"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.
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