Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/115

 ancients had frequently very high poops or enormous castles erected aft, a practice which prevailed up to the seventeenth century, it is hardly possible to conceive that the highest portion of the poop of Ptolemy's ship was fifty-three cubits, or about eighty feet above the water. The object of having so many as seven beaks is not easily understood; two of them may, however, have been placed at the bluff, or rounds of the bows, so as to protect, in some measure, the oars from being destroyed by the ship of an enemy sheering alongside. "Some of them," we are informed, "were fixed to the ears of the ship."

Nor is it easy to understand what is meant by the "ears," unless they represent that portion of the head or bow where the cat-heads are now placed. A beak in that place would protect the upper bank of oars, while another below it, a little above the water-line, would guard the lower banks. Though inferior in length, breadth, and capacity to our modern wonder, the Great Eastern, Ptolemy's huge vessel could hardly have been meant for sea-going purposes, if the dimensions given of her depth, and the height of her poop, are accurate; nor could seven or eight thousand men, besides a "large number under deck," have been accommodated in her 'tween decks; but, though the nautical knowledge of the present day renders it difficult to accept all the recorded details of this extraordinary vessel, it is not necessary to agree with the writers who altogether deny her existence. The four thousand rowers could perfectly well have been placed at their stations, though it is most likely that she was never used except for display, or as an object of ornament or luxury.