Note 74 — VI. PREPARATIONS.

“This mode of steering was retained till a comparatively late period. In a bass-relief over the doorway of the leaning tower of Pisa, built in the twelfth century, ships are represented with paddle rudders, as those in the Bayeux Tapestry representing the Norman Invasion. They must have been in use till after the middle of the thirteenth century; for in the contracts to supply Louis IX. with ships, the contractors are bound to furnish them with two rudders. By the middle of the following century we find the hinged rudders on the gold noble of Edward III. The change in the mode of steering must, therefore, have taken place about the end of the thirteenth, or early in the fourteenth, century.”—Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul.