sailed under orders from Alexander the Great, reports that some ships on this
run were“poorly furnished with sails and are constructed without belly-ribs
on both sides.”Vessels known as sangara used on the tip of southern India
were described in thePeriplus Maris Erythraeias“very big dugout canoes held
together by a yoke,”the largest of which were two-masted. Pliny puts the
size of Bay of Bengal ships at“three thousand barrels”in reference to a
system of measurement used in the Mediterranean based on a ship’s capacity
for holding amphorae wine jars. This would make them about 75 tons. Ships
that had to negotiate narrow channels, as in the passage between India and
Ceylon, had bows at both ends so they would not have to come about
(change directions) when conditions changed.
Most trade goods were carried in craft Western observers referred to as
“sewn boats”because their planks were stitched together with ropes made of
coir (fiber from coconut husks). In parts of southern India split bamboo was
the main form of fastening, but in other places wooden dowels were used to
fasten planks. The best wood for shipbuilding was teak, which was hard,
durable, and highly resistant to warping, a product of the jungles of India.
But the vessels themselves must have had problems with leaking that kept
sailors bailing much of the time. Early ports lacked infrastructure, including
quays, docks, and warehouses. Any settlement on or near the coast could
serve as a port. Ships were simply run onto a beach, or cargo was unloaded
onto lighters, smallflat-bottom boats used in harbors and roadsteads (places
offshore that were less sheltered and enclosed than harbors). Ships hugged
the coastlines, risking shoals, reefs, and other hidden dangers, not to mention
pirates, to keep the coast in sight so as not to risk getting lost.
Sometime in thefirst millenniumBCE, someone discovered how to navi-
gate across the ocean by using the wind pattern known as the monsoons.
That someone may have been the Malays or, coming from the opposite
direction, the Arabs, or from the north Indians sailing across the Bay of
Bengal, or perhaps all three working independently, although it has been
suggested, without any real evidence, that Harappan sailors had this knowl-
edge earlier. A four-month travail inching along the coast became a 40-day
ride across open waters using the stars at night and reading signs in the sea
and sky to navigate during the day. The Malays traveled east to west across
the ocean, settling in Madagascar and probably establishing trading stations
at various points along the East African coast to trade in cinnamon, although
speculation on the date of this ranges widely. A Malay settlement may have
existed on the southwest Arabian coast, which fleets visited periodically,
bringing products from Southeast Asia. Indian traders sailed to the“Island of
the Black Yavanas” somewhere on the East African coast. Sailors from
Ceylon, according to Pliny, developed their own system of open-water navi-
gation:“The Cingalese take no observations of the stars in navigation...but
they carry birds on board with them and at fairly frequent intervals set them
free, and follow the course they take as they make for the land.”
86 When India was the center of the world