The vessel, an Illyrian galley, had six wheels propelled by as many oxen. The curious picture suggests an unwieldy, top-heavy concern which could only be of use in still water, and would probably be safest in shallow water, so that if anything happened the oxen and men could walk ashore without trouble. The cattle apparently occupy most of the space, an immense bird’s head with a hooked nose juts out in front immediately above the water-line; this is of course the ram, above which is a platform upon which a dog stands as the vessel’s figure-head. It is unnecessary to go in detail into all the schemes devised by inventors and visionaries for propelling vessels by mechanical means. Several of them from time to time suggested placing wheels on the outside of the boat, and “turning the wheeles by some provision so that the wheeles make the boat goe,” to quote William Bourne’s proposition of 1578, but the “some provision” constituted a problem which he and many others found too much for them. David Ramsay in 1618 took out a patent “to make boats for carriages running upon water as swift in calms and more safe in storms than boats full sailed in great winds,” and twelve years later another patent is recorded to his credit for making ships and barges go against the tide. The optimism of these and other mechanical pioneers was wonderful; indeed, had their inventive genius only equalled their imagination, some of the difficulties which until comparatively recently baffled naval engineers and marine architects would have been long since overcome. [Illustration: “LIBURNA” OR GALLEY, WORKED BY OXEN. _From Morisotus._] The webbed feet of water-birds suggested to many a form in which mechanical propulsion could be applied. This was only natural, as early shipbuilders took as their models the birds which they saw floating before them. In 1759 a Swiss pastor named Genevois published at Geneva a proposal to use an oar fitted with a foot which should expand when used for propelling a boat and contract when being moved forward through the water for another stroke. Genevois visited London in 1760 to lay his proposal before the Government. His propellers were to be worked by springs which in turn were to be compressed by a kind of cannon with a piston. A pamphlet which he issued at the time of his application to the Government contains the interesting statement that he had been informed that a Scotchman had propounded a scheme thirty years earlier for propelling vessels forward by the recoil from the firing of cannon over the stern. The gunpowder of the period made up in smoke what it lacked in power; hence, although the vessels of his day were not large, the ingenious Scot “found, by the experiments made for that purpose, that thirty barrels of Gun-powder had scarce forwarded the ship the space of ten Miles”; and it is not surprising that this means of mechanical propulsion shared the fate of all of its predecessors.[4]