Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/386

 navigation were on a scale unknown in the world of ancient history. Whether or not they were the first discoverers of Vinland (or North America), they quickly found their way to the Mediterranean, and were known on every European coast from Iceland to Constantinople. Their rapid movements directly across wide, stormy oceans show a start in seamanship passing at once beyond the capacity of the earlier navigators who crept along the shore. Their ordinary galleys were adapted to the Mediterranean, where they were used down to the seventeenth century. They had small square sails merely to get help from a stern wind, their chief mode of propulsion being oars; but it may be reasonably supposed that the Vikings, when they performed, as they so often did, the feat of sailing from their place of retreat straight across a stormy ocean, and of pouncing unexpectedly on the opposite shore, had made considerable advance in the rigging and handling of sailing vessels.

From incidental allusions in the Sagas, it is believed that a fleet fitted out for fighting and plunder was accompanied by lumber ships to carry slaves for the drudgery work, provisions, munitions, and perhaps the heavier portion of the plunder. As to the size of their light narrow war ships, it has been calculated by an ardent and skilful student of the habits of the Norsemen, that one favourite vessel, "the Long Serpent," must have been above a hundred feet in length. The monk of the Irish house of St. Gall, who tells the story of Charlemagne weeping when he saw a pirate fleet in the Mediterranean, also tells how