Page:The history of yachting.djvu/30

 2 Cleopatra's galley at the battle of Actium; the magnificent pleasure-vessels Isis and Thalamegus, built by Ptolemy Philopator (222 B.C.); the royal vessel with "a golden beak, and fence of golden shields to protect the rowers on their benches," presented to Athelstane by the King of Norway (A.D. 925); the galley presented to Hardicanute by Earl Godwin, "sumptuously gilt and rowed by eighty men, each of whom wore on his arm a bracelet of gold weighing sixteen ounces" (A.D. 1040); the Queens Hall, which carried Phileppa, niece of King Henry IV. and Queen of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, to join her husband in Denmark, all—together with many other royal vessels that might be mentioned—carried purple sails.

This custom continued until the beginning of the fifteenth century, one of the last instances recorded being that of the King's Chamber, on board of which King Henry V. sailed from England to France. This vessel carried a sail of purple silk, upon which was embroidered in gold the arms of England and France.

By means of purple sails we are enabled to trace and establish the antiquity of vessels used exclusively by royalty, or what would, at the present time, be known as royal yachts.

A vivid picture—herewith abridged—of Tyre, the "golden city" and "mother of crafts," is given in Ezekiel chapter XXVII., where the prophet speaks of Tyre as "a merchant of the people for many isles. . . . They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir: they have taken cedars