10-22-2013, 12:06 AM
Has anyone ever read credible reports about a Hellenistic or Roman four-master? It seems three masts were about the maximum on sailing ships.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
Ancient three- and four-masters
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10-22-2013, 12:06 AM
Has anyone ever read credible reports about a Hellenistic or Roman four-master? It seems three masts were about the maximum on sailing ships.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
10-22-2013, 02:07 AM
Triremes, which were arguably the most popular warship of the Classical Greek era, had only one sail, as did probably all smaller ships and the larger but still mass-producible quadremes and quinqueremes. This is because the primary propulsion of ships back then was still by oar, and this would remain so until some time before the Renaissance. When sailing had reached its height under men like Lord Nelson, the ship's sailing abilities were so great that they could, no exaggeration, sail directly into the wind, although contrary to what Pirates of the Caribbean might have you believe you cannot simply throw the wheel and turn the car. The many masts seen on first-rate warships like the HMS Victory propelled the ship, yes, but also had a great deal to do with turning the ship, and this has to do with the way air currents push the sails, which in turn push the ship in different directions through a medium which does not offer very much resistance if gone through correctly, although such a large ship requires hundreds of men aloft in the rigging alone.
If I were to guess, having several masts on any polyreme ship would get simply too complicated. Remember, those ships relied on oar power, and contrary to what some might have you believe, those oars required highly skilled crews to operate them truly effectively. Masts simply weren't yet needed - ten knots was what a smaller sailing ship might effectively make, and it was what the reconstruction trireme Olympias made in a full speed run.
10-22-2013, 06:52 PM
Apart from an "artemon", which acted as a "headsail" and was very useful for manoeuvring, multiple masts on galleys would have been of very limited use. This is because galleys are very shallow hulled with little in the way of a keel, the advantage of multiple masts is only evident when the wind is on the beam, wind from close to directly astern is harnessable by a single mast just as efficiently as multiple masts. Wind acting on sails from abeam would make a shallow hulled galley tend to heel over, so that increasing the sail area through multiple masts would be positively dangerous - this applies less for lateen rigs than square rigs as lateens can be used to balance each other and are much better at sailing on the wind (close hauled).
This means that multiple masts would only be useful for merchant ships in the Ancient world, they had deeper hulls and more evident keels.
Martin
Fac me cocleario vomere!
10-29-2013, 02:18 PM
Thinking of it, adding a fourth mast would have been impractical. Since ancient ships had only one sail each mast, there was still enough potential to increase the sail surface by adding topsails (square sails) to the existing masts.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
10-30-2013, 07:54 AM
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? I'm not sure that they would have necessarily invented those things in that order.
My copy of Casson is in another country so I can't help with the original question. It doesn't help that evidence for merchant ships is so scarce before the Roman empire.
Nullis in verba
I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
10-30-2013, 05:12 PM
Quote: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. Now admittedly, the Chinese did exactly that, simply adding multiple masts to their junk to increase the sail area more and more. But the reason for this must have been that AFAIK one cannot add a lugsail, and in general fore-and-aft sails, on top of another one. This works only with square sails, which the Chinese mariner however hardly ever used and certainly not on large ships.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
10-31-2013, 03:22 PM
I was really saying that galleys are not primarily "sailing ships." They are primarily designed for oar-powered combat, and as a result are long, narrow and shallow. A long, narrow and shallow hull is not suited to coping with a press of sail with the wind from close to abeam, in that situation the galley will easily turn turtle. This is why there are so many records of Ancient fleets of warships being destroyed by storms. The Vikings also had this problem and had long shallow oar powered warships for use in the Baltic and for coastal raiding, but their long-range ocean-going sailing vessels, knarrs, had shorter wider-beamed and deeper hulls.
Of course the galley would only use its sails if the wind was favourable, it could always be rowed if the wind was coming from an unfavourable direction. In battle sails would not be used at all, so the advantage of a balanced rig for improved manoeuvrability would not apply.
Martin
Fac me cocleario vomere!
10-31-2013, 05:39 PM
I have been talking about sailing ships, merchantmen with bulky and heavy hulls (see initial post). It is clear that too many masts and sails on a galley would be impractical for an array of reasons.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
10-31-2013, 06:24 PM
Quote: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.Sean Manning post=345973 Wrote: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?
Nullis in verba
I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
10-31-2013, 10:41 PM
There were a number of huge ships built for the specific purpose of transporting obelisks from Egypt to Rome and later Constantinople. If any multiple masted ships existed my bet is that it would have been those.
Martin
Fac me cocleario vomere!
11-02-2013, 06:58 PM
Quote:If any multiple masted ships existed my bet is that it would have been those. Lucian's The Ship, which has the famous description of the grain ship Isis, also contains the following quote: What do you say to five ships, larger and finer ones than your Egyptian; above all, warranted not to sink? ... three-masters all of them, and imperishable. (Lucian, The Ship, or The Wishes, 15) That seems to imply that the very largest ships (at least in the second century) had three masts at most.
Nathan Ross
11-02-2013, 07:19 PM
It implies that unusually large ships might have three masts. However, the obelisk ships were not unusually large, they were phenomenally large for their time.
Martin
Fac me cocleario vomere!
11-08-2013, 07:14 PM
Do we have any idea of the length of the mainmast on the large, ocean-going freighters?
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
11-11-2013, 04:35 PM
I need at bit of help. Could you make a real quick search for a five-masted Roman ship in your native tongue?
This sounds mighty strange, but still intriguing. Quote from D.J. Blackman: Ancient Harbours in the Mediterranean. Part 2, 1982, INJA: A curious graffito in Sabratha theatre appears to show a floating crane and a five-masted ship (!), but only a drawing has been published: Turba, L., 1954. Graffiti con figure di navi nelle pareti di un fornice del teatro di Sabratha. Quaderni di Archeologia della Libia. 3: 109-12. Rome I go nuts if nobody has bothered yet to follow up this trail. According to Google Scholar and Books this Turba article has only been quoted a few times ever since.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
11-25-2013, 12:39 PM
I got a copy, but my Italian is not good enough for comprehending it. I'd appreciate some help in understanding it:
1. Did the author personally saw and recorded the ship drawing? Then why does he provide a sketch only, and not a photograph? Is the graffito accessible? 2. Does he date the graffito? Is he aware of the anachronism of a five-master in antiquity? 3. In the drawing each mast has several topsails (superimposed sails not unlike a full-rigged ship). What does he say about them? 4. What does he mean with a "pontone", the other object depicted? The sketch he provides looks weird, like a modern stadium roof. Quote:In uno dei fornici del teatro di Sabratha, e precisamente in quello stesso in cui nel 1926 sono apparse alcune palmette simboliche, graffite sull'intradosso dell'archivolto intermedio (già a suo tempo segnalate e pubblicate dall'allora Soprintendente Bartoccini), è apparsa ora una coppia di graffiti di insolita grandezza (fig. 1).
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
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