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The Evolution of the Sail Ship

The development of the sailing ship was truly a global effort. It began about 2000 BC when the Ancient Egyptians used sails on their Nile barges and reed boats. They were followed by The Phoenicians, In the centuries following 1200 BC, the Phoenicians formed the major naval and trading power of the region.

Phoenician, Greek and Roman Galleys. The term galley can refer to any ship propelled primarily by man-power, using oars. The Greeks and Phoenicians built and operated the first known ships to navigate the Mediterranean: merchant vessels with square-rigged sails. Around the 7th or 6th century BC the design of galleys changed. Shipbuilders, probably first in Phoenicia, added a second row of oars above the first, creating the biere or bireme (although probably neither term was used at the time). Very soon afterwards, a third row of oars was added, by adding an outrigger to the hull of a bireme. These new galleys became known as trieres (&quot;three-fitted&quot;;) in Greeks and Romans called this design the triremis (in English, &quot;trireme&quot;). The origin of these changes remains uncertain; Thucydides attributes the innovation to the boat-builder Aminocles of Corinth in about 700 BC, but some scholars distrust this and suggest that the design came from Phoenicians. Herodotus (484 BC - ca. 425 BC) provides the first mention of triremes in action: he mentions that Polycrates, tyrant of Samos from 535 BC to 515 BC, had triremes in his fleet in 539 BC.

Chinese Junks Leeboards and centerboards were used circa 759 AD to stabilize the Chinese Junks and to improve their capability to sail upwind, an innovation adopted by Portuguese and Dutch ships around 1570. Another characteristic of junks, interior compartments, allowed reinforced the ship structure and reduced the rapidity of flooding in case of holing. The compartments were not watertight, as popular belief has it. All wrecks so far have limber holes, probably for the sensible reason that with early Chinese pump technology and heavy tropical rains, multiple watertight compartments would have been impractical. This innovation was misunderstood in the West in the late 18th century, but was not adopted at that time. Later in the 19th century a similar system, but beginning with longitudinal bulkheads, was adopted to strengthen early iron ships to counter hogging and sagging.

Benjamin Franklin wrote in a 1787 letter on the project of mail packets between the United States and France:&quot;As these vessels are not to be laden with goods, their holds may without inconvenience be divided into separate apartments, after the Chinese manner, and each of these apartments caulked tight so as to keep out water&quot; (Benjamin Franklin, 1787).In 1795, [Sir Samuel Bentham]], inspector of dockyards of the Royal Navy, and designer of six new sailing ships, argued for the adoption of &quot;partitions contributing to strength, and securing the ship against foundering, as practiced by the Chinese of the present day&quot;. His idea was not adopted. Bentham had been in China in 1782, and he acknowledged that he had got the idea of watertight compartments by looking (obviously not too closely) at Chinese junks there. Bentham was a friend of IK Brunel, so it is possible that he had some influence on Brunel's adoption of longitudinal, strengthening bulkheads in the lower deck of the SS Great Britain.

The Junk is a Chinese sailing vessel. The English name comes from Malay dgong or jong. Junks were originally developed during the Han Dynasty (220 BC-200 AD) and further evolved to represent one of the most successful ship types in history. Junks are efficient and sturdy ships that were traveling across oceans as early as the 2nd century AD. They incorporated numerous technical advances in sail plan and hull designs that were later adopted in Western shipbuilding. The historian H. Warington Smith considered the junk as one of the most efficient of ship designs.

Viking Longships The world's first truly intercontinental explorers were the Vikings, who probably crossed the Atlantic Ocean about 900 AD in their Longships. The Longship was the first true sailing ship because its sail was used for power most of the time. Longships or the bigger drakkar ship were boats used by the Scandinavian Vikings and the Saxons for their raids on coastal and inland settlements during the European Middle ages. They were the epitome of Scandinavian military power at that time, and they were highly valued as material possessions. The longship was a long, narrow, light boat with shallow draft. They were fitted with oars along almost the entire length of the boat. Later versions sported a rectangular sail on a single mast which was used to augment the efforts of rowers, particularly during unusually long journeys. In combat, the variability of wind power made rowers the chief means of propulsion. Nearly all longships were clinker built and waterproofed by moss drenched in tar. The ship's low shallow draft allowed navigation in waters measuring as little as one metre deep, rapid beach landings, and its light weight allowed portages.

Dutch Cogs The next important development for sailing ships was the invention of the hinged rudder. This first appeared around 1250 AD on small merchant ships, called Cogs used in the Baltic Sea by German traders. Cogs or rather cog-built vessels came into existence around the 12th Century. They were characterized by flush-laid flat bottom at midships but gradually shifted to overlapped strakes near the posts.

Mediterranian Xebec The Xebec, also spelled chebec, chebeck, jabeque, sciabecco, shebec, xebeque, and zebec, was a small, fast, three mast (but originally two mast) vessel of the 16th to 19th centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea, with a distinctive hull, which added a pronounced overhanging bow and stern, and rarely displacing more than 200 tons, slightly smaller and with slightly fewer guns than frigates of the period.

They were greatly favored by Mediterranean nations as corsairs, and for this purpose were built with a narrow floor to achieve a higher speed than their victims, but with a considerable beam in order to enable them to carry an extensive sail plan. When used as corsairs they carried a crew of 300 to 400 men and mounted perhaps 16-40 guns according to size. In peacetime operations, the xebec is known to transport merchandise to their designated ports of call. This vessel contributed the lanteen sail. The European adoption of the lateen in the Late Middle Ages made ships more maneuverable, thus permitting merchants to sail out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic Ocean Caravels typically mounted three or more lateens.

Portuguese Caravels About 1470, a revolution in sails occurred in Europe when the Caravel appeared with two and sometimes three sails. It still used lateen or triangular sails like the Mediterranean boats it was modeled on. It also had a new type of construction which was more streamlined than the clinker-built ships that went before it. A caravel is a small, highly maneuverable, three-masted ship used by the Portuguese and Spanish for long voyages of exploration beginning in the 15th century. Although the carrack represented the state of the art in later medieval shipbuilding, there were purposes for which it was not appropriate. Initially carracks were used for exploration by the Spanish and Portuguese venturing out along the west African coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. But large, full-rigged ships could not always be sailed with the precision necessary for inshore surveying in unknown waters. The explorers soon came to prefer smaller carracks of around 100 tons, or the light three-masted Mediterranean lateen-rigged vessels known as caravels. By the 1500's, it was sometimes rigged with square sails on long voyages. It was used for very long voyages of exploration, exploring the west coast of Africa and even crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

Next came two ships which were really versions of the same thing the Carrack and the Galleon.

English and Spanish Carracks The Carrack was important because it always used square rigged sails on its foremast and mainmast and added a topmast to the mainmast. This meant that a second or third sail could be set on the mainmast. Ferdinand Magellan's ship Vittoria was a carrack, which made the first circumnavigation of the globe. A carrack or nao was a three- or four-masted sailing ship developed in the Mediterranean in the 15th century. It had a high rounded stern with an aftcastle and a forecastle and bowsprit at the stem. It was square-rigged on the foremast and mainmast and lateen-rigged on the mizzenmast. Carracks were the first proper ocean-going ships in Europe; large enough to be stable in heavy seas, and roomy enough to carry provisions for long voyages. They were the ships in which the Spanish and Portuguese explored the world in the 15th and 16th centuries. In Spanish this type was called carraca or nao, while in Portuguese it was called nau (both of which meant simply "ship"). English military carracks were called great ships.

English and Spanish Galleons The Galleon developed rapidly after 1570. It became a large and formidable fighting ship with which some of the great sea battles of history were fought. The cores of the opposing English and Spanish fleets in the 1588 confrontation of the Spanish Armada were galleons. A galleon was a large, multi-decked sailing ship used primarily by the nations of Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries. Galleons were an evolution of the caravel and carrack (or nao), for the new great ocean going voyages. A lowering of the forecastle and elongation of the hull gave an unprecedented level of stability in the water, and reduced wind resistance at the front, leading to a faster, more maneuverable vessel. The galleon differed from the older types primarily by being longer, lower and narrower, with a square tuck stern instead of a round tuck, and by having a snout or head projecting forward from the bows below the level of the forecastle. The galleon was powered entirely by sail, carried on three to five masts, with a lateen sail continuing to be used on the last (usually third) mast. They were most famous in the Spanish treasure fleet, and the Manila Galleons. The galleon was the prototype of all three or more masted, square rigged ships, for over two and a half centuries, including the later full-rigged ship.

American and British Clippers The last great sailing ship was the clipper. This sleek fast ship was designed for trade. A clipper was a very fast multiple-masted sailing ship of the 19th century. Generally narrow for their length, limiting in their bulk freight carrying capacities, and small by later 19th century standards, the clippers had a large relative sail area. &quot;Clipper ships&quot; were mostly products of British and American shipyards, though France, the Netherlands (the Dutch-built &quot;Telanak&quot;, built in 1859 for the tea and passenger trade to Java) and other nations also produced a number of them. Clippers sailed all over the world, primarily on the trade routes between Britain and its colonies in the east, in the trans-Atlantic trade, and in the New York-to-San Francisco route round The Horn during the Gold Rush.

The most complex sail plans had a total of four main masts and two auxillary masts, each main mast at full sail bearing six rectangular mainsails, and technically seven when bearing topgallants. These were trimmed with lateen spinnakers, as many as three to four at the bowsprit, and two auxillary stern lateen gaffs.One of these clippers, when fully rigged and riding before a tradewind were acknowledged to be the fastest of all sail vessels, with peak average velocities approaching 35 knots for endurances over 12 hours.When the last China Clippers were retired, they ended the age of the fastest commericla sailing vessels made by man. Their velcoties have been improved upon many times by modern ocean yachts, but never by any commercial sail vessel.

The Age of Sail came to an end with the emergence of the Steam ship in the second decade of the Twentieth Century.