The Romans used similar vessels of large size until the time of the battle of Actium, where the clumsy, many-banked ships of Antony and Cleopatra were destroyed by the lighter single- or double-banked vessels of Augustus. Augustus had adopted the low, swift, handy vessels of a piratical people, the Liburni, who had learned in their sea fights against all kinds of vessels that the lighter type of boat could be used most effectively. Structurally the hulls of these boats were not unlike modern wooden vessels.
While the various types of vessels were being developed in the Mediterranean region, a race of mariners far to the north were perfecting boats in which they were destined to overrun the Western seas from the tropics to the arctic circle. These people, the Norsemen, left few written descriptions that give a good idea of the construction of their boats, which were sufficiently seaworthy to enable the Danes to cross the Atlantic and colonize America. But thanks to one of their peculiar burial customs some of their smaller boats have been preserved and brought to light in recent years. It was their custom when a great chief died, to bury him in a ship, heaping earth over it to form a great mound. In most instances the wood of such boats, buried for a thousand years, has entirely disappeared; but in some mounds the boats have been preserved almost intact.
From the specimens so preserved it is known that the Norsemen knew how to shape the hulls of their boats almost as well as the modern boat-builder. This fact is interesting because the immediate successors of the Norsemen, either through ignorance or choice, reverted to most primitive types in building their boats. Thus it required centuries for them to develop a knowledge of hull-construction that was familiar in ancient times to the northern rovers. Scandinavia itself never entirely forgot the art, and there are boats built in Norway to-day closely similar in all essentials to some of the boats constructed by the Norsemen.
The contrast in shape and construction between the trim ships of the Norsemen and the short, top-heavy vessels which were the approved European type during the early Middle Ages, is most striking. The Mediæval shipbuilders in striving to improve their craft, making them as seaworthy and as spacious as possible, first added decks, and then built towering superstructures at bow and stern. The result was a vessel which would have been so top-heavy that it would be likely to capsize had it not been so broad that "turning turtle" was out of the question.