Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/113

 *eight cubits long, with handles necessarily weighted with lead. She had two heads, two sterns, and no fewer than seven beaks, one of them much larger than the rest. She carried on board four thousand rowers, and about three thousand mariners, besides a large body of men under her decks, and a vast quantity of stores and provisions. She was launched by means of a contrivance invented by a Phœnician, one, indeed, which might probably have been adopted with success for the launching of the Great Eastern, and, assuredly, at less cost.

Various imaginary drawings have been made of Ptolemy's great vessel; but as none of them appear to answer the only description of her which has been preserved, or to fulfil the requirements of a structure meant to float in safety, an endeavour has been made, in the drawing annexed, to illustrate this remarkable ship, which was "well proportioned in an extraordinary degree." If the cubit be taken at eighteen inches, Ptolemy's ship was four hundred and twenty feet in length, fifty-seven feet beam, and had seventy-two feet depth of hold: proportions which, as far as regards the length and breadth, accord very well with those of the large steam-ships of our own time; but the depth is so great and so much out of proportion to the length and breadth, that there is no doubt a mistake in the figures. The depth was much more likely to have been twenty-eight cubits, for which forty-eight has, through some misapprehension, been substituted. There is no doubt, also, a mistake in the height of the stern above the water, for though the ships of the