SHIP, the vehicle by which man conveys himself and his goods upon water. The earliest and most elementary form of ship was, doubtless, a log or one or two of them secured together to form a raft. The first conception of a vessel which can carry weights, not merely on account of its own buoyancy, but on account of the water it displaces, may be traced in the primitive craft fashioned by hollowing out tree trunks, by fire or such primitive tools as savage races could devise.
It was long before the principle of flotation by displacement was fully and universally understood, and we read of objectors to the introduction of iron ship construction arguing that "wood floats but iron sinks," yet it is this principle which makes pos sible the great ship as we know it to-day. Some glimmering of the future seems, however, to have enlightened Virgil when he wrote, "Rivers then first the hollowed alder felt" (Georg. i. 136, ii. 451). Alder is a heavy wood and not fit for rafts, but to make Early efforts at shipbuilding may be classified in the following order : (I) rafts—floating logs, or bundles of brushwood of reeds or rushes tied together; (2) dug-outs—hollowed trees; (3) canoes of bark, or of skin stretched on framework or inflated skins (balsas) ; (4) canoes or boats of pieces of wood stitched or fastened together with sinews or thongs or fibres of vegetable growth; (5) vessels of planks, stitched or bolted together with inserted ribs and decks or half decks; (6) vessels of which the framework is first set up, and the planking of the hull nailed on to them subsequently. All these in their primitive f orms have survived, in various parts of the world, with different modifications which mark a varied progress in civilization. On the north west coast of Australia, for instance, is found the single log of buoyant wood, not hollowed out but pointed at the ends. Rafts of reeds are still used by the natives of the same continent. In New Guinea catamarans of three or more logs lashed together with rattan are commonly used, and similar forms appear on the Madras coast and throughout the Asiatic islands. On the coast
of Peru rafts made of a very buoyant wood are in use, some of them as much as 7o ft. long and 20 ft. broad; these are navigated with a sail, and, by an ingenious system of centre boards, let dawn either fore or aft between the lines of the timbers, can be made to tack. The sea-going raft is often fitted with a platform so as to protect the goods and persons carried from the wash of the sea. Upright timbers fixed upon the logs forming the raft support a kind of deck, which in turn is itself fenced in and covered over. (The raft of Ulysses described in Homer [0d. v.] must have been of this class.) Thus the idea of a deck, and that of side planking to raise the freight above the level of the water and to save it from getting wet, are among the earliest typical expedients in the progress of the art of shipbuilding.
Dugout canoes of a single tree have been found associated with objects of the Stone Age among the ancient Swiss lake dwellings; other specimens have been extracted from the bogs of Ireland and the estuaries of England and Scotland. Whatever may have been the origin of the bark canoe, its construction was a step onwards in the art of shipbuilding, for the lightness and pliability of the material necessitated the invention of some internal framework. In those countries where suitable timber was not to be found, the use of skins or other water-tight material, such as felt or canvas, covered with pitch, giving flotation, de manded a similar framework to keep them distended and to bear the weight they had to carry. In this structure we have the rudimentary ship, with longitudinal bottom timbers, and ribs, and cross-pieces, imparting the requisite stiffness to the covering material. Bark canoes are found in Australia, but the American continent is their true home. In northern regions skin or woven material made water-tight supplies the place of bark.