conquer these tribes, and had only succeeded in driving them into undying hostility to it, and to Roman civilisation. Wealth, polish, and luxury were what the decadent Romans set store by. They were exactly the things which the Saxons most cordially despised. These last prided themselves upon the manner in which they endured hardships and surmounted difficulties; they regarded bluntness and roughness as manly virtues rather than as defects, and they held it disgraceful and womanish for a man to seek to lie soft, or to idle at home, when there were spoils to be won abroad by good seamanship, and by axe and sword. Brutal they were; dissolute they were; drunken they were; but their brutality was the brutality of strength and high spirits, and not of premeditation; their dissoluteness sprang from natural cravings and not from artificial vices; and though they drank deep, they did not allow their orgies to interfere with their work in the world.
The Anglo-Saxon ships[1] seem to have been nothing more than long, deep, undecked boats, sometimes, perhaps, of as much as fifty tons' burden, yet never having more than single mast, provided with a single lug-shaped sail. There was no rudder. The steersman sat in the stern, holding on his right or "steerboard" side a paddle, with which he controlled the vessel's course. This paddle was probably fixed by a thong, or by a thole-pin passing through it, so as to preserve it from loss, and to assist the steersman, whose other hand held the gathered up end of the sail. The arrangement was, thus, much like that of still earlier ships, and it recalls, strikingly enough, Virgil's description:[2]
"Ipse sedens clavumque regit, velisque ministrat."
It is unlikely that the crew ever exceeded fifty or sixty men. The ships[3] were usually, if not invariably, clincher built, that is, they were covered with planks so disposed that the lower edges of the superior ones overlapped the upper edges of the inferior ones. The bow was raised, and generally bore, as a figure-head, a carved model of the upper part of some fierce or fabulous beast. The stern also was raised, and occasionally ornamented, though less elaborately
- ↑ 'Mémoires des Belles Lettres,' Stockholm, 1783; Mems. of Roy. Soc. of Copenhagen,' viii.; Charnock's 'Mar. Architecture.' But see more detailed account, at end of chapter, of the Gokstad boat.
- ↑ Applied by Mr. Dallaway in 'Archæologia,' xxi. 81.
- ↑ Some ships of this period are called "ceols" (keels), others "hulks," others "long ships," and still others "æses." It seems impossible to say exactly what each was.
