Identifier: manuponseaorhist00good (find matches)
Title: Man upon the sea : or, a history of maritime adventure, exploration, and discovery, from the earliest ages to the present time ...
Year: 1858 (1850s)
Authors: Goodrich, Frank B. (Frank Boott), 1826-1894
Subjects: Discoveries in geography Voyages and travels
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.B. Lippincott & co.
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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er laden, her hold was declared to have contained huge quantities of grain. A critical comparison has shown that this famous galley could not have turned her head from west to east without describing an enormous orbit and occupying a full hour in the manoeuvre. Indeed, had the Egyptians been foolish enough to build such a ship, they would not have been fortunate enough to navigate her. Nevertheless, as it is quite clear that Ptolemy did construct a galley of unusual size and capacity, modern commentators have earnestly sought to explain away the glaring exaggerations and impossibilities of the description given by Callixenus. The chief difficulty lay in the forty tiers of oars and in the four thousand oarsmen. The engraving upon the opposite page gives a representation of the Ptolemy, as she may reasonably be sup-posed to have appeared. Instead of forty tiers, she has, when thus restored, forty groups of oars: with this substitution, and a liberal diminution in the aggregate number, it is not impro-
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* IMAGE: Ptolmey Philopator - MAN UPON THE SEA. 65 bable that she may have existed, and floated even. It is not, however, pretended by Callixenus that she was ever useful in war: she seems to have been regarded as a curiosity and a spectacle. She was, in fact, the Leviathan of antiquity, the original Triton among the minnows. The Romans obtained the models of their vessels from the Greeks, though they remained almost entirely unacquainted with the sea till the third century before Christ. They then had no fleet, and few or no ships for any peaceful or commercial use.Livy mentions the appointment of naval decemvirs about the year 300 B.C. But it was not till 260 B.C. that Rome became a maritime power. It was now seen that she could not maintain herself against Carthage without a navy, and the senate ordered the immediate construction of a fleet. Triremes would have been of little avail against the high-bulwarked quinqueremes of the Carthaginians. It so happened, very fortunately* for them, that a vessel of the largest cl

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