The ships which Richard had found awaiting him in the harbour of Messina when he arrived there are said to have numbered one hundred and fourteen.[578] Stragglers that had come in later, Tancred’s gift, and other vessels bought or hired by Richard had now raised the total to about two hundred.[579] Of these, some forty or fifty were galleys or battleships, built after the pattern of the old Roman _liburnae_ or the “long keels” of Richard’s Norse forefathers, long, slender, with armed prows, and propelled by two tiers of oarsmen.[580] The rest were transport vessels; those of the largest size, of which there seem to have been now twenty-four, were called “busses” by the northerners and “dromonds” in the Mediterranean and the Levant. Of these vessels, fourteen which had formed part of the original English fleet had each of them three spare rudders, thirteen anchors, thirty oars, two sails, triple ropes of every kind, and a double set of everything else that a ship could need, except the mast and the boat; the lading of each consisted of forty war-horses, forty knights with all their arms and accoutrements, forty foot-soldiers, and fifteen sailors, with food enough for all these men and horses for a whole year. The other ships of burden, called “huissiers,” “ushers,” “enekes” or “smacks” (_esneccae_) were round-shaped vessels, seemingly dependent on sails alone; their carrying capacity was half that of the busses. The king had taken the precaution to distribute his treasure among all the transport ships, “so that if part were lost, another part should be saved.”[581] [Sidenote: _April 10_]