Note 1446 — Chapter XII · REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY (continued 2)

This would represent rapid, though probably not excessively rapid, sailing for the Middle Ages. The data which have come down to us on the speed of medieval sea journeys are so varied that it is impossible to determine a fair average. On the whole it is probable that better time was made by the Scandinavian seafarers than by those of the Mediterranean. A rate of fifty miles (English statute) a day was perhaps about all that could have been expected in the Mediterranean under ordinary circumstances, though on occasions one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles or even more may have been accomplished. The Icelanders, on the other hand, may well have covered as much as one hundred and fifty miles in twenty-four hours. See below, p. 486, note 440, and Ludwig, Untersuchungen, 1897, passim, especially pp. 131–132, 185–186.

To make the journey from Marseilles to Acre in fifteen days a rate of rather more than one hundred and twenty miles a day would have to be maintained throughout the entire passage. Schaube (op. cit., pp. 153–154) brings together some interesting material on the speed of journeys in the Mediterranean. “The duration of the voyages naturally varied very much; we hear that it was reckoned from Messina or one of the Apulian harbors an average of forty days to Accon (Acre); obviously this would refer to a voyage in no way influenced by adverse circumstances. For galleys a somewhat longer time was necessary. The forty galleys of the Emperor Frederick II took in midsummer of 1228 twenty-four days for the journey from Brindisi to Limassol in Cyprus in the best of weather. Benjamin of Tudela assumed that the passage from Messina to Egypt took twenty days. At a somewhat later date Peter of Albeney went from Marseilles to Damietta in twenty-two days, though the ambassador of Barbarossa, Burkhard, who left Genoa on the 6th of September and followed the route by way of Pantellaria and Malta, took more than twice this long, or forty-seven days to reach Alexandria.”