NAVIGATION, HISTOSY0F. Navigation and commerce without doubt took thew rise together, for the desire of gain being one of the most powerful incentives to action, would naturally lead men to explore distant countries. Hence we find that the Phenicians, particularly those of Tyre, who were the first trading peo ple on record, were also the first to make fleets, and, by the aid of astronomical observations, to extend their voyages to some distance from their own shores. The Carthaginians follow ed the course of their ancestors the Tyrians, and addicted themselves so thoroughly to trade and navigation, that they surpassed every other nation of antiquity in the cultivation of these two arts. They first made the quadremes, or four-oared galleys, and probably were the who made cables for their large vessels of the shrub spatum. They likewise pushed their discoveries to a vast extent They were per fectly acquainted with the Mediterranean and an the ports in it, and proceeded to the west. ward farther than any other nation. Britain and the Canaries were known to them, and in the opinion of some they even went as far as America. The formidable fleets they fitted out, the quantity of shipping they always kept in their employ, and the honour they so long enjoyed of bemg the masters of the sea, sufficiently attest the advances which they made in navigation. As the Greeks and Ro mans were more addicted to war than com merce, they employed their shipping princi. pally in transporting their men to the coun tries they were going to attack, or in engaging their enemies at sea. That the Athenians ex celled all the other Greeks in their maritime warfare, is evident from the victories which they gained over the Persians by sea. As to the Romans, they are said by Polybius to have been utter strangers to naval affairs, and quite ignorant of ship building, before the first Punic war, when a Carthaginian galley having accidentally stranded on the coast of Italy, was taken by them, and served as a model for the construction of vessels. Of this they made so good a use as to raise a fleet of one hundred and twenty galleys, with which they were enabled to beat the Carthaginians on their own element It does not appear, however, that either of these people went to any distance in their vessels, either for pur poses of trade or curiosity. The only voyage of discovery we read of in antiquity, was that made by Nearchus under the auspices of Alexander. In all Other countries navigation was encouraged solely for the purposes of commerce, as by the Egyptians and the By. zantines, and subsequently by the Venetians and Genoese until the time of the Crusades, when a spirit of adventure was excited through. out all Europe, and preparations were made for voyages to the Holy Land, which led to the improvement of navigation. The laws of Oleron, framed and established by King Richard I., show that a system of maritime policy was now thought necessary. Of the progress of the English navy it suffices here to oLserve, that the first statutes respecting it were passed in the reign of Richard II. and
that from that period to the present it has been the object of government to raise it to the highest pitch of perfection. As to the art of navigation generally, nothing contributed so much to its advancement as 'the invention of the mariner's compass, in the fourteenth cen tury, which gave so great a facility to the ex ploring of unknown regions. From this time many considerable voyages were made, par ticularly by the Portuguese, under the !insp. cm of Henry duke of Visce, who was par ticularly skilled in cosmography, and employ ed a person from the island of Majorca to teach navigation, and to make instruments and charts. In the subsequent. reign of John II. one Martin de Bohemia, a Portuguese, native of the island of Faye!, a pupil of Regiomon tanus, calculated, about 1485, for the use of navigators, tables of the sun's declination, and recommended the astrolabe for taking observa tions at sea. About the same time, Columbus conceived the idea of exploring a passage to India by sailing directly towards the west across the Atlantic ocean, and being furnished with a small armament of three ships by Fer dinand and Isabella of Spain, he set sail in August, 1492, and steered directly for the Canary Islands, thence holding his course due west, he stretched away into unfrequented and unknown seas. After encountering incredi ble difficulties and hardships from the elements, and a scarcity of provisions, but above all from the mutinous spirit of his crew, he arrived at Guanami, one of the large cluster of islands called the Lucaya, or Bahama Isles. He also discovered Cuba, Hispaniola, and several other small islands, and having left a colony in a fort at Hispaniola, returned to Spain in March, 1493. In September following he set out on his second voyage, and sailed by the Leeward Islands to Hispaniola ; and in a third voyage, undertaken in 1498, he discovered the continent of America. In the same year Vasco de Gama returned to Lisbon from a voyage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope. As from practice the art of navi gation was thus materially improved, so like wise additional efforts were now made to ad vance it theoretically, and to extend its cultiva. lion. The emperor Charles V. founded a lec ture at Seville for the improvement of naviga tion, which derived much advantage from the discovery of the variation of the compass, and the use of the cross staff. The subject also now began to engage the pens of the learned. Two treatises, the first of the kind, containing a system of the art, were published in Spanish, the first by Pedro de Medina, at Valladolid, in 1545, called 'Arte de Navegar,' the other at Seville, in 1556, by Marten Cortes, under the title of 'Breve Compendio de la Sphere y de la Arte de Navegar, which was translated into English, and passed through several im pressions.