Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/620

 all the great maritime nations possessed vessels of large dimensions, although the smaller were comparatively far more numerous than in modern times, being better adapted to the nature of the voyages undertaken and the limited extent of maritime commerce.

If therefore Columbus set sail on his expedition with ships the largest of which, as some writers have imagined, was only from 150 to 200 tons burden, this must have been from choice, or for the reason just named; it could not have arisen from ignorance on his part of the kind of vessels best adapted for his purpose, or of the roughness of the sea about to be explored, for he had made various voyages on the Atlantic, had studied with care the logs of the Portuguese navigators in their discoveries, and had himself visited Iceland, and made a voyage to the 73rd degree of north latitude, then a region of the ocean all but unknown. But unfortunately history furnishes no definite account of the vessels placed under his charge, and no authentic delineation of their form. In the abridged edition of Washington Irving's interesting work, there is, indeed, the representation of a Spanish galley from the tomb of Fernando Columbus in the cathedral of Seville. But there is no reason to suppose that this galley is an actual drawing of any one of the three vessels in which Columbus made his ever memorable voyage, though it probably represents the ordinary coasting vessel of the period, or one of those occasionally employed in the trade between Spain and the smaller Mediterranean ports.