Ships and Shipbuilding

I

Introduction

Ships and Shipbuilding, the types and construction of any large buoyant-type vessel in which people travel or transport goods over the surface of water. The term “boat“ usually denotes smaller vessels, but no criterion of differentiation is generally accepted. The term “shipbuilding” is applied to the construction of large vessels.

II

Early Types of Vessels

Early societies used rafts, skin- or bark-covered canoes, and dugout canoes for water travel. In the most advanced type of early vessel a wooden framework of ribs and longitudinal pieces was covered with a skin of thin wooden planks. Modern types of ships used in Europe have developed for the most part from the early boats used by the Egyptians and other Mediterranean peoples.

A

Egyptian Vessels

The earliest known Egyptian ships employed a wooden framework covered with wooden planking and were large enough to accommodate at least 20 oarsmen and to carry a cargo of several head of cattle or an equivalent weight of goods. The first pictorial records of these galleys date from as early as 3000 bc, and ships of this type were probably in use for some time before that date. Ships illustrated in early Egyptian paintings were equipped with a double mast, joined at the top, from which sails were hung. In later types, a single mast was used and the sails were hoisted by means of rollers at the top of the mast. Steering, in all the early Egyptian vessels, was accomplished by means of one or more steering oars or sweeps that projected over the stern of the vessel. When more than one oar was used in steering, the steering oars were attached to each other and were directed by means of a single steering arm or tiller.

B

Phoenician Vessels

The most able shipbuilders of ancient times were those of Phoenicia, about 2000 bc, who constructed not only merchant vessels capable of carrying large cargoes, but also warships larger and more effective than any built by their contemporaries, the Egyptians and the Aegeans. The Phoenicians’ most significant contribution was the round boat—a broad-beamed ship that depended principally on sails rather than oars and provided a much larger cargo-space than the narrow galleys. Phoenician round ships travelled the Mediterranean and beyond: to Britain (for trade in tin), and probably far south along the African coast.

Phoenician shipbuilders are also credited with developing bireme and trireme galleys, in which the oars were arranged in two or three banks. Multi-banked galleys are a matter of scholarly dispute. Some authorities, who doubt that the quinqueremes of the Greeks and Romans actually had five banks of oars, suggest that the term means merely that five rowers were assigned to an oar.