AN IMMENSE VESSEL.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 47, 23 January 1884, Page 3

AN IMMENSE VESSEL.

The most prodigious vessel on tbe records of the ancients was built by order of Hiero, the second Tyrant of Syracuse, under the superintendence of Archimedes, about 230 years before Christ, the description of which would fill a volume. Athenseus has left a description of this vast floating fabric. There was, he says, as much timber employed in her as would have served for the Construction of fifty galleys. It had all the varieties of apartments and conveniences necessary to a palace—such as banqueting-rooms, baths, a library, a temple of Venus gardens, fish ponds, mills, and a spacious gymnasium. The inlaying of the floors of the middle apartment represented in various colors the story of Homer’s Iliad ; there were everywhere the most beautiful paintings, and every embellishment and ornament that art could furnish were bestowed on the ceilings, windows, and every part. The inside of the temple was inlaid with cypress-wood, the statues were of ivory, and the floor was studded with precious stones. The vessel had twenty benches of oars, and was encompassed by an iron rampart or battery; it had also eight towers, with walls and bulwarks, which were furnished with machines of war, one of which was capable of throwing a stone of 300 pounds weight, or a dart of 12 cubits long to the distance of half a mile. To launch her Archdimedes in-

vented a screw of great power. She had four wooden and eight iron anchors ; her mainmast, composed of a single tree, was procured after much trouble from distant inland mountains. Hiero finding that he had no harbors in Sicily capable of containing her, and learning that there was famine in Egypt, sent her loaded with corn to Alexandria. She bore an inscription of which the following is part :—“ Hiero, the son of Hierocles, the Dorian, who wields the sceptre of Sicily, sends this vessel bearing in her the fruits of the earth. Do thou, O Neptune, preserve in safety this ship over the blue waves.”—The Sea : its stirring Story of Adventure, Peril and Heroism.