“From Marseille to Acre,” says a contemporary writer, “is a sail of only fifteen days. But,” he adds, “then you go through the Great Sea, so that after the mountains round about Marseille cease to be visible you will, if you keep the direct course, see no land either to right or left till you see the land of Syria.”[485] Some of the Crusaders who accompanied Richard—among them Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury and Ranulf de Glanville—faced the mysterious terrors of the “Great Sea” and took this route[486] to Tyre, which they reached on September 16.[487] The two kings had chosen Messina as the final starting-point of their voyage at a time when they deemed themselves sure of finding there every possible facility for refitting and revictualling their ships, and substantial help of every kind for their enterprise; King William of Sicily being married to a sister of Richard, and having long ago promised every assistance in his power to the Crusade.[488] In March, however, they had learned that William had died in the preceding November.[489] The original scheme nevertheless had obvious advantages both for Richard, who knew that William had made some testamentary dispositions for his benefit, and for Philip, who “dreaded the sea.”[490] As the difficulties and dangers of the real overland route from northern France to Apulia and Sicily through the Alpine passes and Italy were apparently still considered even more formidable than those of the Mediterranean sea, Philip had arranged to be conveyed by the practised mariners of Genoa from their city to Messina, not exactly as an English chronicler says “by land,” but by the shortest and easiest coasting route. Richard on the contrary was minded to go by water as much as he could, and had ordered his fleet to meet him at the nearest Mediterranean port—Marseille.[491] When a week had passed and no fleet appeared, he grew weary of waiting; so he hired “two large busses and twenty well armed galleys,” in which he set sail with his household troops on August 7.[492] He was “grieved and confounded at the delay of his navy,”[493] and seems to have coasted along very slowly in the hope of its overtaking him, for it was not [Sidenote: _Aug. 13_] till the 13th that he reached Genoa, where he went ashore to [Sidenote: _Aug. 14_] visit Philip, who was lying there sick. Next day, at Portofino, he received a message from Philip asking for the loan of five galleys; Richard offered three, but this Philip declined. [Sidenote: _Aug. 23_] On the 23rd Richard relieved the tediousness of the slow coasting voyage by landing with a small escort at Baratto and hiring horses on which the party rode to Piombino; [Sidenote: _Aug. 24_] there they rejoined their ships. “Then the king went on board the galley of Fulco Rustac” (or “Rustancri”) instead of the one in which he had been sailing (the “Pumbone”), and they proceeded to Porto Ercole, which was reckoned to be half way between Marseille and Messina.