e
of its features the Viking ship shown in Figs. 22 to 26. Apparently,
oars were not used in this particular boat; the propulsion was effected
by means of a single square sail. The mast unshipped, as we know from
other illustrations on the same piece of tapestry. The steering was
effected by a rudder, or steering-board, on the starboard-side. In all
the illustrations of ships in this tapestry the main sheet was held by
the steersman, a fact which shows that the Normans were cautious
navigators. Another ship is represented with ten horses on board.

We possess confirmatory evidence that the ship shown in Fig. 27
represents a type that was prevalent on our coasts in the eleventh and
two following centuries, for very similar boats are shown in the
transcript of Matthew Paris's "History of the Two Kings of Offa" (now
in the Cottonian Library), the illustrations in which are supposed to
have been drawn by Matthew Paris himself. The history is that of two
Saxon princes who lived in the latter half of the eighth century, and
was written in the first half of the thirteenth. We may fairly suppose
that the illustrations represented the types of vessels with which the
historian was familiar. They were all of the type depicted in the Bayeux
tapestry. They are of the same shape at both ends, just like the Viking
ship, and it may be added, like the boats to this day in common use
along the coasts of Norway.

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--One of William the Conqueror's ships. 1066
A.D.]

It must not be supposed that the art of building ships of larger size,
which was, as we have seen, well understood by the Romans, about the
commencement of our era, was forgotten. On the contrary, though, no
doubt, the majority of ships of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were
of small dimensions, yet we occasionally meet with notices of vessels of
comparatively large size. Such an one, for instance, was _La Blanche
Nef_, built in the reign of Henry I., and lost on the coast of Normandy
in the year 1120 A.D. This ship was built for Prince William, the son of
the King, and he was lost in her, together with 300 passengers and crew.
This number proves that the vessel was of considerable size. _La Blanche
Nef_ was a fifty-oared galley. Long before her time, at the end of the
tenth century, when Ethelred the Unready was King of England, the Viking
Olaf Tryggvesson built, according to the Norwegian chroniclers, a vessel
117 ft. in length.

It may here be