Ancient and Modern Ships, Part 1: Wooden Sailing Ships — Reading Companion

Evidence and Its Limits

Holmes repeatedly confronts the scarcity and unreliability of sources. For the classical period, drawings and paintings are 'few and far between,' made by artists who 'thought more of pictorial effect than of accuracy of detail.' The Phoenicians, 'the principal maritime people of antiquity in the Mediterranean,' left almost no record of their vessels. Even the Greeks of the Archaic period are known mainly through chance finds, such as an eighth-century BCE vase depicting a bireme. Holmes places his trust in Egyptian carvings, which he considers 'correct in their main features' if the draughtsmen were as conscientious as in their animal and building drawings. This cautious weighing of evidence runs throughout the book.

Numbers and Scale in Medieval Fleets

Holmes provides detailed figures for English naval expeditions under Edward III. In 1345, the invasion fleet comprised 'from 1,000 to 1,100 ships, besides small craft.' Two years later, a fleet of 745 ships carried 15,895 mariners, averaging about twenty men per vessel, not counting fighting men. Yarmouth contributed 43 ships and 1,950 men; Fowey sent 47 ships and 770 men; Dartmouth supplied 32 ships and 756 men; London, independently of the king's own vessels, sent only 25 ships with 662 men. These numbers illustrate the scale of medieval naval mobilization and the distribution of maritime resources across English ports.

The Advent of Naval Artillery

The introduction of cannon forced changes in hull design. Early guns were mounted on the upper deck and fired over the bulwarks 'en barbette'; later, portholes were cut through the bulwarks. Holmes notes that the Venetians are 'usually credited with having been the first people to employ naval guns,' but the first sea fight in which artillery was probably used was the 1372 battle off La Rochelle, where Spanish ships were 'partly armed with the new weapon.' To counterbalance the weight of guns aloft, the beam of vessels had to be increased. The Venetians, however, feared that wide transverse sections would strain the connection of sides with beams, so they gave the sides considerable—the text breaks off, but the pattern of technical adaptation is clear.

Holmes's handbook is best approached as a working document from an era when naval architecture was still synthesizing archaeological and historical data. Readers interested in the evolution of ship design will find a wealth of specific figures, vessel types, and armament details, though the narrative is necessarily fragmentary where evidence is lacking. The work rewards those who read with attention to the author's own methodological cautions.

Reading Ancient and Modern Ships, I kept thinking about those fragile hulls riding out storms, and how the sailors inside must have felt. That handbooks' dates and rigging diagrams suddenly felt like quiet margins around a larger story. It made me recall The battles of the world — A Closer Reading, which turns those same timber and canvas details into something far more human.