SAILING SHIPS
People made their first journeys across water tens of thousands of years ago. Their first craft must have been logs, used as buoyancy aids. Later, they tied logs together to make rafts, or hollowed them out to make canoes. Where there were no big trees, they made boats from locally available materials, such as reeds or animal skins. Their boats allowed them to travel on rivers and lakes, searching for better fishing, or visiting hunting grounds.
These early craft were propelled by simple paddles, or poles pushed into the river bed. The first sailing boats we know about were built in ancient Egypt in about 3500 BC. Some were built from reeds bundled together, others from wood. They had a single mast with a square sail, which was used in addition to oars when the wind was blowing in a favourable direction. The crew steered with long oars hanging over the stern (rear).
The ancient Greeks and Romans used sturdy, seaworthy cargo boats and sleek fighting boats called galleys, both with a square sail. In battle, the galleys were propelled with oars and attacked enemy ships with a ram on their bows.
About 1000 years ago, the Vikings, who lived in northern Europe, started to explore new lands. Their ships were called knorrs. Each had a hull (body of vessel) made of overlapping or “clinkered” planks.
Chinese boats called junks had sails stiffened by thick bamboo poles, and a sternpost rudder for steering. Until the 15th century they were the world’s biggest and best boats.
The arrangement of sails on a boat is called its rig. A square rig consists of sails hung on a boom across the boat (as in ancient Egyptian and Viking boats). This sort of rig cannot make the best use of wind blowing from side-on. The fore-and-aft rig, with a triangular sail hanging from a boom parallel with the boat’s sides, is more effective. The Chinese had developed a similar rig on their early junks in about 500 BC. It was developed in the Mediterranean in the third century AD. In Europe in the fifteenth century, ships began to appear with a mixture of rigs – square-rigged sails on some masts and fore-and-aft rigs on others. Through the centuries, sailing ships grew larger, with more, taller masts and more sails on each one.
The fastest sailing ships were the “clippers”, which had a huge sail area to take advantage of light winds, and streamlined hulls. They were used to carry important cargoes around the world, such as the new crop of tea from China to Europe.
By the 16th century, small, sturdy ships such as carracks and galleons were capable of long ocean crossings. With the aid of compasses to stop them accidentally sailing in circles, sailors set out from European ports to explore the world and to try to find new sea routes to the Spice Islands of Asia.
Among these explorers was the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, who left Spain in 1519 with five ships to sail to Asia around the southern tip of newly-discovered America. Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines, two years into the voyage. Only one of the ships, the Vittoria, under the captaincy of Sebastian del Cano, finally got back to Spain, 1082 days after it left. It was the first ship to circumnavigate the world.
Barques were high-capacity, multi-masted sailing ships that carried bulk cargoes such as grain between Europe, South America and Australia. A small crew could operate the barque’s simple rig. This particular barque, France II, built in 1911, was the biggest sailing ship ever built. Its steel hull was 127 metres long.
Picture Credit : Google