gale reached its height.[1] On his return he embarked at Joppa, but did not dare to venture out to the open sea for fear of Saracens; a statement which clearly indicates that navigators had begun to sail direct for their destination instead of deviously following the outline of the coast. Coasting along near Acre, his ship, in company with others, encountered a fleet of twenty-six Saracen vessels, which were conveying an army to "Babylonia." The Saracens surrounded the pilgrims, and two of the Christian ships fled. "But our men," says Saewulf, "ready to meet death in the cause of Christ, took their arms when the foe was a bow-shot off, and stationed themselves as quickly as might be on the forecastle of our ship—for our dromon carried two hundred men-at-arms." For an hour the enemy debated whether to attack, and then, noting the bold face of the pilgrims, hauled off. Three of his ships were taken afterwards by certain Joppa Christians. Thence Saewulf sailed along Syria to Cyprus and Little Antioch, being hereabouts ofttimes assailed by pirates, who were beaten off. Then he went by Patras, Rhodes, Stromlo (Stampali), Samos, Scio, Smyrna, Mitylene, Tenis (Tenedos), and Gallipolis to Raclea (Heraclea, now Eregli, on the Sea of Marmora), where his narrative abruptly ends.[2]
The Orkneymen in the Norman period caused some trouble by their depredations on the coast. In 1075, as the Saxon Chronicle tells us, a large fleet under Hakon of Norway came to plunder, but retired incontinently on hearing something of William's administration. In the days of Stephen an Orkney fleet pillaged Aberdeen, Hartlepool, Whitby, Pilawick, and Langton. On the other hand, the English had themselves taken to playing pirate in the Mediterranean. In 1102 one Hardine, an Englishman,[3] was with a fleet of two hundred ships which put into Joppa, and in 1105 an English pirate named Godric sails boldly into the same port, with King Baldwin of Jerusalem. The Saracens off the port, with "20 gallies and 13 shippes," endeavoured to surround them, but "by God's help the billows of the sea swelling up and raging against them, and the king's ship gliding and passing through the waves with an easy and nimble course, arrived suddenly in the harbour of Joppa."[4] A few years later a fleet of English, Danish, and Flemish ships arrived. The crusading warfare with the Saracens was familiarising our navigators with the waters of the Mediterranean.
