According to Lucian’s description, the ship had both bow and stern curved upwards like those of the ancient Egyptian and earliest Greek ships, the ends terminating in « gilded cheniscus, one of which was in the form of the head and neck of a swan, and the other either similar or a ‘figure- head.’ Somewhere between the stem and stern was a statue of the presiding deity of the State or port of origin of the ship. On each bow was painted a large eye, or a figure illustrative of her name.
From a painting still to be seen in a tomb at Pompeii, and another found at Herculaneum,§ we know that such ships had projecting galleries at bow and stern, with bulwarks of open rails, and that the upper ends of the two paddle-rudders (rndddia, gubernacula) passed through holes in the ship, as described by Herodotus, instead of being externally attached to rope straps on the gunwale as in the Egyptian vessels and in the Scandinavian one already spoken of, and were often connected together by a rope attached to the tillers stretched across the ship, called yahivés, which kept the two paddle-blades parallel to one another ;|| but this, from St. Luke’s account of the shipwreck, must have been done in such a way as not to prevent the rudders from being triced up clear of the water in case of anchoring by the stern. We also see in the Herculaneum painting a portion of one of the ship’s cabins described by Lucian. There are also depicted what are, apparently, cable arrangements for anchoring by the stern, though no anchor is visible. She has two masts with ‘square’ yards and sails, as we see represented on the coins of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. ; and this seems to have been the normal number, though occasionally there were three at this period; but only one mast is shown in the Pompeii ship. The masts were supported by ‘shrouds’ placed abreast of and
* grosoy 4 Edyai.
+ Pliny, HN xvi. 76 and xxxiv. 14,
t de Bello Gallico, iii. 14; de Bello Civili, i. 26.
§ Antichita di Hreolano, tom. ii. pl. xiv. cit. J. Smith, V. and_S. of St. Pawl, p. 206.
oe and Koner, Life of the Greeks and Romans, fig. 291, p. 257.
bow as now. These as well as the ‘running rigging’ were made of hide, flax, or hemp, or, prob- ably in many cases, a combination of them and papyrus. 4
The ships of this—the merchant—class were built almost exclusively of fir or pine, as also the masts and yards, the latter (kepata: or antenne) being in two pieces ‘fished’ together like those of both ancient and modern Egyptian vessels. The sails at this period were almost universally made of flax as now; the ‘bolt rope’ surrounding them being of hide. One of the sails is called dpréuwyv by St. Luke (Ac 27%), and, although this word is not found in Julius Pollux or in any other ancient or medizval Greek author, a mast and sail, each termed artemon, are mentioned by the Romans, Lucilius, Labeo, and Seneca, almost contemporane- ously with St. Paul’s shipwreck, as being, appar- ently, inferior in importance or magnitude to the principal mast and sail of a ship; they are repre- sented on an Alexandrian coin of A.D. 67* as a sort of bowsprit and spritsail, and again on a Roman coin of A.D. 186 in the Museum at Avignon as a foremast and square foresail.| The word artemon is translated in the AV ‘mainsail,’ but in the RV ‘foresail’; and there can be little doubt but that the latter is the more correct term as applied to the sail hoisted when the ship was purposely run aground, The word is still in use in the French marine as the name of the mizen or sternmost mast, and the sails on it; whilst the term misaine is applied to the foremast and its sails. The word artemon is now. obsolete in the Italian language, but in the 16th cent. it was applied at Venice to the largest sail of a ship, which appears then to have been the foresail ; and, possibly, the ignorance of this fact, as suggested by Smith, may have led the AV translators into error.t
The sails were triced up to the yards by numerous ‘prails’ (kadwdua) when it was desired to reduce or take them in, and these were worked by the crew from the deck below; the yards were also furnished with ‘lifts’ and ‘braces’ for trimming the sails, The anchors (déyxvpa), which were suspended as now, one on each bow from ‘ catheads’ (érwrides), were made of lead, iron, or wood coated with lead, and of the modern form, as on the coins of Pestum we see the stock and flukes or palms and ring duly re- presented ; besides the ‘ bower’ anchors there were others, four of which were let go at the stern of St, Paul’s ship when shoaling water (Ac 2779 %), whilst a pretence was made by the crew of also laying out the bower anchors by boat.
Oars (kdérn, remus) are not mentioned as being used on board ; and as these were often absent from large merchant vessels, or only sufficient in number to be used as ‘sweeps’ during a calm, this was probably the case here. Such vessels had movable ‘topmasts,’ to the summit of which was hoisted the upper corner of the triangular sail, called in Latin supparum. It is to the lowering down to the deck of these topmasts that the expression (Ac 2717) ‘strake sail’ in the AV and ‘lowered the gear’ in the RV probably refers; to ‘strike’ a topmast is the proper nautical term in use at the present day. Seneca tells us that Alexandrian wheat- ships,§ on arrival at Puteoli, alone had the privi- lege of keeping their topsails up, all others being obliged to lower them down on entering the bay. The phrase dvro@Oaduety te dvéuw (Ac 27"), trans- lated in the AV ‘ bear up into the wind,’ and in the RY ‘ face the wind,’ would be, in nautical language, ‘beat up against the wind.’ To ‘bear up’ is the sea phrase for doing exactly the reverse of what is