They would, at first, be hollowed out with hatchets and adzes, or else with fire; and, later on, the canoes thus produced would form the models for the earliest efforts in shipbuilding.

The great length, however, would soon be found unnecessary, and the canoe would give place to the boat, in the ordinary acceptation of the term.

There are models of boats among the Phoenician remains which have a very archaic character,[92] and may give us some idea of the vessels in which the Phoenicians of the remoter times braved the perils of the deep.

They have a keel, not ill shaped, a rounded hull, bulwarks, a beak, and a high seat for the steersman.

The oars, apparently, must have been passed through interstices in the bulwark.
From this rude shape the transition was not very difficult to the bark represented in the sculptures of Sargon,[93] which is probably a Phoenician one.