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
