The ship was a beautiful ship, sleek and well-lined. It was a twenty-bencher, but this nomenclature may be confusing. There were twenty beches to a side, with two men to each bench. It carried, thus, forty oars, with two men to each oar. Tersites of Port Kar, the controversial inventer and shipwright, had advocated more than one man to an oar but, generally, the southern galleys utilised one man per oar, three oars and three men on a diagonal bench, facing aft, the oars staggered, the diagonality of the bench permitting the multiplicity of levers. The oars were generally some nineteen feet in length, and narrower than the southern oars, that they might cut and sweep with great speed, more rapidly than the wider bladed oar; and with two men to each oar, and the lightness of the ship, this would produce great speed. As in the southern galleys the keel to beam ratiowas designed, too, for swiftness, being generally in the neighbourhood of one to eight. Forkbeard’s ship, or serpent, as they are sometimes called, was approximately eighty Gorean feet in length, with a beam of some ten feet Gorean. His ship, like most of the northern ships, did not have a rowing frame, and the rowers sat within the hull proper, facing, of course, aft. The thole ports, I noted, had covers on the inside, on swivels, which permitted them to be closed when the ship was under sail. The sail was quite different from the southern ships, being generally squarish, though somewhat wider at the bottom.The mast, like that of the southern ships, could be lowered. It fitted into two blocks of wood, and was wedged into the top block by means of a heavy diagonal plug, driven tight with hammers.