Maritime history of Europe
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The Maritime history of Europe represents the era of recorded human interaction with the sea in the northwestern region of
Ancient times
Egyptian sources mention regular shipments of copper from the island of Cyprus, that arrived at the city of Byblos as early as 2,600 years BCE.[1] The Minoans of Crete are the earliest known European seafarers of the Mediterranean Sea. Little is known of their ships, but they reportedly traded pottery as far west as Sicily. According to the historian Thucydides, by 1,900 years BCE. their King Minos commanded a navy and conquered the islands of the Aegean. The Mycenaeans would obtain maritime hegemony in the region around 1,600 BCE and hold it until the attacks of the Sea Peoples, that disrupted the maritime culture and the naval balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age collapse between 1,200 and 900 years BCE.[1][2][3]
During the following centuries the ancient
Around 325 B.C. Pytheas, a Greek geographer and explorer undertook a voyage of exploration to northwestern Europe (modern-day Great Britain and Ireland) and beyond. In his account On The Ocean (Τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ), that is only known through the writings of Strabo and Pliny the Elder, he introduces the idea of the land of Thule and describes Celtic and Germanic tribes, the Arctic, polar ice and the midnight sun.[9][10]
Republican and Imperial Rome
During the
By the end of the Macedonian Wars in the latter half of the 2nd century BC, Roman control over the Aegean sea was undisputed and full hegemony over the entire Mediterranean Sea, now referred to as Mare Nostrum ("our sea") had been established.[13]
Roman
There were many shipwrecks of Roman vessels, which can be explained by the very large number of trading vessels during Roman times since the volume of sea trade in the mediterranean reached a quantity to be only equaled in the 19th century. This greatly increased the number of shipwrecks.
Byzantine Empire
The western Mediterranean came under the control of the barbarians, after their invasion split the Empire in two, while Byzantium dominated the eastern half of the sea. The eastern empire lasted until 1453, such was the efficiency of the Byzantine navy, with its fleets armed with Byzantine fire (or Greek fire), a mixture of naphtha oil and saltpetre, fired through tubes in the bows of the ship. Enemy ships were often afraid to get too close to the Byzantine fleet, since the liquid fire gave the Byzantines a considerable advantage.[15]
The Viking Age
Also called the
The Vikings were the best
of only 3 feet (0.91 m). The shallow draft enabled them to navigate far inland in shallow rivers. Later on during the Viking period some of the ships were reported to be over 100 feet (30 m) long."From the fury of the Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us," has entered apocryphal knowledge as a common prayer among the people of western Europe during the period of the Norse raiders from the late 8th century to the 11th century. According to the website Viking Answer Lady,[16] which in turn cites Magnus Magnusson's Vikings![17] as its reference,
No 9th century text has ever been discovered containing these words, although numerous medieval litanies and prayers contain general formulas for deliverance against unnamed enemies. The closest documentable phrase is a single sentence, taken from an antiphony for churches dedicated to St. Vaast or St. Medard: Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et custodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna, ”Oh highest, pious grace, free us, oh God, by preserving our bodies and those in our keeping from the cruel Norse people who ravage our realms.”.
The Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was a commercial and defensive alliance of the merchant guilds of towns and cities in northern and central Europe that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea and most of Northern Europe between the 13th and 17th centuries. Although trading alliances in the region were forming as early as 1157, the town of Lübeck did not form an alliance with Hamburg (which controlled access to salt routes from Lüneburg), until 1241.[18]
Trade was carried on chiefly by sea in order to escape tolls and political barriers, and at the end of the 15th century the Hanseatic League controlled some 60,000 tons of shipping. Although compasses were commonly being used in the Mediterranean during this period, the captains of Hanseatic vessels seemed slow to adopt the new technology, which put them in greater danger of wrecking. They also had to deal with pirates. During its zenith the alliance maintained trading posts and kontors in virtually all cities between London and Edinburgh in the west to Novgorod in the east and Bergen in Norway.
The League's power declined after 1450 due to a number of factors, such as the 15th-century crisis, the territorial lords' shifting policies towards greater commercial control, the silver crisis and when the great
Republic of Venice
Around 1300, Venice began to develop the great galley of commerce, the ‘’galea grossa’’. It grew to carry a crew of more than 200 and weighed as much as 250 tons. These galleys took passengers and goods to Constantinople (now Istanbul), and to Alexandria in Egypt, and returned to Venice carrying luxury items. A sea route to the Indies discovered by Portugal signaled an end to the glory days of Venice's merchant galleys and spice trade, but the war galleys (or fighting galleys) lived on. The war galleys were mostly manned by prisoners of war or convicts, who were chained to benches, usually three to six per oar.
More than 3,000 Venetian merchant ships were in operation by the year 1450. The trading empire of the Republic of Venice lasted longer than any other in history, and even merchants vessels were required to carry weapons and passengers were expected to be armed and ready to fight. From the beginning of the 13th century until the end of the 18th century, the Republic ruled the
The European Age of Discovery (1400–1600)
The
At the beginning of the 16th century, sea clashes in the Indian Ocean as the decisive Battle of Diu, in 1509, marked a turning point in history: the shift from the Mediterranean and from the relatively isolated seas, disputed in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, to the oceans and to the European hegemony on a global scale.
Christopher Columbus set sail in Santa Maria on what is probably history's most well known voyage of discovery on August 3, 1492. Leaving from the town of Palos, in southern Spain, Columbus headed west. After a brief stop in the Canary Islands for provisions and repairs, he set out for Asia. He reached San Salvador first, it is believed, (easternmost of the Bahamas) in October, and then sailed past Cuba and Hispaniola, still searching for Asia. He returned home in 1493 to a hero's welcome, and within six months had 1,500 men and 17 vessels at his command.
The year 1571 saw the last great battle between galleys, when more than 400
The publication of
Once knowledge of the sea route became available to all Europeans, more ships headed to East Asia. A Dutch fleet embarked on a voyage to India using Linschoten's charts in 1595. (The Dutch version of his book was published in 1596, but his sea charts had been published the previous year). The publication of the nautical maps enabled the Dutch and British East India companies to break the trade monopoly Portugal held with the East Indies.
European innovations
From the sixth to the eighteenth centuries, the maritime history of Europe had a profound impact on the rest of the world. The broadside-cannoned full-rigged sixteenth-century sailing ship provided the continent with a weapon to dominate the world.
During this time period, Europeans made remarkable inroads in maritime innovations. These innovations enabled them to expand overseas and set up colonies, most notably during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
They developed new sail arrangements for ships, skeleton-based shipbuilding, the Western “galea” (at the end of the 11th century), sophisticated navigational instruments, and detailed charts. After Isaac Newton published the Principia, navigation was transformed. Starting in 1670, the entire world was measured using essentially modern latitude instruments and the best available clocks. In 1730 the sextant was invented and navigators rapidly replaced their astrolabes.
Barbary pirates
For several centuries, from about the time of the
Siege of Gibraltar and the Battle of Trafalgar
July 1779 saw the start of the Great Siege of Gibraltar, an attempt by France and Spain to recover control of stolen Gibraltar from the British. The
Lighthouses
The Pharos of Meloria is often considered the first lighthouse in Europe since Roman times. Meloria, a rocky islet off the Tuscan coast in the Tyrrhenian Sea, was the location of two medieval naval battles. The Tower of Hercules (Torre de Hércules), in northwestern Spain, is almost 1,900 years old. The ancient Roman lighthouse stands near A Coruña, Galicia, and is 57 metres (185 ft) in height. It is the oldest working Roman lighthouse in the world.
According to Smithsonian, a lighthouse on the
Oil spills
There have been several large oil spills off the coasts of Europe since 1967. They include:
- Aegean Sea— A Coruña, Spain, December 3, 1992
- Amoco Cadiz — Brittany, France, March 16, 1978
- Braer — Shetland Islands, January 5, 1993
- Othello — Trälhavet Bay, Sweden, March 20, 1970
- Prestige — Galicia, Spain, November 13, 2002
- Torrey Canyon — Cornwall, England, March 18, 1967
- West Cork oil spill — 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of Fastnet Rock, Ireland, February 16, 2009
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 0-691-01477-9.
- ISBN 978-1-58983-721-8.
- ^ Eberhard Zangger. "Who Were the Sea People?". Aramco Services Company. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-521-78274-6.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ISBN 978-0-521-79543-2.
- ISBN 978-0-7432-4450-3.
- ^ A.D.Godley (15 November 2018). "Herodotus, The Histories". Perseus Digital Library. Retrieved July 25, 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-14-190939-4.
- ISBN 978-1-4381-3161-0.
- ISBN 978-3-96724-010-8.
- ^ Tusa, Sebastiano; Royal, Jeffrey (2012). "The landscape of the naval battle at the Egadi Islands (241 B.C.)" (PDF). Journal of Roman Archaeology (in Italian and English). 25. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 August 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-8018-5130-8.
- ISBN 978-1-317-70110-1.
- ^ Thomas Rice Holmes. "Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar". Clarendon Press. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-521-42892-7.
- ^ "Origin of the phrase, "A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine"". The Viking Answer Lady. Archived from the original on 1 December 2010. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
- ISBN 0-525-22892-6.
- ^ Margrit Schulte Beerbühl. "Networks of the Hanseatic League". Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
- ^ Istvan Szepesi, "Reflecting the Nation: The Historiography of Hanseatic Institutions." Waterloo Historical Review 7 (2015). online Archived 5 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Murray N. Rothbard (23 November 2009). "The Great Depression of the 14th Century". Mises Institute. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
- OCLC 174172925.
- ^ "Bartolomeu Dias". 15 October 2019.Retrieved 2023-02-14.
Further reading
- A Study of 16th Century Western Books on Korea: The Birth of an Image, Myongji University
- Pryor, John, Maritime History, University of Sydney, course outline
- Villiers, Alan, Men Ships and the Sea, National Geographic Society, 1962, pgs. 62, 70, 132 & 133
External links
- National Maritime Museum, London - [1]
- Early Maritime Maps Online