It must not be supposed that the art of building ships of larger size, which was, as we have seen, well understood by the Romans, about the commencement of our era, was forgotten. On the contrary, though, no doubt, the majority of ships of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were of small dimensions, yet we occasionally meet with notices of vessels of comparatively large size. Such an one, for instance, was _La Blanche Nef_, built in the reign of Henry I., and lost on the coast of Normandy in the year 1120 A.D. This ship was built for Prince William, the son of the King, and he was lost in her, together with 300 passengers and crew. This number proves that the vessel was of considerable size. _La Blanche Nef_ was a fifty-oared galley. Long before her time, at the end of the tenth century, when Ethelred the Unready was King of England, the Viking Olaf Tryggvesson built, according to the Norwegian chroniclers, a vessel 117 ft. in length. It may here be mentioned that galleys continued to be used, along with sailing ships, in the various European navies till the seventeenth century. Another instance of the loss of a large twelfth-century ship occurred in the reign of Henry II., half a century later than the wreck of _La Blanche Nef_, when a vessel engaged in transport work foundered with 400 persons. In the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion a great impetus was given to shipbuilding and to maritime adventure in this country by the expedition which the king undertook to the Holy Land. A fleet of about 110 vessels, according to Peter Langtoft, sailed from Dartmouth in April, 1190 A.D. It was reinforced considerably in the Mediterranean; for, according to Matthew Paris, Richard was accompanied on his voyage to Palestine by 13 buccas, 100 "ships of burthen," and 50 triremes, and according to Vinesauf, the fleet consisted of about 230 vessels. The buccas, or busses, or dromons, were ships of the largest size, with triple sails. There were two sorts of galleys; some were propelled by oars alone, and others by oars and sails: the latter were the larger, and, according to Matthew Paris, sometimes carried 60 men in armour, besides 104 rowers and the sailors. He also states that some of them had triple banks of oars like the ancient galleys; but, according to Vinesauf, the majority had not more than two banks of oars, and carried the traditional flying deck above the rowers for the use of the soldiers; they were low in the water compared to the sailing-ships, and they carried beaks, or rams, which, as narrated subsequently, they used to some purpose. The larger type of sailing-ships carried a captain and fifteen sailors, forty knights with their horses, an equal number of men-at-arms, fourteen servants, and complete stores for twelve months. There were, moreover, three much larger vessels in the fleet which carried double the complement mentioned above.