HISTORY OF NAVIGATION.
The early history of navigation is wrapped in obscurity. The Egyptians had vessels large enough to be called ships about 3000 years B.C., and perhaps long before this. The Chinese also built ships at a very early date. The appliances for navigating these vessels must have been few and rude, and a voyage of a few hundred miles was regarded as a great undertaking. Consider ing the difficulties under which they labored, the voyages of the Plicenicians must be regarded as daring ventures. They spread their mer chant fleets throughout the Mediterranean. navi gated Solomon's squadrons to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, and planted colonies every where.
Principal among these colonies was Carthage. The Carthaginian fleets passed the Pillars of Hercules. and, with no better guide than the stars, are believed to have sailed northward to the British lsles, and southward for some dis tance along the west eoast of Africa. In B.G. 611 a Phcenician expedition fitted out by Pharaoh Neeho started to circumnavigate Africa, a teat which is said to have been actually accomplished. From the eighth to the fourth century B.C. the Greek States gradually developed the art of navigation, and at the time of the Peloponnesian War the Athenians appear to have been skillful tacticians, capable of concerted manuaivres. In the fourth century B.c. Alexander the Great destroyed the power of Tyre, transferring its commerce to Alexandria. which beeame the centre of trade for the ancient world. Rome wrested from Carthage its naval power, and took its vast trade into the hands of the Italian sailors.
During all this period the average size of the vessels had been continually increasing. Sails were known, and some knowledge was evinced even of beating up against a foul wind; but oars were the great motive power; speed was not thought of, a Voyage from the Levant to Italy being the work of a season. During the time of the Roman Empire no great progress seems to have been made, except in the size of the vessels: but regular fleets were maintained. both in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic coast of Gaul. for the protection of commerce.
The barbarian nations of the North developed the alt of navigation in their own way. The Saxons, Jules, aml 'Norsemen Ilegan to roam • the (wean in every direction; in small vessels they trnsted more to the winds than to oars. anti. sailing singly, gradually acquired that har dihood and daring which ultimately rendered them masters of the sea. The Norsemen extended their voyages to Iceland. Greenland, and New foundland, while they first ravaged and then eolenized the roasts of Britain, France, and Sicily.
In the Middle Ages the Venetians, the Gen oese, and the I9sans became the carriers Of the Mediterranean Sea. Their merchants traded to the farthest Indies, and their !markets became the exchanges for the produce of the world. Their constant rivalries gave occasion for the growth of naval tactics. So rich a commerce tempted piracy. and the Mohammedan corsairs spread over the 'Alediterranean, and, passing through the straits of Gibraltar, ravaged the Atlantic coast.
The mariner's compass (q.v.) came into quite general use in the thirteenth Celli Ivry, and • tendered the seaman independent of the sun and stars. so far as simple steering was (Imperiled. The variation of the compass from true north seems to have been observed as early as 1269. but it was not until the voyages of Columbus that much attention was paid to it.
It was not until the thirteenth century that the employment of the mariner's compass brought about. the development of practical nautieal charts. ( For aneient cartography. see and MAP.) These appeared in Italy; they were constructed by the aid of the compass and took the name of compass charts. The oldest of them is the so-called l'isan elute. which belongs probably to the middle of the thirteenth Century. and it covers the, whole of the Mediterranean. The earliest chart of which the exact date is known appears to be that of P. Viseonte (1311). These eharts are all plane, and together with other early ones are chiefly of ranean; but smite of those appearing in the fourteenth century show the Azores, the Canaries, and the eoast of Africa as far as Cape 110in dOr.