The Philipsburg mail., 1898-07-22
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FIGHTING TOP.
For Centuries Before the Christian Era They We're
Ised-EWptians and the Military Mast.

AS place of peril the fighting top
OF modern man-ofwar is the most
exposed position in heated action,
cut Off as it's occupants are from all
sheltering armor and poised high and
clear as a tempting target for an en-
emy's quick-firing guns. Let that
mast be torn away and swept over
board by the tempest of small shell
that ships of to-day can bring to bear
upon unarmored parts of a foe, and
the brave defenders must go to GER
tain death without the chance of bit
of floating spar, as in the olden days,
to hold them up till succor come af-
ter the fierce rush of conflict.
The story of the fighting top reaches
way back centuries before the Chris
tian era; in fact, back to the earliest
time when war craft might pardonably
be called ships by virtue of their sue
cessful struggle with wave and tenn
pest; and amid the rapid changes of
to-day, it is hard to trace the connec-
tion between those ancient craft with
their rude equipments and the modern
battleship, fierce and strong, by right
OF the power she has plucked
from the bowels of the earth
and turned to her own purposes of
might and majestic dominance.
The carvings and drawings of the
war craft of the ancient Egyptians and
Asiatics, two thousand years before
Christ, bear the embryo of the mill
tary top perched at the masthead of
the single spars that bore their sails
then. 1t was merely rough basket
like arrangement in which one or two
men might stand and assail the war
riors of the foe where they crouched
behind the sheltering bulwarks of
bucklers hung against the sides. Perch
ed high above, the men in the ga
bie," as later it was called, picked off,
like sharp-shooters, the enemy before
he could come aboard or tempted him
into open exposure and the cOnse-
quences such rashness brought.
Down upon the foes deck the hurt
ling spear was sent, while the top
men rested far above retaliation save
from the enemy's topmen, if he had
any. During the time of the naval
struggles between the Greeks and the
Romans, the fighting tops disappeared,
for it was customary then to lower the
masts and trust only to the great
sweeps or oars when going into ac-
tion. Strange as it may seem the mer-
chant vessels alone carried fighting
tops then, and for the purpose only
of meeting the attack of pirates. with
whom nearly every sea was then in
tested. Those tops were not unlike
casks, and, with two or three men in
them, could be hoisted we'll up and
into position in time to be of service.
Many of our large merchant liners and
all whalers carry somewhat similar
arrangement we'll up on their masts
to-day, and, from the crows nest, as
it is now called, most of the lookout
duty is now done. The Japanese have
adopted something of the kind for their
modern naval vessels and the cut of
the Chitoses mast is typical.
AS the ships grew in power their
masts had to be heightened by splicing
on additional spars, and to give spread
for the stays and shrouds that held
them in place, platform was built
at the top of the lower mast There
the archer and spearman found ample
room for his work, and the Saxon
chronicles of that lusty writer, Sir
John Froissart, in the latter part of
the fourteenth century give as some
very interesting accounts of the dam
age inflicted upon the French, the
Spanish, and the Genoese by the top