Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

a degree of longitude, but again it was useful only if one could measure one’s speed accurately, and that required accurate time-keeping. Essentially, as J. H. Parry has remarked, throughout the fifteenth and for most of the sixteenth century, navigation in the open ocean was a matter of dead-reckoning ‘checked and supplemented by observed latitude’.60 In the short space of about twenty years, in the middle of the fifteenth century, a major revolution took place in shipping.61 This was a marriage between the lateen-rigged Mediterranean ships and the square-rigged north Europe–Atlantic ships. ‘The marriage produced the basic barque, the direct ancestor of all the square-riggers of the [age of] Reconnaissance and the later great age of sail.’62 The principal warship of the Mediterranean was the oared galley, which remained a component of Mediterranean navies until the seventeenth century.63 Its main drawback was the large crew it required, making it unsuitable for long voyages out of sight of land. The other main idea in Mediterranean sailing had been taken from the Arabs–this was the lateen sail. The only type of sail seen on Arab ships, the lateen sail is essentially triangular, laced to a forward-leaning mast and a long yard. Whether or not the Arabs invented it, the lateen was spread through them, both in the Indian Ocean and in the Mediterranean. Its shape made the most of whatever wind was going and as a form of rig it was very versatile and made ships more manoeuvra...