It is the custom of some writers concerning mediæval ships to deplore the existing information as being too scanty to afford us any adequate idea as to vessels that sailed the seas during the first half of the middle age. For myself I think that such a statement cannot be maintained. The evidence on which we are able to construct afresh in our minds the ships of this period, is scarcely as slender as has been supposed, though not unnaturally we must make allowances for obvious inaccuracies, for exaggerations, and for ignorance. But, even when we have done this we shall find the sources of information far from shallow. I have used as the basis for this chapter, the evidence of mediæval seals, both English and Continental: England, Scotland, France, Spain and Flanders all affording interesting details of ships by this means. I have gone carefully through old coins, and though representations of ships thereon depicted have necessarily had to suffer through the limitations imposed on the artist by the size and shape of the coin, yet this evidence used collaterally with the rest, goes a long way towards completing the picture we are endeavouring to paint. During the eleventh century, certain merchants from Bari on the Adriatic made an expedition to Lycia and brought back the remains of St. Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra, who had lived and suffered persecution in the fourth century under Diocletian. Thence grew up a wide-spread cult of this saint. Not only did he become patron saint of Russia, but of all sailormen throughout Christendom. In ancient pictures we sometimes see a ship caught in a terrible storm with sails and gear carried away, Boreas or his colleague, raising his head above the waters, blowing with inflated cheeks at the helpless ship, while above the picture, St. Nicholas appearing in the clouds, comes to the aid of the skipper seen praying on the poop for deliverance from the horrible seas. In England this cult was not wanting either. There are between three and four hundred churches in our land dedicated in St. Nicholas’ honour, and the reader as he journeys along the coast, will frequently find that in an old seaport the parish church bears this dedication. We need not go too far into this matter, but the famous parish church of that very ancient seaport of Great Yarmouth (whose seamen used to have goodly quarrels with the men of the Cinque Ports, and who, long prior to the coming of William the Conqueror, were busy with the herring fishery), and also of Brighton, are notable instances of this devotion to the sailor’s saint. The font of the Brighton church and of Winchester Cathedral—although the design in each case is conventionalised—cannot fail to assist us. The date of the former belongs to somewhere between the years 1050 and 1075: as to the latter, Dean Furneaux informs me that the date is about 1180.