Rigging for lateen sails

[nijis]

I'm having a very hard time envisioning how a large lateen sail -- say, of the kind mounted on a 16th century galley -- would be rigged, and how in particular it would function if the mast was on the windward side.

Please forgive in advance any misuse of nautical terms, as I try to explain my problem.

If you look at the game animation on a xebec, the flaws and fudges give you an indication of the difficulty setting up a lateen rig that can handle significant changes in wind direction. Depending on your angle to the wind, the sails on the game xebecs cut through the rigging, and even the mast on some occasions.

I've been looking at art from the period, and that also doesn't seem to help. Raphael has a beautiful sketch of a galley under sail. (I looked for a link, but unfortunately a Google search yields a whole lot of ninja turtles). The sketch does indicate however that the solution implied by the game's xebecs -- keeping the sail inside the side rigging -- was not used by Renaissance galleys. It shows the bottom edge of the sail swirling on the outside of the rigging, blown far out to the leeward side.

This picture of a Byzantine dromon isn't as dramatic, but gives the general idea...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nstruction.png

This is great -- but only if the wind is coming from the opposite side of the mast from where the sail is mounted. If the sail is mounted on the windward side, then it would be blown up against the mast and side rigging.

A Bermuda-rigged sloop solves the problem by having two sails, one before and one behind the mast, but Renaissance galleys and xebecs had a single, large sail.

Small feluccas or dhows in fact will allow the sail to press up against the mast -- but then the sail is much taller compared to its breadth than it would be on a galley, and also, a smaller sail can be controlled easily from the bow or stern, and don't have the complicated side block-and-tackle rigging that you see on the xebecs.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...mbane-dhow.JPG

If the sail was a near-perfect isosecles triangle, I suppose you might be able to roll the sail around the mast and rotate it ninety degrees down, so that the upper tip of the spar on the port side is now the lower tip on the starboard. But a lot of lateen sails looks pretty asymmetrical.

The easiest solution to envision is that winds are predictable enough so that a galley would mount it on the appropriate side. If the wind changes or if you change course, then you take it down again, change sides, and put it up again. That probably can't be done in battle, obviously, but for battles you have oars.

Any thoughts?

[brendonoid]

I've actually thought about this too. Staring at the Zebecs in game does nothing but puzzle me further. The answer to how the sail switched sides must be simple and obvious, but for the life of me I can't work out what that simple answer is!

Sorry.

[nijis]

Glad to know I'm not the only one!

A picture of dhow under sail, that looks a lot like the Raphael galley sketch, can be found here. Again, I'm not picking up a lot of clues on how you'd switch tack quickly...
http://www.amazon.com/Sindbad-Voyage.../dp/0399127577

[Xylander]

From what I know, the sail did not traverse per se on lateen ships. They had large sails that were rather loose rigged which, if you can envision it, pillowed out with the wind to a degree. Thus, allowing them to catch wind at many angles. The actual rigs only traversed something on the order of 30 degrees to either side. If you were to measure the connecting lines between the fore and aft masts on the dromon image, you can somewhat judge the distance of travel on the two rigs.

Now most Xebecs/Dromons were double masted. Again, from memory... I think they rigged them with the fore mast leeward rigged, the aft mast windward rigged. They would then lower the sail if needed to avoid getting them tangled. Being such a light ship, only one mast was needed to propel the ship. This setup allowed for less rigging on deck and much quicker response time in turning.

Still, with the lateen style rigging, you could leave both sails up. The mast would however pinch the leading edge of the sail, but still allowed it to billow out towards the stern. I've seen images of this before...where in a tailwind, the sails pillow out on both starboard and port side. Looks awesome

They were not like square riggers that could traverse 180 degrees. So they had to make due. Lateen captains of the day were like our good old boy backyard hot rodders of the day. So, pretty much everything I've said is subjective as I'm sure you'll find evidence of leeward rigged lateens and any combination of other things. The Barbary pirates were almost completely locally funded, so ships from village to village would vary in design to a degree.

One thing I've read about how they could alter tack ont he fly was to draw the sail in, and fold the spare upwards to parallel with the mast, the quickly shift the unhinged spar to the other side. Took almost no amount of time. I've only seen this done on smaller ships. Not so sure about the bigger ones of the day...but I wouldn't doubt if they could do the same thing.

But, you are forgetting one major design element of the lateen ships. They had a huge compliment of crew. The reason for this...even Xebecs and Arcadias in game...and their historic muses had oars. So, their luffing speeds were achievable with the assistance of the sails to some small degree, but more to the hordes of oarsmen.

They were also very lightweight ships. So, they didn't need a massive stern wind to propel the ship. I read once that many lateen mediterranean pirate ships weighed sometimes 2x more with cannon and provisions loaded than they did empty. So, a stripped Xebec was indeed a sportcar of the time when compared to period galleons and frigates..

Not to mention, that the gunnery they tended to favor were extraordinarily large bow chasers

[nijis]

Thanks for the long answer!

Two sails, one rigged windward and the other leeward, would seem to make sense for two-masted xebecs. I'd love to see one of the pictures where a sail billows out on each side.

Some lateen-rigged vessels however do reverse the sails, apparently. I just received from Amazon however a copy of The Sindbad Voyage, about a fellow who sails a medieval dhow from Oman to China, and apparently they had to "wear ship" -- push the mainsail around the front of the mast, to reverse its direction -- every time the wind changed sides. This was apparently a half-hour long procedure which involved standing the entire 80' mainspar on end. So I guess that if you plan to do a lot of maneuvering with a single-masted lateen-rigged ship, you'd better have those oarsmen which you mentioned.

Glad that you mentioned the big bow chasers! This is just a pet peeve of mine, but a lot of historians will denigrate the galley in comparison to broadside-firing carrack or galleon, implying that galleyphile nations were slow in keeping up with the latest technologies. In fact, the galley was a much better gun platform than the roundship until the late 16th century -- French galleys ripped apart an English carrack squadron in Brest Roads in 1513, for example. Turkish or Venetian carracks could be found in the Med in the late 15th century (ie, the battle of Zonchio), but were driven out once the galleys started mounting the big guns. Naval architects had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to mount heavy ordnance pointing sideways, so the broadside was not really considered a viable offensive tactic until quite late.

Addendum: a friend just referred me to a link on how to change tack with a dhow, complete with diagram:
http://indigenousboats.blogspot.com/search/label/dhow

[elessaria]

Hey there!

I designed the Arcadia model in-game and as such I did a lot of research into this and related issued during her construction. Xylander hit on a good point in that for SHORT journeys where tack might be changed regularly, the yards would be staggered to that one was always giving optimum performance. Whilst *xebecs* were three masted vessels (2 masts were tartanes) the mizzen was considerably smaller and the main sails would provide the majority of the power.

For longer journeys, the yards would in fact be lowered completely, and shimmied round to the opposite side of the mast, and the ship would be sailed to the wind. Rigging the yards inside or outside the shrouds seems to have been captains' personal preference, but for game purposes the fore-and-aft yards are all fixed in place and had to be modelled central to the hull's axis, hence why I chose to put mine in-board. If you look though, you will see that the Arcadia's yards are staggered. The sail art is not mine (and something of a pet peeve ) and confuses the issue somewhat, but that's not something I had any say in so...

If you want to know how a lateen sail was actually rigged then the Arcadia model is a great example. If you really want to get into it then copy the Pirates.ini file in your game directory and rename the copy Pirates_local.ini. Then add the lines

[UI]
sdc=true

to this file. Now, in-game you can type /freecamera to get an independent camera view that really lets you delve into the model details for all the ships! To return to the standard view, simply type /defaultcamera.

This is the original construction thread for the ship model I built and has many details of the rigging (which was a nightmare let me tell you!) as well as other goodies in it. Good reference sites also include:

http://www.geocities.com/xebecinc/?200921

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?im...%3D36%26um%3D1

http://b.rimlinger.free.fr/AlbumDiligente/Album01.html

and

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/maquettes.ge/indiscret.htm


Hope that answers your questions. Any more and I'll try to remember to stop by again.

[Putsku]

Arcadia is the ugliest ship in game!!!111

[elessaria]

In a fit of nostalgia I went through the construction thread and found this render I took with my own sail art. It shows much better than the game's sails (sorry Joram ) how they would look with staggered yards.

http://archive.burningsea.com/forums...4&d=1179054850

[elessaria]

Originally Posted by Putsku Arcadia is the ugliest ship in game!!!111

NO U!

[Putsku]

Originally Posted by elessaria NO U!

So's ur face!