![]() The 20 sailors on the Niña and the 26 crewing the Pinta would have been constantly engaged with adjusting the rigging, trimming the sails, inspecting for leaks and plugging them with spongy scraps of old rope called oakum. Work was relentless on any 15th-century ship. “You’re trying to stay out of the way of the sailors who are working. “If you’re a sailor on a caravel, you’re living on the deck and sleeping on the deck,” says Marc Nucup, public historian at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Unlike the Santa Maria, which at least had tiny cabins where sailors could sleep between eight-hour shifts, the Niña and Pinta had a single small deck at the rear of the ship with only one cramped cabin reserved for the captain. The versatile caravel could speed south along the coast and easily return to shore against the wind. The lateen-rigged caravels were critical in the Portuguese voyages to sub-Saharan African, where strong coastal winds blow north to south. “You can point the bow of the caravel with an angle of just 20 degrees off the wind and still get enough lift on the outer edge of the sail to propel forward.” “Lateen sails are almost like wings,” says Castro. Luis Filipe Viera de Castro, a nautical archeologist at Texas A&M University, says that the earlier Portuguese caravels, known as the caravela latina, were rigged with lateen (triangular) sails that hung at 45-degree angle to the deck. Though only two of Columbus’s ships ended up being caravels, Isabella’s decree speaks to the popularity of the vessel during the 15th-century “ Age of Discovery.” Starting with Portuguese explorations of the African coast in the mid-1400s, caravels were prized for their sleek, lightweight hull and their uncanny ability to sail into the wind. Caravels Were Cutting Edge in the 15th Century ![]()
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