“For when that we shall go to bedde, The pumpe was nygh our beddes hede, A man were as good to be dede, As smell thereof the stynk.”[42]
It is curious to observe, as one reads history, that many an invention, or a practical idea belonging to modern times, has really existed for century and century, though in an undeveloped condition. The modern liquid compass is an excellent instance.
“Ere men the virtue of the magnet found, The ocean scarcely heard a human sound.”
But inasmuch as the ship is at the mercy of the sea, and since the sea is a continually undulating entity, a compass which does not have a corresponding adaptability is inadequate. This fact, as one might naturally suppose, was appreciated by the early navigators. Ford[43] quotes Bailak Kibdjaki, an Arabian writer of A.D. 1242, and shows that at least a crude kind of liquid compass was in use by the Oriental navigators. “The captains navigating the Syrian Sea,” says Kibdjaki, “when the night is so dark as to conceal from view the stars, which might direct their course according to the position of the four cardinal points, take a basin full of water; they then drive a needle into a wooden peg or cornstick, so as to form the shape of a cross, and throw it into the basin of water, on the surface of which it floats. They afterwards take a loadstone of sufficient size to fill the palm of the hand, or even smaller, bring it to the surface of the water, give the hand a rotary motion towards the right, so that the needle turns on the water’s surface. They then suddenly and quickly withdraw the hand, when the two points of the needle face north and south. They have given me ocular demonstration of this process during our sea voyage from Syria to Alexandria in the year 640 of the Hegira.”
By the thirteenth century the people dwelling along the Mediterranean littoral had long since become skilled seamen if not consummate navigators. There is in the British Museum a volume by Francesco da Barberino, entitled “Documenti d’Amore.” The author was born in 1264, and in the ninth lection of this volume has so much to say about nautical service that this forms what is really the first work on seamanship that was ever written. Space will not allow more than a cursory reference to this, but it contains evidence of the system into which the Mediterranean sea-service had developed. The old custom which was in vogue during classical times of limiting the sailing season to certain months was retained. Thus Barberino remarks that the time for navigation was from April to the end of September. Furthermore it was not custom merely, but actual law. For maritime legislation had originated during the twelfth century, and was continued in the “Loi de Trani,” the “Code Navale des Rhodiens,” the “Code de la Mer,” and the famous Laws of Oleron. In fact only the lawless, avaricious merchant captains ventured to put to sea in the other six months of the year; none but these cared to venture forth sailing through the long dark nights, and the fogs, storms, and snow.