First evidence of lateen sails?

[longshore lubber]

Longshore lubber strikes again in history corner! :-D

I am just reading a passage in Lionel Casson's informed 'Ships and Seanmanship in the Ancient World', and need your help for understanding a passage which Casson interprets as evidence for a lateen sails with the Romans.

Remarks from a LETTER by Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, in 404 AD (p.268-269, Synesius' quotes in italics):

"In the middle of the first night out a storm made up. All aboard put their hands to the ropes - but no abail, since these turne out to be jammed in the blocks. The following day, when the wind slacked off and the sun came out and dried the ropes, a second try was made. At this point Synesius drops a significant remark: We weren't able to substitute another, bastard sail since it was in pawn.

In other words, the ship was so rigged that, to shorten sail, one took down the ordinary sail and replaced it with another, presumably smaller, used for extraordinary circumstances such as the present emergency. This is confirmed by his words when the ship ran into another storm a few days later: Again the sail was hard to handle, and it couldn't be made to move for lowering.

I have made the last two words bold for they are critical: they describe a procedure precisely the opposite of that used on vessels rigged with squaresails, whether ancient or not. Sailors shorten a squaresail not by lowering it but by raising it to the yard. the ancients did this by taking up on the brails.

One of the prime weaknesses of the lateen, on the other hand, is that it allows of no quick and efficient way of shortening sail; it is basically a fair-weather rig. If the wind suddenly makes up, the crew of the lateener has one standard recourse: to lower yard and sail to the deck, and either scud under bare poles, or, stripping off the sail, set another, smaller one - which is precisely the procedure that Synesius is describing.

Do you think this passage confirms that Sysnesius talked about a lateen sail, and could you describe the whole procedure in your own words - as simple as can be?

Longshore lubber

[Hughman]

Until the 14C. square sails and their yards were lowered to the deck for shortening, either by removing a 'bonnet', essentially an attached strip tied on, or by bundling the sail to the yard.

Footropes on the yards are a 16C. invention. IIRC.

Lateens had a bonnet too, I think, but it might have been a Portuguese invention.

[Kaa]

Sailors shorten a squaresail not by lowering it but by raising it to the yard. the ancients did this by taking up on the brails.


Not necessarily -- it's perfectly possible to shorten a squaresail by lowering the yard. In a storm it's probably even a better idea because you're lowering your center of effort.

Just because a lot of peoples reefed the sqaresail by brailing doesn't mean the Romans did it this way, too.

Kaa

[longshore lubber]

So, in a nutshell, Casson is not right in assuming that the procedure of lowering the sail firmly hints at a non-square sail, that is in this case a lateen sail?

[Tom Hunter]

It is a huge assumption.

[longshore lubber]

Hello,

I found a good overview article on the history of the lateen sail, and more generally the fore-and-aft sails. Thanks, among others, to the work of Lionel Casson, there has been enough evidence for half a century to prove that the invention of lateens, and more generally fore-and-aft sails, took place in Greco-Roman times in the Mediterranean. Campbell summarizes and present concisely the evidence again.

His main points are:
1. The lateen, both the triangular and the quadrilateral type, were introduced by Greek and Roman sailors between the 2nd century BC and 4th century AD, that is hundreds of years before the Arabs, long thought to the originators, took to large scale sailing.

2. Not only lateen sails were employed, but also spritsails appeared by the 2nd century BC. Greco-Roman sailors thus invented the first fore-and-aft sailings. One of the most important inventions of antiquity in my mind, ranking alongside the watermill, concrete or glass-blowing.

3. The thesis of the European, particularly Portuguese, adoption of the lateen sail from Arab navigators in the age of discovery is no longer tenable. In fact, lateen sails were continually used in European/Christian navigation from antiquity onwards.

4. Long overlooked, although evident: Even in countries conquered by the Muslims after 632 AD, navigation and navigation technology remained for hundred of years in the hands of the indigenous Christian population. And these people followed the same ancient shipbuilding tradition as those on the nortern Mediterranean shore. It was in this tradition in which the Muslim nomads actually stepped when they adopted the lateen sail from the Copts.

SOURCE: I. C. Campbell, "The Lateen Sail in World History", Journal of World History (University of Hawaii), 6.1 (Spring 1995), p. 1-23 (http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/jwh/jwh061p001.pdf)

Page 8ff.: The Mediterranean Evidence

It seems increasingly likely that the lateen may have originated in the Mediterranean where the missing link between the square and triangular sails was the brailed square sail. Brails were ropes that ran from the foot of the sail, up the front of it (fastened at various holding points) and over the upper yard to the deck.22 By pulling on the ropes sailors could wholly or partly furl the sail, and they could shorten one side of it more than the other merely by adjusting the lengths of the various brail ropes. The process is similar to adjusting horizontal venetian blinds. This was an important innovation in allowing sailors to adjust the amount of sail surface area exposed and in trimming the sail to wind conditions. Sails brailed on one side could be tilted toward the wind to further increase efficiency. A remark by Aristotle suggests that partially furled sails were used in a fore-and-aft manner by the fourth century B.C.23 This suggestion establishes the typological “missing link.” Moreover, Casson argues that only Greco-Roman sailors used the system of vertical brails and that only in the manner described could a square sail have been set to resemble a lateen. Developing a lateen sail from a square sail that was brailed up on one side would seem fairly straightforward and would be consistent with a sail that was eventually triangular, the head stabilized by a long yard and apex fastened at the bow of the ship. Casson further argues that the Mediterranean lateen had priority and that its presence elsewhere is due to diffusion, probably, he concedes, by the Arabs.24 The evidence for Mediterranean—indeed, northern Aegean—priority is epigraphic. Tombstone representations of lateen sails have been found from as early as the second century a.d.25 Other fore-and-aft sails (not lateens) were in use by the second century b.c. Most of the examples of these early sails known to Casson were from the northern Aegean, a geographically suitable area to serve as a sailing nursery. More recent evidence of mausoleum graffiti from Alexandria depicting boats has led a later scholar, Lucien Basch, to suggest that an inclined yard was often used with a square sail in the manner of a proto-lateen. He argues that lateen sails were in use by the third or second century b.c.26 Such a date would take the antiquity of the lateen sail back one thousand years earlier than its previously known age and much earlier than would be necessary to demonstrate that it was not invented by the Arabs of the Muslim era. Moreover, throughout the sixteen or so centuries between its first recorded use and its adoption and adaptation by the Portuguese, the sail was in continuous use, indicating that not even its diffusion was an Arab accomplishment. A second-century stele shows a quadrilateral lateen sail, and a fourth-century mosaic shows a triangular one.27 The lateen sail seems not to have been used by merchant vessels after classical times, but depictions of warships—typically long, straight-sided galleys relying mostly on oar power—using a triangular lateen sail recur during the late Roman imperial and Byzantine periods. A reference by Procopius in The Vandalic War (sixth century) to the upper angle of sails appears to make sense only if he was referring to lateen sails.28 Indeed, the lateen-sailed warships of the Italian Renaissance city-states were direct descendants of the Roman war galleys of more than a thousand years earlier, structurally, functionally, and in their sails; they remained substantially unchanged after the ninth century.29

The lateen sail therefore predates the Muslim invasions of the Mediterranean shores, but this does not prove that some Arabs did not already have it. However, their maritime role before then was so confined that they seem unlikely agents for either its invention or its diffusion. Although Arabs were engaged in east African trade in the first century a.d., and others in the region of the Persian Gulf were reported to be seafarers in the third century, these were probably engaged in local navigation only. As late as the sixth century, when trade to Sri Lanka and beyond was conducted by Persian-speaking mariners, there is no mention of Arabs, who were clearly “playing no noteworthy part on the high seas.”30 Such Arabs as were mariners were south Arabians; the center of affairs in Arabian history abruptly swung to the northern Arabians on the eve of the Muslim outburst, and these people were emphatically not seafarers.31 Thus, when strategic opportunism impelled the Arabs to venture onto Mediterranean waters, they did so in Byzantine-style galleys, built and manned by Copts of Alexandria in their accustomed fashion, and in this way they won the great naval victory of Dhat al-Sawari in 655.32 Hourani assumes that the sails (if any) used by these galleys were square, on the presumption that the lateen was unknown in the Mediterranean for another two centuries. As Casson and others have since shown, however, the lateen was already well established as the auxiliary motive power for the Byzantine dromones. It follows that the Arabs learned their naval craft from the Copts and acquired the lateen sail in the same way. Copts, indeed, continued to supply the bulk of naval personnel for the Arabs in the Mediterranean for centuries.

The lateen sail did not entirely bypass Italian merchant shipping. The basic pattern of the merchant ship in the Mediterranean in the early centuries of the second millennium was a tubby vessel descended from the Roman oneraria. By this time it had been converted into a lateen-rigged vessel carrying up to three masts, which was practically identical to the later Portuguese caravel supposedly adopted from the Arabs. Indeed, since the Arabs never had a commanding position in Mediterranean commerce comparable to that of the Italians, it is unlikely that the Italians procured the sail from them. This would suggest that the gift of the lateen sail to Atlantic maritime history could well be Italian rather than Portuguese.

[Thorne]

With all the extant and referenced/copied artwork from the period, why wonder? If all the surviving examples of depicted ships show squaresails, they'll be the norm if not the whole sampling of period rigs.

We've had similar threads with many links to museum sites -- worth a search.

[paladin]

I think if you will dig deeper, and somewhere I recall that this has been discussed before, that lateen rigged vessels have been depicted in pre christian times in Egypt as having been on ships that were tradeing partners with the Egyptians, and during the same period, lateen rigged vessels were being used by tribes in the delta area of modern day Vietnam and on Chams temple walls, that would indicate that the pacific islanders used lateen sails in their travels across the pacific.

[Steve Paskey]

A Micronesian proa with a crab-claw rig, sometimes known as an "Oceanic lateen."
.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Proa1.jpg

[Steve Paskey]

I skimmed through that link you posted, landlubber. The article was interesting but maddening. The author seems to make a lot of assumptions, and seems to focus too much on war galleys and larger trading vessels, without reference to smaller boats. Imagine writing a history of working watercraft in the U.S. that excludes everything in Chapelle's "American Small Sailing Craft," and you get the idea. That might be necessary due to lack of historical evidence, but the gap should at least be acknowledged.

By the way, the author of the article asserts that the crab claw (or Oceanic lateen) developed independently, and had no influence on the development of the lateen in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean. That conclusion, though, is based solely on a series of physical differences between the sails (the cut of the cloth, the presence or absence of a lower yard, etc., etc.) ... As if nothing evolves, and ideas are borrowed wholesale or not at all!

[Sam F]

Longshore lubber strikes again in history corner!

Thanks! It was quite interesting.
That's the same conclusion I found in a different source (IRRC) - History of Seafaring: Based on Underwater Archaeology George Bass editor.
For some reason in that long lost thread (BC, Before the Crash), a Greco-Roman origin for that lateen (i.e. Latin) sail was at the time a controversial conclusion. ;)