The Slender Giants of the Wine-Dark Sea (1)

 

I am still undecided about the plan to write a new book. Meanwhile, things are getting into a groove. 

Whether a book in its virtue or a unit in a volume, it will be titled "The Anguish and Thrill of Navigation". I may add a subtitle emphasizing that the topic concerns plying the medieval Mediterranean. I have chosen an epigraph from Eustache Deschamps, a 14th- century French poem. His extract claims that landlubbers, no matter how they are proficient in globetrotting have no idea about the hardships of sea travel. 

The prototype of the project is based on a string of articles written in 2014-2015 for my second manuscript, "The Enchanting Encounter with the East". However, these papers were excluded from the final draft since the book deals with land travels rather than seafaring. A new, extended version of these essays makes them awkward to use in my third project, which focuses on the Age of Discovery. On the other hand, my current project is too significant to cut it short and restrict myself to a few technological notes. 

Chapter 1, The Long Ship versus Round Ship is more or less ready, though it may endure a few minor changes. 

Chapter 2, The Slender Giants of the Wine-Dark Sea is nearly ready. It will comprise four parts: 

• Light galleys
• The Monster Galley
• The Intricacies of the Naval Warfare
• The Shipborne Artillery 

I am currently developing the last section, though I have to decide what to do with a hill of bits and pieces which may become part of the first two chapters. 

Last but not least. I have recently read the article "Mysterious Mound in Syria May Be Oldest War Memorial in the World, Archaeologists Say", 

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-mysterious-mound-in-syria-may-be-oldest-war-memorial-in-the-world-1.9850752

where the writer advocates that four-wheeled battle cars of the III millennium BCE could turn if a warrior would leap on an extended board, making the carriage stand on its back wheels and enabling the driver to shift the direction of a team of donkeys dragging it. I shared my amazement with a friend, a retired engineer. I was right, the idea sucks. Imagine the force needed in this case, the strenuous effort needed to drive the donkeys in the seconds when part of the "car" will be in the air, the danger to spoil the wheels, and the possibility that the carе will turn over.

I thought that it was a journalist's blunder but then I checked a scientific article, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/their-corpses-will-reach-the-base-of-heaven-a-thirdmillennium-bc-war-memorial-in-northern-mesopotamia/664312804723289D33D9D5CA2E32D1C2

where archeologists subscribe to the same idea. I was stunned! And you?