Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/568

 Eastern, of somewhere about twenty-four thousand tons register, would be insignificant, and whose main-*mast is a walking stick in comparison with the mast of one hundred and eighty-four feet high, and ''thirty-eight feet in circumference'', of which Captain Napier has furnished a description. Nor are we disposed to place any more confidence in the account of her height which he furnishes; and we are sure that he would not have considered it safe to have commanded in rough weather a ship of the height he describes in proportion to her length (the breadth is not given), much less would he have attempted to hoist upon her deck a "long boat" which carried "nearly seventy-two tons."

There is no way of accounting for these numerous palpable mistakes than by supposing that they arose "from a mistake in copying the MSS., or from typographical errors;" but how they should have arisen in so many cases is perplexing. Moreover, it is wholly unaccountable why historians, especially men with the experience and practical knowledge of Napier, should not have directed special attention to errors so glaring.

It may, however, from all the information we have been able to collect, be affirmed that, previously to the fifteenth century, practical or professed writers upon shipping were unknown; while those who incidentally refer to it are so inaccurate, that their works have little, if any, real value. Almost everything relating to shipping, and especially to merchant shipping, before that time is, therefore, in a great degree matter for conjecture. Nay, we are even inclined to think that, on the whole, we possess more accurate accounts of the ships of antiquity.