The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (160 page)

4. An artist’s conception of the port of Carthage showing the outer commercial harbor and the inner naval harbor, within which there was “an island, and great quays were set at intervals round both the harbour and the island. These embankments were full of shipyards which had capacity for 220 vessels.” Courtesy of DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, New York.

5. The three-masted merchant ship depicted in the landlocked temple complex of Ajanta, India. In addition to its three tall sails, the ship sets a square spritsail from a yard over the bow, which is adorned with an
oculus
, or eye, to help the ship see danger. A steering oar is clearly visible on the port quarter, while a number of jars, possibly for drinking water, can be seen beneath a shelter on deck. Marine Archaeology Centre, National Institute of Oceanography, Goa.

6. A sixth-century Byzantine mosaic shows a fisherman hauling a net while his mate steers their small boat, probably a reference to the calling of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew (Matthew 4:18). The mosaic is in the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. The Adriatic port was the site of a Roman naval base under Augustus, and capital of the Western Roman Empire (402–476) and of the Ostrogoths (until 554) before it became the capital of Byzantine Italy. Courtesy of Art Resource, New York.

7. A Byzantine imperial
dromon
fitted with Greek fire, a medieval flamethrower, attacking a ship in the fleet of the rebel Thomas the Slav in 821. Greek fire was developed in the seventh century by a Syrian Byzantine refugee from the Arab conquest. Despite dire threats of eternal damnation and more temporal punishments, knowledge of how to make it soon spread to navies across the Mediterranean. This illustration is from a twelfth-century Sicilian manuscript of John Skylitzes’s eleventh-century
Synopsis Historion
(vitr. 26-2, fol. 34v). Courtesy of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid/Art Resource, New York.

8. The first-century
BCE
gold Broighter boat, named for the town in County Derry, northern Ireland, where it was found in 1895. Part of a votive deposit to the sea god Manannán Mac Lir, this is probably a model of an oceangoing vessel, of wood rather than hide-covered, complete with seats, oars, rowlocks, steering oar, and mast. The twenty-centimeter-long model probably represents a vessel twelve to fifteen meters long. Courtesy of the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.

9. Shipbuilding scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, which recounts the story of William, duke of Normandy’s campaign to take the English throne in 1066. To the left, a man is shaping a plank with a side axe. In the center, the master shipwright is checking the lines of the hull of the upper ship by eye while someone else finishes the planks of the completed hull, and a third man bends over a breast augur. Two men are applying the finishing touches to the hull below, one with an axe or adze, and the other with a drill. To the right are five complete hulls being drawn to the water’s edge, as we know from the caption in the following panel:
“Hic trahunt naves ad mare”
(Here they drag the ships to the sea). Courtesy of the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, France.

10. A ship crossing the Persian Gulf, from Yahya Ben Mahmoud al-Wasiti’s thirteenth-century manuscript of the
Maqamat
(Assemblies, or Entertaining Dialogues), by al-Hariri of Basra (1054–1122). Although the stylized rig is difficult to interpret, the ship apparently has three decks and a fluked anchor hangs from a projection from the bow. The image is best known for al-Wasiti’s depiction of a centerline rudder, the first known from the Indian Ocean region and roughly contemporary with the oldest depiction of a rudder from Europe. Photograph by Gerard Le Gall; courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris/Art Resource, New York.

11. A passenger-carrying junk at Kaifeng, China, one of some twenty-eight vessels depicted in Zhang Zheduan’s 5.25-meter-long scroll painting
Qingming Shanghe Tu
(Along the River During the Qingming Festival) of about 1125. The boat is being pulled by five trackers (out of frame to the left). The bipod mast is supported by numerous stays, and the massive centerline rudder is readily visible. (Scrollable versions of the
Qingming Shanghe Tu
are available online.) Courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

12. A Venetian great galley from a fifteenth-century shipbuilding treatise by Michael of Rhodes. Great galleys helped open regular commercial sea trade between Genoa and Venice and the markets of Flanders in northwest Europe. Although they originated as oared warships, their primary means of propulsion was a massive lateen sail, and oars were reserved for auxiliary propulsion. Courtesy of David McGee, ed.,
The Book of Michael of Rhodes.
Vol. 1,
Facsimile: A Fifteenth-Century Maritime Manuscript,
image from page 236. © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by permission of MIT Press.

13.
The Doge of Venice Departing for the Lido in the
Bucintoro
on Ascension Day
by Antonio Canaletto (1697–1768). Starting in the year 1000, the doge annually boarded the elaborately carved and gilded state barge to cross the Venetian lagoon to perform the
sposalizia
, a wedding rite that symbolized Venice’s dominion over the Adriatic and its trade, and thereby affirmed its exclusive relationship with the sea against other prospective suitors. Courtesy of the British Museum, London.