EARLIEST SHIPS: The Evolution of Boats into Ships

Conway's History of the Ship #1

by Robert Gardiner

Researching back into prehistory and into the earliest evidence provided by archaeology, this volume explores the varied lines of development from the most primitive watercraft to the first real seagoing ships, from Northern Europe, through the Mediterranean to the Near and Far Easts. It traces the most primitive forms of boats - rafts, skin boats and dugouts, for example - which developed ultimately into ships for trade, commerce and war. Apart from chapters on the craft themselves there are sections on related topics, including early pilotage and seamanship, and an evaluation of what modern reconstructions can tell us about the performance of ancient ship types. The Earliest Ships not only summarises existing information but has been produced by many of those whose pioneering work was responsible for the revolution in understanding in the first place.

Genres: History

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

Reviews

[Budge Burgess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated using B&W photography and line drawings, this is the first volume in a series of 12 covering the history of ships. This starts, in Europe at least, with the evidence of small craft used maybe as early as 16,000 BCE - there's evidence of tw0-man boats used to hunt reindeer as they swam across rivers (the animal was defenceless as it swam, the boat would allow a hunter to kill it with a blow to the head ... an economical and safe way to tackle a large animal). The timeline for this book takes up to the first vessels capable of long river and sea journeys and on up to the emergence of the Celtic and Viking shipbuilding industries.
Focus is predominently on Europe - a chapter does look at Arab and Oriental craft - and considers the problems of using the archaeological evidence to reconstruct, say, Viking craft. Clearly the vessels were designed for their efficiency but my enduring memory of this book is of the extraordinary beauty of so many of the vessels which carried our ancestors around and across the world's seas.

[Richard Abbott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Earliest Ships, subtitled 'The evolution of boats into ships', is the final contribution to Conway's 12-volume series on shipping through the ages. Ironically, as the title indicates, it is chronologically the first, hence my own interest in it. It is definitely a work of reference, and the various contributing authors assume you have, or can acquire, a working knowledge of basic terminology about boats and ships. So if you don't know what scarfing is, or a sheer line, or deadweight, then you may need to do some quick online searches to find out.

In passing, the authors' basic distinction between "boat" and "ship" is that a ship requires social interaction and engagement, and has a benefit of some kind to the community as a whole, whether for war or peace. A boat is more of a personal impulse or endeavour. This distinction does become blurred the further back in time you go. For most of the vessels this book focuses on, it is impossible to decide, since our main evidence is archaeological or pictorial rather than textual.

Hence the subtitle - during the span from the last Ice Age to the Viking era, river- and sea-going vessels clearly made this transition, even if we cannot be certain when and how this happened. The earliest boats - skins stretched over a frame of mixed antlers and wood just big enough for a single person - were probably personal. But as boat technology extended to hollowed and planked wooden boats, driven by many oarsmen or by sails needing specialised handling, we enter into ship territory.

Now, I acquired this book quite specifically for research purposes, as I wanted better insight into both Mediterranean and northern European ships of the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages. For this purpose it was excellent, though the year of publication (1996) meant that some recent finds were inevitably not present. Most material here covers these old-world spheres, but there is a section written by an exert on Asian and far Eastern shipping of the ancient world.

But as well as the content I was looking for, I discovered a wealth of insight into many other issues. There were some fascinating explorations of the ways in which social development was shaped by the different patterns of river routes in northern as contrasted with southern Europe. There were some case studies of reconstructed vessels which I found fascinating, mostly for their insights into speed and cargo capacity. However, there were also more inspirational tales, such as the Saga Siglar (a replica of the Skuldevev 1 archaeological find) which completed a circumnavigation of the world. In doing so, she became the first recorded open vessel with no permanent weather deck to perform this feat. This ship was eventually lost a few years later in a fierce Mediterranean storm - which with winds exceeding 100mph would have been a challenge for many more modern ships.

I imagine that the other volumes in the series are as rich in detail as this one, and if so would recommend them to anyone who is interested either in actual research or just an overview of the state of shipping at various times past.

[David H. Millar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful reference book.