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For one of the best sites on the web concerning the development of western sailing ships between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, go to A Concise History of the Development of the Square-Rigged Ship.
Below, I have included images of several types of ships that we will discuss in class.
This manuscript, which dates from around 1620, represents Turkish galleys with captured European sailing ships. Although the image is not really drawn to scale and is crude in some respects, it captures nicely the delicate lines of the fast galley.
Built by Henry VIII, the Mary Rose represented the acme of mid-sixteenth century fighting ship design in Northern Europe—until it keeled over and sank in Portsmouth harbor because someone left the gun ports open.
The galleas represented an attempt to combine the best features of Atlantic sailing ships and the Mediterranean galley. With their great sails and heavy armanent, these vessels proved deadly when they encountered galleys—the six galleases deployed by the Christian forces at Lepanto supposedly sank 70 Turkish galleys.
This depiction of the Battle of Lepanto (1571) captures the confusion that characterized galley battles in the Mediterranean. Once galleys locked together in combat, soldiers fought much as they did on land.
This etching depicts the English fleet chasing the Spanish Armada off of Plymouth in 1588. The English on the left have the wind at their backs. Notice the Spanish galleas in the right foreground.
This is De Zeven Provincien (the Seven Provinces—named after the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic), the flagship of the Dutch admiral De Ruyter around 1660. It was during this period that England fought a number of naval wars with the Netherlands. By this point, the ship of the line had assumed a form that would remain more or less the same for the next 160 years.
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Copyrighted by Hugh Dubrulle, 2003.