istance, and having altered and adorned her
to suit their own fancies afterwards, put a crew on board, utterly
forgetful of the proper proportions between the ship and the men.

In the reign of the son and successor of William the Conqueror, William
the Second, called Rufus, the first great crusade against the Saracen
possessors of the Holy Land was commenced, in the year 1095. To aid in
that extraordinary expedition, a large fleet was fitted out in England,
and placed under the command of the Earl of Essex. The ships, as they
had a long voyage to perform, and a number of armed men and provisions
to carry, must have been of considerable size. As the use of the
mariner's compass was unknown to them, they must have coasted round the
shores of France, Portugal, and Spain, before they entered the
Mediterranean.

The Atlantic in those days was not likely to be more tranquilly disposed
than it is at present, and thus the mariners must have been expert and
brave, and the ships well found, or they would not have performed the
voyage in safety. We know that the Crusaders had horses, but they
probably were transported from the neighbouring shores of the
Mediterranean, and any favourite war-steeds which came from England were
conveyed across France. Neither Henry the First nor Stephen, from A.D.
1100 to 1135, maintained a navy, properly so-called, but on the few
occasions that they required ships, they hired them of the merchants,
called on the Cinque Ports to supply them, or had them built for the
purpose.

Probably all vessels in those days carried oars, or long sweeps, to
assist them in calms, and in going in and out of harbours; but many
craft of considerable burden depended solely on oars for moving at all.
There appears to be much difference of opinion as to how these oars were
worked when there were several tiers, and I therefore return to the
subject already touched on in the first chapter. It is most probable
that there was one space, or between decks, devoted entirely to the
rowers. This space was fitted with a succession of rows of benches one
higher than the other, but not one above another. That is to say, that
the bench immediately higher than the first was placed in the interval
between it and the one behind it, so that the rowers sitting on this
higher bench had their feet pressed against the bench below them, others
on the tier above having their feet on their bench. As the tiers were
higher and higher