Ancient three- and four-masters

[Sean Manning]

Do you mean that if the ancients had wanted to increase sail area, it would have made sense to add more sails to the existing masts before adding more masts?

Yes, that's my guess. With three masts (foremast, main mast and mizzen), they had a balanced ship plan, which they would not have wanted to give up easily. So, instead of packing yet another mast somewhere onto the deck, it would have been more practical to first start trying to increase the height of the masts to fit in another sail. To a certain extent, they already did this with the triangular topsail. For larger sails and masts, however, they would have needed to master the technique of creating composite masts, and I am not sure if the ancient shipwright was already that far.

Stefan, I would guess that a shipwright familiar with both rigs-with-many-masts and masts-with-many-sails would chose the later before the former, but I don't think it is obvious that someone would invent a mast with several large sails before inventing a ship with more than three masts. The ancients did have latteen sails, and Europeans experimented with four masts and a bowsprit in the sixteenth century before deciding that three masts and a bowsprit was better. But this is a technical question, and I think you will need to talk to someone like Morrison or Coates who understands shipbuilding and sail plans.