Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/343

 were only decked somewhat less than halfway across, a large space remaining open for ventilation, while the rowers of the upper tier were above the level of the deck, and were consequently exposed to the darts of the enemy.

As far as we can now judge from the writings of the ancients, first-class galleys were divided into compartments, not unlike the steamers of our own day, verifying the adage that there is "nothing new under the sun;" and certainly this holds true on comparing the bows of the war galleys of the ancients with the iron-clad rams of modern times. Our theory, therefore, after the most careful inquiry, is that ''the paddle-*wheel steamer of to-day resembles in her structure (though materially improved, and possessing the vast advantage of mechanical power) the row galley of the ancients''. Her machinery and coal bunkers are distinct and separate from the hold, cabins, or any other portions of the ship; while the engines and the paddle-wheels take the position and act the part of the rowers and their oars. Here modern genius and skill, as in a thousand other instances, substitutes mechanical for manual labour. The modern paddle, in its revolutions, performs exactly the same duty as the oars of the ancients in their simultaneous movements, and the well-trained crews of the Grecian and Roman galleys in their action at the oars were, so far as is traceable, almost as regular as the beat of the paddle-wheel.

Nor was it necessary to appropriate for the use of the rowers, even when three hundred men were engaged, a larger space in the ship than would now be required for a steam engine of one hundred and