k. Others
were distracted when the wind held for days together while they were
outward bound, lest it might never blow the other way in North America,
and so they would not be able to get back home. The ships, too, often
gave as much trouble as the men. They were far better supplied with
sails and accommodation than the earlier Viking ships had been; but
their hulls were markedly inferior. The Vikings, as we have seen,
anticipated by centuries some of the finest models of the modern world.
The hulls of Cabot, Columbus, and Cartier were broader in the beam,
much bluffer in the bow, besides being full of top-hamper on the deck.
Nothing is known about Cabot's vessel except that she must have been
very small, probably less than fifty tons, because the crew numbered
{49} only eighteen and there was no complaint of being short-handed.
Cartier's _Grande Hermine_ was more than twice as large, and, if the
accepted illustrations and descriptions of her may be relied upon, she
probably was not unlike a smaller and simplified _Santa Maria_, the
ship which bore Columbus on his West Indian voyage of 1492. Such
complete and authentic specifications of the _Santa Maria_ still remain
that a satisfactory reproduction of her was made for the Chicago
World's Fair of 1893. Her tonnage was over two hundred. Her length of
keel was only sixty feet; length of ship proper, ninety-three; and
length over all, one hundred and twenty-eight. This difference between
length of keel and length over all was not caused by anything like the
modern overhang of the hull itself, which the Vikings had anticipated
by hundreds and the Egyptians by thousands of years, but by the
box-like forecastle built over the bows and the enormous half and
quarter decks jutting out aft. These top-hampering structures
over-burdened both ends and produced a regular see-saw, as the Spanish
crew of 1893 found to their cost when pitching horribly through a
buffeting head sea. The _Santa Maria_, like most 'Spaniards,' had a
lateen-rigged mizzen. {50} But the _Grande Hermine_ had no mizzen,
only the square-rigged mainmast, foremast, and bowsprit. The bowsprit
of those days was a mast set at an angle of forty-five; and it
sometimes, as in the _Grande Hermine_, carried a little upright branch
mast of its own.

Many important changes occurred in the nautical world during the two
generations between the days of Jacques Cartier and those of Champlain.
The momentous change in