SHIPS IN ANCIENT TIMES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 4 May 1934, Page 2

SHIPS IN ANCIENT TIMES

SOME SPLENDID VESSELS Ptolenxaeus Philopatei*. King of Egypt, built a vessel 420 ieet long, 56 feet broad, 72 feet high from the keel to the top of the prow, but 80 feet to the top of the poop. She had four helms of 60 feet; her largest oars were 56 feet long, with leaden handles, so as work more easilv by the rowers; she had two prows two sterns, seven rostra or beaks, successively rising and swelling out one over the other, the topinosti one most prominent and stately; on the poop and prow she had figures of animals, not less than 18 feet high; all the interior of the vessel was beautified with a delicate sort of painting of a waxen colour. She had 4,000 rowers; 400 cabin boys, or servants ; marines to do duty on the decks, 2,820;. with an immense store of arms and provisions. The same prince built another ship, called the Thalamegus, or Bedchamber-ship, which was only used as a pleasure yacht for sailing up and down the Nile. She was not so long or large as the preceding, but more splendid in the chambers and their furnishings. Hiero, King of Syracuse, built an enormous vessel, which he intended for a corn-trader; her length is not given. She was built at Syracuse by a Corinthian shipbuilder, and was launched by an apparatus devised by Archimedes. All her bolts ana nails were of brass; she had twenty rows of oars; her apartments were all paved with neat square variegated tiles, on which were painted all the storv of Homer’s “Iliad.” She had a gymnasium, with shady walks on her upper decks; garden plots stocked with various plants, and nourished with limpid water that flowed circulating round them in a canal of lead. She had, here and there on deck, arbours mantled with ivv and vine branches which flourished in full greenness, being supplied with the principle of growth from the leaden canal. She had one chamber particularly splendid, whose pavement was of agates and other precious stones, and whose panels, doors and l'oofs were of ivory, and wood of the thya tree. She had a scholarterium, or library, with five couches, it's roof arched into a polus or vault, with the stars embossed; she had a bath, with its accompaniments all most magnificent; she had on each side of her deck ten stalls for horses, with fodder and furnishings for the grooms and ridel's; a fishpond of lead full of fish, whose waters could be let out or admitted at pleasure; she had two towers on the poop, full of arnxed men, that managed the machines invented by Archimedes for tin-owing stones of 300 pounds weight, and arrows 18 feet long, to the distance of a furlong. She had three masts and two antennae or yards, that swung with hooks and masses of lead attached. She had, round the whole circuit of her deck, a rampart of iron, with iron crows, which look hold of ships and dragged them nearer for the purpose of destroying them. The tunnels or bows on her niasts were of brass, with men in each. She had twelve anchors and three masts. It Was with difficulty they could find a ti-ee largo and strong enough for her highest mast. Great Britain had the glory of bestowing upon her a sufficient tree for that purpose; it was discovered amid the l-ecesses of Albion’s forests by a swineherd ! What is remarkable in the construction of this gigantic vessel is that her sentina, or sink, though largo and deep, was emptied by one man, by means of a pump invented by Archimedes. Hiero, on finding that the Syracusan was too uinvieldly to be admitted with safety into the harbours of Sicily, made a present of her to Ptolomv. who changed her name to the Alexandrian. Archimelus, the Greek epigrammatist, wrote a little poem on tlie large vessel, whichwas rewarded by Hiero with 1,000 measures of corn—a premium proportioned, if not to the poem, at least to the magnitude of the theme celebrated.