Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/33

 Rh examination of facts fails, however, to warrant this very exactly The oar as 'motive power' was essentially the product of the Mediterranean, where seas were comparatively calm and distances moderate. As in process of time sea empire travelled west, its chief centre shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and contiguous water in which rougher seas made the oar a far less reliable instrument. In the Mediterranean the ships of the ancients were oar-propelled with auxiliary sail power: in the north even the earlier vessels depended upon sail with auxiliary oar-power.

As habitude with sails grew, a natural tendency to discard the auxiliary oar arose. This may be compared with the gradual abandonment of the auxiliary sails by steamships of a later age. Northern nations found themselves able to do more and more with sails and needing oars less and less.

Then came the introduction of cannon, for which the sides of ships, hitherto occupied by oars, were required. To obtain the advantages of artillery, which was the better of two alternatives, oars were sacrificed. The galley, however, survived for a long period, and practically into the steam age, as a subsidiary craft for special purposes. It could move against the wind and