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| ships in middle
ages |
For nearly 800 years, European ships kept the clinker-built
hull of overlapping lanks and square sail known to the Vikings.
By the thirteenth century the stern and bow has been built up into
"castle" structures, and the stern-mounted rudder had
replaced the steering-oar.
By trading with the Mediterranean, northern builders learned of
the "Carvel" structure: a skin of planks fitted edge to
edge over an internal frame. They also learned how the triangular
lateen sail made it easier to sail close to the wind. By about 1450
the one-masted, clinker-built European cog of the past 200 years
has given place to the carvel-built, three-masted carrack.
The Arab world in the middle ages produced some of the greatest
shipbuilders and sailors of all time. Arab lateen-rigged, two-masted
dhows, navigated by the stars, sailed as far afield as southeast
Africa and China. Remarkably, Arab shipbuilding used no nails: the
timbers were stitched and lashed together with coconut fiber. In
1980-81, Tim Severin built an authentic Arab dhow and sailed it
from Muscat, Oman, to china in seven and a half months.
Pacific Islanders, in big, double-hulled canoes driven by "crab-claw"
sails, also steered by the stars on voyages over 4,800 kilometers
(3,000 miles), cruising the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii to New Zealand.
The most advanced Asian ships in the Middle Ages were the Chinese
junks recorded by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century. The biggest
had five masts, 60 passenger cabins, and watertight compartments
to limit the danger of flooding. The big sails were stiffened with
bamboo slats. |
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 Busy
scene on the dockside waterfront of a North European port, around
the year 1350. The broad, single-masted, clinker-built cog was distinguished
by its straight keel, bow ,and stern posts. The cog was the most
popular trading ship of the Hanseatic League, which linked major
North German merchant cities. |
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| A
hinged and decorated weathervane of gilded bronze for showing the
wind direction. |
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| 13th century
war galley. |
13th century
warship. |
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| 15th century
flemish carrack. |
14th century merchant gog. |
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| Another Arab
instrument for sighting: the astrolabe. |
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Reduced
to lines and curves - a medieval Arab world map, with Arabia at
the center.
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Arab navigator
using the kamal, a simple but efficient device for measuring the
star's height above the horizon, to calculate the ship's position. |
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| Two-masted
Chinese trading junk, with stern rudder, of a type which Marco Polo
would have recognized more that 700 years ago. |
A wa'a kaulua,
the ocean-going double-hulled canoe. In 1976 a replica sailed the
4,830 kilometers (3,000 miles )from Hawaii to Tahiti in an amazing
35 days. |
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| The sampan
is still the standard transport craft and houseboat of the Far East. |
Dhow
type from oman, Arabia – a two – masted boum, with a
hull of stitched planks. |
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