Who mastered the sea? At a time before the folk of Iberia ventured into the Atlantic or crossed the Cape of Good Hope? The Vikings, the adventurous and the audacious, one might think! The Venetians, the Genoese, the Hanseatic, too. They all did, but in the Mediterranean in the main, occasionally venturing eastwards to the Red Sea and westwards to the North Sea. But the Mediterranean is a closed sea, a rivulet compared to the massive expanse of the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific oceans.