Vasco de Gama had the honor of doubling the promontory the 20th of November, 1497. Sailing along the coast of Africa, he passed through the Mozambique Channel to Mombaz and thence to Melinda, where he procured pilots, and crossing the Arabian sea, arrived at Callicut the 22d of May, 1498. It is thought that the ridiculous ceremony of ducking, etc., on crossing the line, was first practiced in this voyage.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.

Christopher Columbo or Colon, better known by his Latinized name of Columbus, was born at Genoa about the year 1436. His father was a woolcomber, in not very affluent circumstances; although connected, according to some accounts, with persons of superior rank. Columbus was the eldest of a family of four. His two brothers, Bartholomew and Diego, will afterwards be mentioned in connection with his discoveries; his sister married an obscure person of the name of Bavarello.

Of the early life of Columbus very little is known. Considering the habits of the age, and the condition of his parents, he appears to have received a good education. While yet a mere child, he learned reading, writing, and arithmetic; he was also such a proficient in drawing and painting, that according to one of his biographers, he could have earned a livelihood by them. At an early age he went to the university of Padua, in Lombardy, then a celebrated school of learning. Here he acquired the Latin language, and devoted himself with zeal to the study of mathematics in all its branches, especially those connected with geography and navigation, towards which he seems to have been drawn from the first by an irresistible propensity. His stay at Padua connot have been long; for in his fourteenth year he returned to his father’s house in Genoa, where he is said to have pursued for some time the occupation of woolcombing. This, however, was far from his taste; and he made choice of the seafaring profession. Genoa being at that time one of the greatest commercial cities in the world, the enthusiasm for maritime enterprise was universal amongst its inhabitants. A historian of the period speaks of the proneness of the Genoese youth to wander through the world in quest of riches, which they intended to return and spend in their native city: few, however, he says, were able to carry their intention into effect――not one in ten of those who left Genoa ever revisiting it. Of these adventurous youths, whose ambition to be sailors was nursed by the sight of the merchant-vessels landing their rich freights on the quays of Genoa, Columbus was one; and, as we have already seen, his education was suitable for the mode of life he had chosen.

At fourteen years of age Columbus left Genoa in the humble capacity of a sailor boy on board a Mediterranean trader; and for many years, at first as a common sailor, and latterly as master of a vessel, he appears to have sailed along the Mediterranean from the Levant to Gibraltar, possibly also undertaking an occasional voyage to some of the northern countries of Europe, with which the Genoese merchants may have had dealings. In this undistinguished course of life he passed his youth; and he does not come prominently into notice till he settled in Lisbon in 1470, when he was thirty-four years of age. At this period he is described as being above the middle size, and of strong muscular frame. His visage was long; his nose aquiline; his eyes of a bluish gray; his complexion fair, but somewhat inflamed. His hair in youth was reddish, but before he was thirty years of age it had turned quite white. His habits were simple; his manners grave and affable; his temper, which was naturally irritable, he had subdued by the force of his will; and in his attention to the observances of religion, he was devout and enthusiastic. His acquirements were far beyond what might have been expected in one whose life had been spent at sea. Besides being a skillful navigator, he was well-informed in astronomy, geography, and all the general science of the age; and while on shore, his leisure appears to have been spent in studying such scientific works as were within his reach. A marriage which he contracted about this period seems to have had some effect in determining his subsequent career. The lady to whom he became attached was Felipa de Palestrello, the daughter of Bartolemeo de Palestrello, an Italian who had distinguished himself as a navigator in the Portuguese service. Marrying this young lady, Columbus obtained from her mother all the charts, journals, and memorandums of her late husband, the possession of which was a treasure to him. After his marriage he lived for many years as a humble citizen of Lisbon, earning a livelihood for himself and family by constructing maps and charts, or by making an occasional voyage in a Portuguese vessel to the Guinea coast, then the ultimate limit of African navigation.

Columbus seems to have acted from deliberate choice in making Lisbon his place of residence. In no city in the world would the demand be so great at that time for maps and charts, or for persons skilled in any of the arts connected with navigation. Portugal had taken the lead of all the nations of Europe in maritime enterprise; and for upwards of twenty years all the great discoveries which had been made by navigators of new coasts or islands had been effected under the auspices of the Portuguese government.

The best result of Columbus’ labors in drawing maps was, that he thereby became acquainted with the small extent of that part of the earth’s surface known to geographers and navigators, as compared with the conjectural extent of the whole. This fact appears to have made a deep impression on his mind, and to have been the germ of his future speculations. It was not long, however, before the idea began to assume a more definite shape. Like all the navigators of the time, he was full of the notion of discovering a new route to India, Cathay, or Cipango――the land of gold, and diamonds, and spices――which was supposed to lie in the east of Asia, and respecting which the most gorgeous fancies were entertained. There was this difference, however, between the speculations of Columbus and other navigators as to this imaginary route to India, that while they universally followed Prince Henry in supposing that it was to be sought by sailing round Africa, he was employed in considering the possibility of effecting the same object by sailing due west across the Atlantic. This most original idea was fully formed in Columbus’ mind before the year 1474.

The globular form of the earth had been for a considerable time known to all scientific men, and various calculations had been made as to its probable size. On this latter point all were at fault, the general supposition being, that the globe was much smaller than it is. Columbus, in pondering on its imaginary magnitude, arrived at the conviction that the Atlantic was a comparatively narrow sea, and that if any one were to push boldly across it, he would inevitably reach the shores of India. These ideas were confirmed by the various rumors which prevailed of lands existing in the Atlantic to the west of Africa. Plato’s fabled island of Atalantis was supposed to be a real country lying in that quarter. There were many traditionary recollections of mariners having been cast upon unknown shores when driven far out to sea by the violence of a storm. There were legends also of adventurers who had embarked in ships in the northern countries of Europe, and gone to seek homes across the Atlantic; and of fugitive bishops and priests, who, to escape persecution in their own country, had committed themselves to the waves, and been conducted by the hand of Providence to fertile and happy islands to the west of the Azores. Moreover, certain circumstances had come within Columbus’ own knowledge, which seemed to argue the existence of land in that direction. Martin Vicenti, a pilot in the Portuguese service, had picked up a piece of carved wood floating in the ocean four hundred and fifty leagues west of St. Vincent, which, as the wind was westerly, he concluded must have come from some land opposite to Africa. Columbus’ brother-in-law, Pedro Correa, had seen a similar piece of wood, which had drifted across the ocean from the same quarter; and had also heard of large canes seen floating on the waves west of Madeira, apparently resembling the reeds known to be produced in the East Indies. It was likewise reported that, when the wind had blown long from the west, trunks of huge pine-trees were often cast ashore upon the Azores; and that once two dead bodies, evidently the corpses neither of Europeans nor Africans, were driven upon the beach of the island of Flores.

All these and many other arguments convinced Columbus that the East Indies could be reached by sailing westward from Gibraltar, or the western coast of Africa. Every circumstance corroborative of this view which came to his knowledge he diligently noted down; and at last the conviction became so strong, that he conceived himself to be expressly destined by God for the great work of discovering a new world. No doubt or hesitation remained in his mind; and his only wish was to find the means of making the contemplated voyage. Once launched upon the Atlantic, he was absolutely certain that, after having sailed seven or eight hundred leagues to the west of the Canaries, he would come upon Marco Polo’s island of Cipango, or the dominions of the great khan of Tartary.