But whereas the Egyptians were a peace-loving race, and therefore their ships were not built for fighting, we find the Greeks constructing two distinct types of craft, and it is important to get this quite clear at once, as the reader will presently agree. First there was the swift-moving galley, relying chiefly on oars. She was built for the purposes of fighting, and therefore does not enter into our subject. But secondly there was the slow-moving, big-bellied craft, relying almost entirely on her one mast and sail, which was used for the purpose of trade from spring to autumn, and then laid up until the good weather returned once more. Think of her with her great square-sail going across to Egypt to bring back corn, calling at Rhodes on the way, getting caught in terrible weather, but year after year, century after century, doing the same voyages as a new generation of seamen grew up. So it was with the Roman merchant ships from every March to November, blundering on their trans-Mediterranean voyages as corn-carriers. These seamen were, as always sailors have been and will be, a race apart. In the mind of most people nobody but a fool or a madman ever takes up a seafaring career. Seamen were very scarce and had to be allowed special privileges; and merchants who travelled in their ships marvelled that they could use the stars for finding their way over the dark waters at night. But the transportation of goods over the sea had to be done. The shipowners formed themselves into corporations, and membership was handed down from father to son, much as it is in a fishing village to-day. One of the oldest professions is that of piracy. In those days a pirate was not so much a sea bandit as a sea adventurer; the Greek word _peirates_ and its Latin equivalent signifying one who _attempts_ or _tries_ his fortune on the sea, much as we speak of the Elizabethan “venturers.” None the less, until the growth of naval power piracy always was the great enemy of the merchant ship; and even in Roman times it at length became so serious that drastic measures had to be taken to stamp it out, only to keep on recurring like a cancerous growth until the age of steam practically wiped it out except in Chinese waters. Over and over again in the following chapters we shall see the innocent, cargo-carrying ship molested in this manner; but, for all that, the seaman’s spirit remained undaunted, and the trade of the world continued to be carried over the seas in spite of these known risks. As it was in the Mediterranean, so it was later on in the North Sea.