petuation of the species, from destruction by water. If we assume the form of the ark to be conceived as that of an ordinary ship, we have no historical mention of its dimensions as given in Gn 6 being exceeded until the construction of the Great Eastern steamship, built at Millwall by Brunel in 1858, with accommodation for 4000 passengers, and with a capacity of 24,000 tons, which is slightly in excess of the apparent size of the ark. See, further, art. FLOOD in vol. ii. p. 16. The earliest Scripture mention of ships properly so called (n‘3x) is in Gn 49, where Zebulun is spoken of in the Blessing of Jacob asa haven for them. The next is in Nu 24%, where the Balaam oracles speak of ships from the coast of Kirrim as taking part in the destruction of Assyria. These latter would be ships of war as distinguished from commercial ones. Merchant ships are mentioned in 1 K 9% (ef. 10 ‘a navy of TARSHISH’); and in Ps 107-8 is given the heart-stirring description of a sailor’s life in a sea-going ship. In Pr 314 the foresight of the thrifty housewife forms the point of comparison between her and the merchant ships which bring goods from afar. In Pr 30! ‘the way of a ship in the midst of the sea’ is mentioned as one of the four things which were too wonderful for the writer. ‘The absence of chart and compass, with the sun and stars only for a guide to the Pheenician mariner, and these often, as in St. Paul’s voyage (Ac 27), invisible, made the art of navigation a mystery known only to those who, like these experts, were gifted with the hereditary instinct of their profession. Moreover, the pressure of the wind on the sails from a direction opposed to the ship’s course, nevertheless urging her through the water on the way she would go, seems almost as wonderful as that the disposition of the muscles and feathers of an eagle should enable it to soar to invisible heights, or swoop to the earth in a moment without apparent motion of its wings, or that the slippery serpent should glide rapidly over a smooth rock without any external means of locomotion. In 1 K 9% (|| 2 Ch 8") and 10” (|| 2 Ch 91) we have the account of the building of Solo- mon’s merchant ships at ‘Ezion-geber at the head of the Gulf of ‘Akabah, and the furnishing of them with experienced Pheenician pilots by Hiram king of Tyre, the friend of Solomon’s father, David ; and of their voyage to Ophir and back with 420 talents of gold (equal to £2,583,000). The last of the above passages has a notice of the tri- ennial visit of Solomon’s and Hiram’s ships ‘to Tarshish,’* bringing back gold and silver (the latter being considered so plentiful as to be re- garded of no account), ivory, apes, and peacocks. These were genuine sea-going ships, and the whole of the above references, except those from Genesis and Numbers, relate to the same century and to the 40 years of Solomon’s reign (c. 970-930 B.C.), when Tyre was at the height of its prosperity, and Shashank (Shishak) 1., of the 22nd dynasty, or his immediate predecessor, was the ruling Pharaoh of Egypt. Unfortunately, the Phoenicians have not left us either literature or sculptures from which we can form an idea of the kind of ships used on these voyages; nor have we any Assyrian representa- tions of them until two centuries later in the time of Hezekiah and Sennacherib, when all the sea trade of the Assyrians was in the hands of the Pheenicians, who had also absorbed that of the Egyptians (Herodot. i. 1). A century later still
* The Chronicler here confuses a ‘ship of Tarshish’ (é.e, a large vessel fitted to go long voyages) with a ship going to Tarshish. Wherever the latter port was, whether (as most believe) identical with Tartessus in Spain, or Tarsus, or some district in Greece or Italy, it could not have been reached by a vessel sailing from ‘Ezion-geber unless by circumnavigating [on every ground a most unlikely supposition] the continent of Africa.
SHIPS AND BOATS
Ezekiel (27°"*) speaks of the royal merchant ships of Tyre, which traded with Syria and various Mediterranean ports and to the far East, as having planks of fir and masts of cedar, whilst the oars were of oak of Bashan, and the benches of the rowers of ivory inlaid in wood from the isles of Kittim, the sails of fine embroidered linen, their crews from Zidon and Arvad, and their pilots from Tyre. But this description, although no doubt applicable to the royal yachts, may be considered to some extent poetical as applied to commercial ships.
The question of the much disputed situation of the port of Ophir to which Solomon’s ships traded from ‘Ezion-geber in the Gulf of ‘Akabah, bringing back gold, ivory, almug trees, and peacocks (1 K 9° 10”), belongs to another section of this Dic- tionary (see art. OPHIR in vol. iii.) ; but the length of time occupied in the voyage, inferred from the interval of three years (1 K 107") between the arrivals of the ships at ‘Ezion-geber, indicates a great dis- tance, such as Central or Southern Africa, or the island of Ceylon, where peacocks still abound. Such voyages would necessitate the ships being laid up in some safe port between the months of May and October, during the bad weather and heavy sea which accompany the S.W. monsoon, as is the case at the present day with the Indian and Arab trading vessels which annually frequent the port of Berbereh opposite to Aden.*