The second class of Mediterranean craft consisted of a rounder, broader type of vessel—the descendant of the classic merchant vessel as distinct from the “longship.” This in fact has been the general division in the history of sailing ships through all times. Under this heading will come the various classes of Mediterranean sailing ships—not galleys—designated respectively “caracks,” “great ships,” “busses” or “buccas,” “caravels,” “barks,” and “dromons.” If we keep these two classes distinct in our minds—“galleys” and “ships”—we shall not get far wrong during the ensuing centuries. Sailors in all ages have always had an unfortunate habit of mixing the various classifications of vessels, and we shall see as we proceed to what inconvenience this has attained.
In the records of the Crusades we find mention made of the larger and second class of the Mediterranean ships of sail. Near to Beirut the English espied in the distance a great ship with three tapering masts, strongly built, painted green and yellow, with 1500 men aboard. On being hailed she pretended at first to belong to Richard’s colleague in the Crusade, the King of France, whose flag indeed she was flying, but she was soon discovered to be a Saracen ship, and after some difficulty was rammed and sunk by the English Viking-shaped and smaller vessels. In Hakluyt’s account of this ship she is described as a “carack.” She was probably not very much different from the caravel shown in Fig. 43. The three tapering masts which astounded the Englishmen in their one-masted Viking ships and the tall sides of the carack which gave Richard’s men so much difficulty in assault from their comparatively small vessels of low freeboard, would not fail to bring forth changes in English shipbuilding as soon as internal and external peace was assured and sufficient technical skill had been acquired. This big ship or carack class—call it what you will—marks a determined stand in naval architecture to build real ships as distinct from big boats. From her evolved the vessels that sailed across the Atlantic with Columbus, that carried Elizabethan explorers to all points of the compass, that fought the Armada and the Dutch, and became adapted in time to such wooden walls as the Victory and others, and which are not radically dissimilar from the modern full-rigged ships, though made of iron instead of wood, with steel rigging and a much larger spread of canvas.
Although the carack class was not rare in the Mediterranean in the twelfth century, it was some time in making itself felt in English naval architecture. We must needs wait for another three centuries. But what seem to have had an almost immediate effect were the castles on the Mediterranean galleys at bow and stern. These may have come into use in England during the remaining years of Richard’s or during John’s reign. I have seen no illustration of either of these reigns which shows these castellated constructions; but in the reign of Henry III. in the seal of Sandwich this structure is shown in the bows, at the stern and at the top of the mast. And we can be quite sure that unless it were a prevailing type it would not have figured in the port’s official seal. Fashions moved but slowly in those days, so that it is not unreasonable to suppose that these castellated structures had been in use for some years prior to the date of the seal—the year 1238. At the same time the seal of the City of Paris, which represents the first seal of its “Merchants of the Water,” belonging to the year 1210, shows the Viking shape pure and simple—without any germ of the castle—as were the ships of this type which accompanied the rest of Richard’s fleet to the South. The high stem- and stern-post, the clinker-build, the three stays forward to support the mast, and three aft, seen in the seal, show how determinedly the Viking type had overrun the north coast of France. But there is nothing surprising in the French not having adopted the fighting castles by this date.
Richard having despatched his navy by the “Spanish seas” to meet him at Marseilles, himself travelled overland, and having waited eight days in vain at Marseilles, “for his Navie which came not he there hired 20 Gallies, and ten great barkes to ship over his men, and so came to Naples” and eventually to Messina in Sicily, where to his great joy he found his fleet had arrived. After the departure of the French King from Messina, Richard followed “with 150 great ships and 53 great gallies well manned and appointed.” They were caught in a strong southerly gale, but only two of his fleet appear to have foundered. Later on, in the account included in Hakluyt, we find that the whole fleet that was gathered at the port of Lymszem consisted of “254 tall shippes, and above threescore galliots.”
Fig. 35. Mediterranean Warship of the Thirteenth Century.
Fig. 35 represents a Mediterranean warship of the thirteenth century and well shows how far ahead the Southerners still were of the North Europeans. Notice especially the sterncastle and forecastle. The former is open at the sides and differs not very much from the sterncastle in the clay model shown in Fig. 17. In the forecastle of the thirteenth-century ship before us will be seen a warrior standing ready to hurl down spears at the galleys over which his ship towered so high. The large cage-like fighting-top is used as well for steadying the unwieldy yard of the mainsail as for purely war-like purposes. The rope ladders are also seen, and the rig consists of a large squaresail on the main with a lateen on the mizzen. The latter, having been for many hundreds of years seen up and down the Mediterranean, would but naturally find its way into the rig when a second mast was added. It would be very acceptable as being far handier than the big squaresail and capable of being easily stowed in a breeze. When her commander was endeavouring to sail a tubby old craft like this as close to the wind as she could get, the help of the lateen mizzen by sending her head up into the wind would counteract the tendency to fall off from the breeze. I attach considerable importance to this illustration as it is the earliest picture I know of giving us anything of a satisfactory idea of the kind of ships, other than the galley class, that sailed the Mediterranean during about the time of Richard’s crusade. Perhaps this is one of those “great ships” already alluded to. At any rate she belongs to the sailing ship days. The method of stowing her anchor is clearly shown. Very interesting, too, is the manner of bending the sails to the yard. No lacing of any kind seems to be employed, but strips of the sail appear to pass round the yard and then meet the cloth again on the other side.
This is a Venetian ship, and when we consider that at this time Venice was the foremost maritime power in the world, it is not surprising that her vessels subsequently influenced Spain and thence Northern Europe to a wonderful extent, as soon as the latter nations had begun to discard the Viking type which had so long been the model of their shipbuild. This illustration is from the work of one of Giotto’s pupils.
