[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. (See above, p. 37.) [For the Chinese words
for rudder, see p. 126 of J. Edkins' article on Chinese Names for Boats
and Boat Gear, Jour. N. China Br. R. As. Soc. N.S. XI. 1876. - H. C.] It
is also used by certain craft of the Indian Archipelago, as appears from
Mr. Wallace's description of the Prau in which he sailed from Macassar to
the Aru Islands. And on the Caspian, it is stated in Smith's "Dict.