Till the last few years, when steamers
have begun to take all the best horses, the Arab horses bound to Bombay
almost all came in the way Marco Polo describes." Some of them do still,
standing over a date cargo, and the result of this combination gives rise
to an extraordinary traffic in the Bombay bazaar. From what Colonel Pelly
tells me, the stitched build in the Gulf is now confined to
fishing-boats, and is disused for sea-going craft.
[Friar Odoric (Cathay, I. p. 57) mentioned these vessels: "In this
country men make use of a kind of vessel which they call Jase, which is
fastened only with stitching of twine. On one of these vessels I embarked,
and I could find no iron at all therein." Jase is for the Arabic
Djehaz. - H. C.]
The fish-oil used to rub the ships was whale-oil. The old Arab voyagers of
the 9th century describe the fishermen of Siraf in the Gulf as cutting up
the whale-blubber and drawing the oil from it, which was mixed with other
stuff, and used to rub the joints of ships' planking. (Reinaud, I. 146.)
Both Montecorvino and Polo, in this passage, specify one rudder, as if
it was a peculiarity of these ships worth noting. The fact is that, in the
Mediterranean at least, the double rudders of the ancients kept their
place to a great extent through the Middle Ages. A Marseilles MS. of the
13th century, quoted in Ducange, says: "A ship requires three rudders, two
in place, and one to spare." Another: "Every two-ruddered bark shall pay a
groat each voyage; every one-ruddered bark shall," etc. (See Due. under
Timonus and Temo.) Numerous proofs of the use of two rudders in the
13th century will be found in "Documenti inediti riguardanti le due
Crociate di S. Ludovico IX., Re di Francia, etc., da L. T. Belgrano,
Genova, 1859." Thus in a specification of ships to be built at Genoa for
the king (p. 7), each is to have "Timones duo, affaiticos, grossitudinis
palmorum viiii et dimidiae, longitudinis cubitorum xxiiii." Extracts given
by Capmany, regarding the equipment of galleys, show the same thing, for
he is probably mistaken in saying that one of the dos timones specified
was a spare one. Joinville (p. 205) gives incidental evidence of the same:
"Those Marseilles ships have each two rudders, with each a tiller (?
tison) attached to it in such an ingenious way that you can turn the
ship right or left as fast as you would turn a horse. So on the Friday the
king was sitting upon one of these tillers, when he called me and said to
me," etc.[4] Francesco da Barberino, a poet of the 13th century, in the
7th part of his Documenti d'Amore (printed at Rome in 1640), which
instructs the lover to whose lot it may fall to escort his lady on a
sea-voyage (instructions carried so far as to provide even for the case of
her death at sea!), alludes more than once to these plural rudders. Thus -
" - - se vedessi avenire
Che vento ti rompesse
Timoni ...
In luogo di timoni
Fa spere[5] e in aqua poni." (P. 272-273.)
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DOUBLE RUDDER OF THE MIDDLE AGES
12th Century Illumination (After Pertz)
Seal of Winchelsea.
12th Century Illumination (After Pertz)
From Leaning Tower (After Jal)
After Spinello Aretini at Siena
From Monument of St Peter Martyr]
And again, when about to enter a port, it is needful to be on the alert
and ready to run in case of a hostile reception, so the galley should
enter stern foremost - a movement which he reminds his lover involves the
reversal of the ordinary use of the two rudders: -
"L' un timon leva suso
L' altro leggier tien giuso,
Ma convien levar mano
Non mica com soleano,
Ma per contraro, e face
Cosi 'l guidar verace." (P. 275.)
A representation of a vessel over the door of the Leaning Tower at Pisa
shows this arrangement, which is also discernible in the frescoes of
galley-fights by Spinello Aretini, in the Municipal Palace at Siena.
[Godinho de Eredia (1613), describing the smaller vessels of Malacca which
he calls balos in ch. 13, De Embarcacoes, says: "At the poop they have
two rudders, one on each side to steer with." E por poupa dos ballos, tem
2 lemes, hum en cada lado pera o governo. (Malacca, l'Inde merid. et le
Cathay, Bruxelles, 1882, 4to, f. 26.) - H. C.]
The midship rudder seems to have been the more usual in the western seas,
and the double quarter-rudders in the Mediterranean. The former are
sometimes styled Navarresques and the latter Latins. Yet early seals
of some of the Cinque Ports show vessels with the double rudder; one of
which (that of Winchelsea) is given in the cut.
In the Mediterranean the latter was still in occasional use late in the
16th century. Captain Pantero Pantera in his book, L'Armata Navale
(Rome, 1614, p. 44), says that the Galeasses, or great galleys, had the
helm alla Navarresca, but also a great oar on each side of it to assist
in turning the ship. And I observe that the great galeasses which precede
the Christian line of battle at Lepanto, in one of the frescoes by Vasari
in the Royal Hall leading to the Sistine Chapel, have the quarter-rudder
very distinctly.
The Chinese appear occasionally to employ it, as seems to be indicated in
a woodcut of a vessel of war which I have traced from a Chinese book in
the National Library at Paris.
