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THE

WHOLE HISTORY

OF

NAVIGATION,

FROM ITS

ORIGINAL TO THIS TIME.

Of all the inventions and improvements the wit and industry of man has discovered and brought to perfection, none seems to be so universally useful, profitable, and necessary, as the art of navigation. There are those that will not allow it to be called the invention of man, but rather the execution of the direction given by Almighty God; since the first vessel we read of in the world was the ark Noah built by the immediate command and appointment of the Almighty. But this is not a place to enter upon such a controversy, where some will ask, why it should be believed there were not ships before the flood as well as after, since doubtless those first men, extending their lives to eight or nine hundred years, were more capable of improving the world than we whose days are reduced to fourscore years, and all beyond them only misery or dotage? It is impertinent to spend time upon such frivolous arguments, which only depend on opinion or fancy. If then we give any credit to history, on which

all our knowledge of what is past depends, we shall find that navigation had but a mean and obscure original, that it was gradually and but very leisurely improved, since in many ages it scarce ventured out of sight of land; and that it did not receive its final perfection till these latter times, if we may be allowed to call that perfect which is still doubtless capable of a further improvement: but I give it that epithet only, with regard to the infinite advancement it has received since its first appearance in the world.

The first vessel ever known to have floated on the waters was the ark made by God's appointment, in which Noah and his three sons were saved from the universal deluge. But this ark, ship, or whatever else it may be called, had neither oars, sails, masts, yards, rudder, or any sort of rigging whatsoever, being only guided by divine providence, and having no particular port or coast to steer to, only to float upon the waters, till those being dried up, it rested on the mountains of Ararat, as we read in Gen. viii. 4. From this time till after the confusion of tongues there was no use of navigation, there being as yet no sufficient multitude to people the earth; and those men there were, having undertaken to build the tower of Babel, from thence were dispersed into all other parts of the known world. These first travellers doubtless met with many rivers before they came to the sea, as plainly appears by the situation of Babel, generally agreed upon by all that treat of scriptural geography; and those rivers they passed in a hollowed piece of timber, no better than a trough, or a sort of baskets covered over with raw hides, being the easiest that occurred to invention, and sufficient for their present purpose, which was only to pass on in their way to other parts, without the prospect of trade or commerce, which cannot be supposed to have then entered into their thoughts. What vessels they built when they came to the sea no history describes, and therefore it would be a rashness to pretend to any knowledge of them. That they were small, ill rigged, and only durst creep along the shores, is out of all dispute; if we consider that many

succeeding ages were no better furnished, though they never failed from time to time to correct the defects they found in their shipping, and industriously laboured to improve the art of navigation. Not to speak therefore of what is absolutely fabulous, or only supposititious, let us come to the first sailors famed in History; and touching those times lightly, descend to matters of more certainty and better authority.

If we give credit to poets and poetical writers, we shall find Neptune covering the Mediterranean sea with his mighty fleets, as admiral under his father Saturn, supposed to be Noah, as Neptune is to be Japheth; and to him is ascribed the first building of ships, with sharp stems, or heads shod with iron or brass, to run against other ships, and split them, and with towers on them for men to fight when they came to lie board and board. Yet there are others that give the honour of inventing of ships, and steering them, to Glaucus, affirming it was he that built and piloted the ship Argo in Jason's expedition against the Tyrrhenians; which others attribute to Argos, making him the builder and pilot. These notions, or rather poetical fictions, are rejected by the learned Bochartus, in his Geographia Sacra, p. 819, 820; where he shows that the ship Argo ought properly to be called Arco, which in the Phoenician tongue signifies long: a name given it because it was the first long ship built by the Greeks, who learned it of the Phoenicians, and called it by their name; whereas all the vessels used by them before that time were round. This ship Argo, or rather galley, he says had fifty oars, that is, twentyfive on each side, and therefore must be fifty cubits in length. Here it appears that the Greeks had round. vessels before that time, and all that we can reasonably conclude is, that this ship or galley Argo, or Arco, was larger, and perhaps better built and contrived than any before it, and might perform the longer voyage, which rendered it famous, as if it had been the first ship. But it is certain there were many fleets, such as they were, before this time; for the Argonauts' expedition was about the year of the world. 2801, which was after the flood 1144 years: whereas we find Semi

ramis built a fleet of two thousand sail on the coasts of Cyprus, Syria, and Phoenicia, and had them transported on carriages and camels' backs to the river Indus, where they fought and defeated the fleet of Staurobates king of India, consisting of four thousand boats made of cane, as Diodorus Siculus writes. About the year of the world 2622, and 965 after the flood, Jupiter, king of Crete, or Candia, with his fleet stole away Europa, the daughter of Agenor king of the Sidonians. In 2700 of the world, and after the flood 1043, Perseus went on the expedition by sea against Medusa in Afric. Now to return to the Argonauts so much celebrated by the poets, upon the strictest examination into truth, we shall only find them inconsiderable coasters in the Mediterranean, and set out by the public to suppress pirates, though fabulous Greece has extolled their expedition beyond all measure.

Next

follows the Trojan war, about the year of the world 2871 and 1214 after the flood, where we find a fleet of one thousand one hundred and forty sail of all sorts, still creeping along the shores, without daring to venture out of sight of land.

Now leaving the Greeks, it is fit we return to the Phoenicians, who are the same the Scripture calls the Philistines or Canaanites, as is largely proved by Bochartus, certainly the earliest and ablest mariners in those first ages: they made the greatest discoveries of any nation, they planted colonies of their own in most of those countries so discovered, and settled trade and commerce in the most distant regions. There can be no greater testimonies of their wealth and naval power than what we find in holy writ, Ezek. xxvii. where the prophet, speaking of Tyre, says it is situate at the entrance of the sea, is a merchant for many isles, its ship-boards are of fir-trees of Senir, their masts of cedars, their oars of oak of Bashan, their benches of ivory, their sails of fine embroidered linen; and so goes on through most of the chapter, extolling its mariners, pilots, ships, all things belonging to them. This, though from the undeniable oracle of Scripture, were no sufficient proof of their knowledge in this art, were not all histories full of their many expeditions. The

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