same period. The galleons used by the Greeks, Turks, and
Algerines, as well as by the Knights of St. John, were awkward and
unwieldy; their hulls represented no true lines of nautical beauty or
usefulness. They were not seaworthy, as the term is usually applied.
When the weather was severe, the vessel was always anchored under the
lee of the nearest land, or was put into some sheltered bay. These
vessels carried far too much top hamper, and exposed too much surface to
the wind, to be safe when a storm raged. Their free board was enormous,
compared with their draught. The author has seen at Christiania, in
Sweden, the hull of an ancient war craft which was dug out of the clayey
soil of the country, where it had been preserved for centuries, that
antedated these galleons used by the Knights at Rhodes and at Malta, it
having been built at least nine hundred years ago. Its lines and
construction combined three important qualities, storage capacity,
buoyancy, and speed, and it was intended to lie low in the water, thus
presenting but small surface to a storm on the ocean. Not one of these
characteristics could be claimed for the galleys of this inland sea. The
latter were crude, top-heavy, with high-curved poop and stern, and
designed only for fair weather service, while the northern-made craft
could ride out the fiercest storm in safety when properly managed, and
were built for open ocean navigation. In fact, this model, still to be
seen at the Museum in Christiania, is such as bore the Northmen across
the Atlantic to our shores, centuries before the time of Columbus, whose
discoveries we commemorate. The naval branch of the Order of St. John
was originated soon after their expulsion from Jerusalem, and was
rapidly developed while they occupied the island of Rhodes, but it did
not reach its highest efficiency until after their settlement at Malta,
where the situation of the island and its extraordinary harbor
facilities particularly favored maritime enterprise. There they built
many armed galleys, though all the material which entered into their
construction was necessarily imported. There was no available wood to be
found upon the island, except that which was brought from the mainland
of Italy. A people entirely surrounded by water naturally came to be
good boat and ship builders, and the galleons produced during the
sovereignty of the Knights showed great improvement, and were famous for
their staunch character compared w