Page 71 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

THE SEA

round the seaboards of the world more ships

than one would guess saw the Second Millennium begin. They
are galleys for the most part, broad in the beam and castle
prowed and sterned. The majority are drawn up for the night on

open beaches, perhaps beneath the tall walls of a seacoast city,
perhaps on a naked foreshore to a naked hinterland. Their crews

sleep soundly, wrapped in their sea cloaks, beside the oar
benches or beneath the poop deck. Many ships, though, lie at
anchor in sheltered coves, where the shores are too steep for the

vessels to beach; and on these the watchmen blink at the light­
ening sky and yawn as they greet the new day. And some, caught

out on a harborless stretch, or commanded by a devil-may-care
captain, fight out the night at sea, with bows turned to meet the
waves and with short-hauled oars just giving steerageway. There

the dawn is doubly welcome for the view it gives of the coast,
which has been muttering menacingly to leeward all night. With

the coming of the sun the watch below is roused, and with
fully manned oars, or with the approximately lateen sail shaken
out to catch a favorable wind, the ships beat onward to their dis­

tant goals. By the beached ships the crews await the tide that
will aid them afloat again, or load or unload bales and ingots,

skins of water and sacks of barley under the direction of the sail­
ing master, while the merchant officers are ashore in the city,
completing the final documentation with their agents or negoti­

ating exchanges with the local dealers.
It is predominantly mercantile, this shipping of the turn of

the millennium, and we still know far too little about it. But every
new discovery, whether of a coastal townsite or of a hoard of