A misunderstood sail

We consider a number of mistakes connected with a particular piece of old technology.

Our tutoring consultant is periodically depressed when called upon to work in AP World History.  It’s not a matter of the student’s ability or motivation, nor the subject matter (which we all find interesting); but mostly the way it is taught (which we’ve commented on before, here, and here for instance).  And the fact that the most-used textbook is sometimes simply wrong.

What prompted our tutor (with support from our navigator) to complain most recently is an assertion that the Age of Exploration, in which European ships sailed to all the oceans and most of the lands of the world, was made possible by the invention or adoption of the lateen sail in place of the earlier square form.  Its supposed advantages included a better ability to sail upwind, and thus a greater freedom to adapt to the winds of different regions.  Not to put too fine a point on it, this is nonsense.  The lateen form had appeared in the Mediterranean centuries before the Age of Exploration, causing no apparent world voyages.  And the voyages of exploration were performed by Atlantic ships, from Spain and Portugal, not from the Mediterranean navies of Venice or Genoa.  A major destination of the voyages was the Indian Ocean, where Arab lateen rigs were common.  Ships from Oman or Zanzibar, we note, did not explore the new lands of Europe.

Misunderstanding of the lateen rig continues to this day, in various forms.  Our navigator (who once had the ambition of owning a sailboat of character) remembers an article in a magazine dedicated to sailing, describing how to maneuver a lateen sailboat.  In the middle of an improbable series of steps to change tack came one we paraphrase as, “wonder why you ever wanted to set foot on a lateen boat in the first place.”  In much more recent research we found the assertion that a lateen sail was either on the right side of the mast or the wrong one, in the latter case chafing the rigging and not working very efficiently.

All of which could be refuted by a few minutes’ observation, as our navigator happened upon while sitting by the harbor of Dar es Salaam a few years ago.  A lateen sailboat came up into the wind, shifted sail, and paid off smoothly and effortlessly.  The vertical edge of the triangular sail became the lower, horizontal edge, and vice versa, as the sail was passed around forward of the mast.  Shifting a jib on a Bermuda rig is easier, but not by much.

Anyway, the historical process was different from that printed in the book.  It involved the fusion of Northern European and Mediterranean ship design and construction techniques, to say nothing of sailing habits (for example, tides are of vital importance in the North Sea, while negligible in the Med).  A part of the development was adding a lateen sail to the mizzen mast for balance and maneuverability.  But covering that properly would require more specialized background than we can really expect of students.  Or, it seems, of textbook-writing historians.

Our navigator still wishes it had been possible for him to bring a sailing dhow home from a deployment to Bahrain.