ization owes so
much. They had doubtless learned their work on their own Nile before they
pushed out by the channels of the Delta to the waters of the "Great Sea."
They had invented the sail, though it was centuries before any one learned
to do more than scud before the wind. It took long experience of the sea to
discover that one could fix one's sail at an oblique angle with the
mid-line of the ship, and play off rudder against sail to lay a course with
the wind on the quarter or even abeam and not dead astern.

But there was as important an invention as the sail--that of the oar. We
are so familiar with it, that we do not realize all it means. Yet it is a
notable fact that whole races of men who navigate river, lake, and sea,
successfully and boldly, never hit upon the principle of the oar till they
were taught it by Europeans, and could of themselves get no further than
the paddle. The oar, with its leverage, its capacity for making the very
weight of the crew become a motive power, became in more senses than one
the great instrument of progress on the sea. It gave the ship a power of
manoeuvring independently of the wind, the same power that is the essence
of advantage in steam propulsion. The centuries during which the sailing
ship was the chief reliance of navigation and commerce were, after all, an
episode between the long ages when the oar-driven galley was the typical
ship, and the present age of steam beginning less than a hundred years ago.

Sails were an occasional help to the early navigator. Our songs of the sea
call them the "white wings" of the ship. For the Greek poet AEschylus, the
wings of the ship were the long oars. The trader creeping along the coast
or working from island to island helping himself when the wind served with
his sail, and having only a small crew, could not afford much oar-power,
though he had often to trust to it. But for the fighting ship, oar-power
and speed were as important as mechanical horse-power is for the warships
of the twentieth century. So the war galley was built longer than the
trader, to make room for as many oars as possible on either side. In the
Mediterranean in those early days, as with the Vikings of later centuries,
the "Long Ship" meant the ship of war.

It is strange to reflect that all through human history war has been a
greater incentive to shipbuilding progress than peaceful commerce. For
those early navigators the prizes to be won by fighting and raiding