13.
For their ships were built and equipped after this manner. The keels were
somewhat flatter than those of our ships, whereby they could more easily
encounter the shallows and the ebbing of the tide: the prows were raised very
high, and, in like manner the sterns were adapted to the force of the waves and
storms [which they were formed to sustain]. The ships were built wholly of oak,
and designed to endure any force and violence whatever; the benches which were
made of planks a foot in breadth, were fastened by iron spikes of the thickness
of a man's thumb; the anchors were secured fast by iron chains instead of
cables, and for sails they used skins and thin dressed leather. These [were
used] either through their want of canvas and their ignorance of its
application, or for this reason, which is more probable, that they thought that
such storms of the ocean, and such violent gales of wind could not be resisted
by sails, nor ships of such great burden be conveniently enough managed by them.
The encounter of our fleet with these ships' was of such a nature that our fleet
excelled in speed alone, and the plying of the oars; other things, considering
the nature of the place [and] the violence of the storms, were more suitable and
better adapted on their side; for neither could our ships injure theirs with
their beaks (so great was their strength), nor on account of their height was a
weapon easily cast up to them; and for the same reason they were less readily
locked in by rocks. To this was added, that whenever a storm began to rage and
they ran before the wind, they both could weather the storm more easily and
heave to securely in the shallows, and when left by the tide feared nothing from
rocks and shelves: the risk of all which things was much to be dreaded by our
ships.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.