Since the beginning of man’s existence on planet earth, sailing has been found to be an instrumental art in the development of civilization. It has afforded humanity greater mobility than travel over land. The uses of sailing have varied over the course of time but whatever the reason is, sailing continues to remain relevant and important whether for trade, transport or warfare, and the capacity for fishing.
It is quite unclear when the first ship sailed the waters and who the first sailors were but the earliest representation of a ship under sail appears in Kuwait on a painted disc. This is as far back as the 5th millennium BC.
Before the time of what we now refer to as ancient maritime history, the first boats are presumed to have been dugout canoes. These are believed by historians to have developed independently by various stone age populations. In that age, the dugout canoes were used for coastal fishing and travel. The traditional people of the Pacific Northwest are very skilled at crafting wood and the earliest dugout canoes have been credited to their mastery. They made the canoes for long for everyday use and ceremonial purposes.
The Austronesians
However, the Austronesians were the first humans to invent oceangoing sailing technologies. These were called the catamaran, the outrigger ship, and the crab claw sail. They put these new inventions of theirs to imperial use and to colonize a large part of the Indo-Pacific region from 3000 to 1500 BC. This period was referred to as the Austronesian expansion.
Before the 16th century Colonial Era, Austronesians were the most widespread ethnolinguistic group, spanning half the planet from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean to Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean. The crab claw sails and Tanja sails of the Austronesians from western Island Southeast Asia likely influenced the development of what was called the Arab lateen sail. The common Chinese ships junk rigs is also believed to be an Austronesian invention. The Chinese encountered and adopted it by the 2nd century after they made contact with Austronesian traders
Egypt, the cradle of civilization also played a major role in the history of sailing. The Ancient Egyptians had knowledge of sail construction. Basically, sail construction is governed by the science of aerodynamics. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Necho II sent out an expedition of Phoenicians, which in three years sailed from the Red Sea around Africa to the mouth of the Nile. Some current historians believe Herodotus on this point, even though Herodotus himself was in disbelief that the Phoenicians had accomplished the act. The uncertainty of this story notwithstanding, it tells us how involved the Egyptians were in the history of sailing.
The history of sailing is very broad, as broad as the history of man’s movement from one place to another, especially classical history. To fully understand this evolution of sailing, historians have divided different periods of importance in the history of sailing into ages. The first is the age of navigation.
The Age Of Navigation
By 1000 BC, sailing had become commonplace, and the Austronesians in Island Southeast Asia were already engaging in regular maritime trade with China, South Asia, and the Middle East. They introduced sailing technologies to these regions. The Austronesians also brought about an exchange of cultivated crop plants, introducing Pacific coconuts, bananas, and sugarcane to the Indian subcontinent, some of which eventually reached Europe via overland Persian and Arab traders.
It is important that we note that ships then did not look like what they look like now. Describing one of the ships, a Chinese record in 200 AD called them “ship of the Kunlun people”. It has 4-7 masts and able to sail against the wind due to the usage of Tanja sails. These ships went as far as Ghana, then referred to as the Gold Coast.
Another important group were also the Northern European Vikings. They had also developed oceangoing vessels and depended heavily upon them for travel and population movements before 1000 AD. The oldest known examples are longships, and they are dated to around 190 AD from the Nydam Boat site. In early modern India and Arabia, the lateen-sail ship known as the dhow was used on the waters of the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf.
By then, China had started building sea-going ships. This was as far back as the 10th century during the Song Dynasty. China’s early trade exports included pepper, safflower, and fine spices. History tells us that China reached massive sizes by the Yuan dynasty in the 14th century with the help of ships, and by the Ming dynasty, they were used by Zheng He to send expeditions to the Indian Ocean.
The Age Of Commerce
Then in the classical times, water was the cheapest and most of the time, the only way to transport goods in bulk over long distances. In addition to this, it was also the safest way to transport commodities.
The long trade routes created popular trading ports which were popularly known as Entrepôts. There were three popular Entrepôts; the Malaka in southwestern Malaya, Hoi An in Vietnam, and Ayuthaya in Thailand. These super centers for trade were ethnically diverse because ports served as a midpoint of voyages and trade instead of a destination. The Entrepôts helped link the coastal cities to the “hemispheric trade nexus”.
As expected, the massive increase in sea trade ultimately led to a cultural exchange among traders. From 1400 to 1600 the Chinese population doubled from 75 million to 150 million as a result of imported goods, this was known as the “Age of Commerce”.
The Mariner’s Astrolabe
In the classical times, the mariner’s astrolabe was the chief tool of Celestial navigation in early modern maritime history. This scaled down version of the instrument used by astronomers served as a navigational aid to measure latitude at sea and was employed by Portuguese sailors no later than 1481.
It is quite unclear when the magnetic needle compass is undetermined. However, the earliest attestation of the device for navigation was in the Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo and this was in the year 1088. Kuo was also the first to document the concept of true north to discern a compass’ magnetic declination from the physical North Pole.
The earliest iterations of the compass consisted of a floating, magnetized lodestone needle that spun around in a water filled bowl until it reached alignment with Earth’s magnetic poles. Chinese sailors were using the “wet” compass to determine the southern cardinal direction no later than 1117.
Religion
Religion played a key role in the drawing of maps for the sailors. The predominant Christian countries during the Middle Ages placed east at the top of the maps in part due to Genesis, “the lord god planted a garden toward the east in Eden”. This led to maps containing the image of religious icons and symbols such as Jesus Christ, and the garden of Eden at the top of maps. The latitude and longitude coordinate tables were made with the sole purpose of praying towards Mecca. The next progression of maps came with the Portolan chart. The portolan was the first map that labeled North at the top and was drawn proportionate to size. Landmarks were drawn with great detail. The earlier location of the East was an error and nothing else.
The Arabian Age Of Discovery
The Arab Empire maintained and expanded a wide trade network across continents, particularly parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. This helped establish the Arab Empire (and the caliphate that held it up. It brought up the empire as the world’s leading extensive economic power throughout the 7th-13th centuries. The Belitung is the oldest discovered Arabic ship to reach the Asian sea. It dates back over 1000 years.
Navigable rivers in the Islamic regions were very uncommon. There were only the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates. As a result of this, transport by sea was very important. Islamic geography and navigational sciences were highly developed, making use of a magnetic compass and a rudimentary instrument known as a Kamal, used for celestial navigation and for measuring the altitudes and latitudes of the stars.
Using this with the detailed maps of that classical era, the sailors of that time were able to sail across oceans rather than skirt along the coast.
Control of sea routes dictated the political and military power of the Islamic nation. The Islamic border spread from Spain to China. Sea trade was put to use to link the vast territories that spanned the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. The Arabs were among the first to sail the Indian Ocean. Long distance trade allowed the movement of “armies, craftsmen, scholars, and pilgrims”.
It is important to note that Sea trade was an important factor not just for the coastal ports and cities like Istanbul, but also for Baghdad and Iraq, which are further inland. Sea trade ensured the distribution of food and supplies to feed entire populations in the Islamic region. Long distance sea trade imported raw materials for building, luxury goods for the wealthy, and new inventions.
Hanseatic League
This was an alliance of trading guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea, to a certain extent the North Sea, and most of Northern Europe. This was during the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period, between the 13th and 17th centuries.
Historians trace the origins of the League to the foundation of the Northern German town of Lübeck, established in 1158/1159 after the capture of the area from the Count of Schauenburg and Holstein by Henry the Lion, the Duke of Saxony. Lübeck became a central node in all the seaborne trade that linked the areas around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.
The 15th century saw Lübeck’s hegemony reach its peak. By the late 16th century, the League imploded and could no longer deal with its own internal struggles, the social and political changes that accompanied the Reformation, the rise of Dutch and English merchants, and the incursion of the Ottoman Turks upon its trade routes and upon the Holy Roman Empire itself. But the league’s influence in sailing over the course of human history cannot be erased.
History Of Sailing In Europe
Europe is the world’s second-smallest continent in terms of area. It however has a very long coastline. It has arguably been influenced more by its sailing history than any other continent. Europe is uniquely situated between several navigable seas and intersected by navigable rivers running into them in a way which greatly facilitated the influence of sea traffic and commerce.
The carrack and the caravel were developed by the Portuguese. When these inventions happened, European thoughts returned to the fabled East. These explorations have a number of causes. Monetarists believe the main reason the Age of Exploration began was because of a severe shortage of bullion in Europe. The European economy was dependent on gold and silver currency, but low domestic supplies had plunged much of Europe into a recession.
There was however another major factor and that was the age long conflict between the Iberians and the Muslims to the south. The eastern trade routes were controlled by the Ottoman Empire after the Turks took control of Constantinople in 1453, and they barred Europeans from those trade routes.
As a result of this, the Europeans saw the ability to outflank the Muslim states of North Africa as crucial to their survival. At the same time, the Iberians learnt much from their Arab neighbors. The carrack and caravel both incorporated the Mediterranean lateen sail that made ships far more maneuverable. It was also through the Arabs that Ancient Greek geography was rediscovered, for the first time giving European sailors some idea of the shape of Africa and Asia.
History OF Sailing In Relation To Colonialism
In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. After this, European exploration and colonization rapidly expanding. The post-1492 era is known as the Columbian Exchange period. The first conquests were made by the Spanish, who quickly conquered most of South and Central America and large parts of North America.
The Portuguese took Brazil. The British, French, and Dutch conquered islands in the Caribbean Sea, many of which had already been conquered by the Spanish or depopulated by disease. Early European colonies in North America included Spanish Florida, the British settlements in Virginia and New England, French settlements in Quebec and Louisiana, and Dutch settlements in New Netherlands. Denmark-Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland from the 18th until the 20th century, and also colonized a few of the Virgin Islands.
The Colonization 1492
From the very start of it, it was obvious that Western colonialism was operated as a joint public-private venture. Columbus’ voyages to the Americas were partially funded by Italian investors, but whereas the Spanish state maintained a tight rein on trade with its colonies (by law, the colonies could only trade with one designated port in the mother country and treasure was brought back in special convoys), the English, French and Dutch granted what were effectively trade monopolies to joint-stock companies such as the East India Companies and the Hudson’s Bay Company.
During the course of exploring Africa, there was the proliferation of conflicting European claims to African territory. By the 15th century, Europeans explored the African coast in search of a water route to India. The Portuguese were at the forefront of these expeditions. They had been given papal authority to exploit all non-Christian lands of the Eastern Hemisphere.
The Europeans set up coastal colonies to prosecute the slave trade, but the interior of the continent remained unexplored until the 19th century. This was a cumulative period that resulted in European colonial rule in Africa and altered the future of the African continent.
Imperialism in Asia traces its roots back to the late 15th century with a series of voyages that sought a sea passage to India in the hope of establishing direct trade between Europe and Asia in spices. Before 1500 European economies were largely self-sufficient, only supplemented by minor trade with Asia and Africa. Within the next century, there was a gradual integration of both European and Asian economies. This was through the rise of new global trade routes; and the early thrust of European political power, commerce, and culture in Asia gave rise to a growing trade in lucrative commodities—a key development in the rise of today’s modern world capitalist economy.
European colonies in India were set up by several European nations beginning at the beginning of the 16th century. Rivalry between reigning European powers saw the entry of the Dutch, British, and French, among others.
The age of exploration is generally said to have ended in the early 17th century. By this time European vessels were well enough built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet. Exploration, of course, continued. The Arctic and Antarctic seas were not explored until the 19th century. By this time, classical sailing had reached a very beautiful point.
The Age Of Sail
The historic period referred to as the Age of Sail originates from ancient seafaring exploration, during the rise of ancient civilizations. This includes but not limited to Mesopotamia, the Far East and the Cradle of Civilization, the Arabian Sea. This has been an important sea trade route since the era of the coastal sailing vessels from possibly as early as the 3rd millennium BC, certainly the late 2nd millennium BC up to and including the later days of Age of Sail.
By the time of Julius Caesar, several well-established combined land-sea trade routes depended upon water transport through the Sea around the rough inland terrain features to its north. These routes usually began in the Far East with transshipment via historic Bharuch traversed past the inhospitable coast of today’s Iran then split around Hadhramaut into two streams north into the Gulf of Aden and thence into the Levant, or south into Alexandria via Red Sea ports such as Axum.
Each major route involved transshipping to pack animal caravans, travel through desert country and risk of bandits and extortionate tolls by local potentiates. Southern coastal route past the rough country in the southern Arabian Peninsula (Yemen and Oman today) was significant, and the Egyptian Pharaohs built several shallow canals to service the trade, one more or less along the route of today’s Suez Canal, and another from the Red Sea to the Nile River, both shallow works that were swallowed up by huge sandstorms in antiquity.
In the modern western countries, the European “Age of Sail” is the period in which international trade and naval warfare were both dominated by sailing ships. The age of sail mostly coincided with the age of discovery, from the 15th to the 18th century. After the 17th century, English naval maps stopped using the term of British Sea for the English Channel. From 15th to the 18th centuries, the period saw square rigged sailing ships carry European settlers to many parts of the world in one of the most important human migrations in recorded history. This period was marked by extensive exploration and colonization efforts on the part of European kingdoms. The sextant, developed in the 18th century, made more accurate charting of nautical position possible.
Spanish and English Sailing
History records that the Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidona in 1588. The Spanish Armada was sent by King Philip II of Spain, who had been king consort of England until the death of his wife Mary I of England thirty years earlier.
The purpose of the expedition was to escort the Duke of Parma’s army of tercios from the Spanish Netherlands across the North Sea for a landing in south-east England. After the army had suppressed English support for the United Provinces, the plan then was to cut off attacks against Spanish possessions in the New World and the Atlantic treasure fleets.
They also hoped this would reverse the Protestant revolution in England, and to this end the expedition was supported by Pope Sixtus V, with the promise of a subsidy should it make land. The command of the fleet was originally entrusted to Alvaro de Bazan, a highly experienced naval commander who died a few months before the fleet sailed from Lisbon in May 1588.
The Spanish Armada consisted of about 130 warships and converted merchant ships. After forcing its way up the English Channel, it was attacked by a fleet of 200 English ships, assisted by the Dutch navy, in the North Sea at Gravelines off the coastal border between France and the Spanish Netherlands. A fire-ship attack drove the Armada ships from their safe anchorage, and in the ensuing battle the Spanish abandoned their rendezvous with Parma’s army.
The Spanish Armada was blown north up the east coast of England and in a hasty strategic move, attempted a return to Spain by sailing around Scotland and out into the Atlantic, past Ireland. But very severe weather destroyed a portion of the fleet, and more than 24 vessels were wrecked on the north and western coasts of Ireland, with the survivors having to seek refuge in Scotland. Of the Spanish Armada’s initial complement of vessels, about 50 did not return to Spain. However, the loss to Philip’s Royal Navy was comparatively small: only seven ships failed to return, and of these only three were lost to enemy action.
The English Armada was a fleet of warships sent to the Iberian coast by Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1589, during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). It was led by Sir Francis Drake as admiral and Sir John Norreys as general and failed in its attempt to drive home the advantage England had won upon the defeat and dispersal of the Spanish Armada in the previous year.
With the opportunity to strike a decisive blow against the weakened Spanish lost, the failure of the expedition further depleted the crown treasury that had been so carefully restored during the long reign of Elizabeth I. The Anglo-Spanish war was very costly to both sides, and Spain itself, also fighting France and the United Provinces, had to default on its debt repayments in 1596, following another raid on Cadiz. But the failure of the English Armada was a turning point, and the fortunes of the various parties to this complicated conflict fluctuated until the Treaty of London in 1604, when a peace was agreed.
Spain’s rebuilt navy had quickly recovered and exceeded its pre-Armada dominance of the sea, until defeats by the Dutch fifty years later marked the beginning of its decline. With the peace, the English were able to consolidate their hold on Ireland and make a concerted effort to establish colonies in North America.
Conclusion
Sailing has been with man since the beginning of migration. It is not clear who started what first. But scholars of prehistoric sailing believe that the first humans must have sailed on wooden rafts or canoes just across small water bodies before sailing became a major means of transportation, trade, and imperial domination.