Carrack

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2008, a wreck turned up on the coast of Namibia that had been missing for nearly five centuries. It was the Bom Jesus, a Portuguese ship that sailed from Lisbon and disappeared in 1533. The wreck was well preserved. Inside lay copper ingots, elephant ivory and more than 2000 gold and silver coins. The Bom Jesus was a carrack, a three- or four-masted ocean-going sailing ship developed in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, most notably in Portugal and Spain. Carracks were built for very long voyages, with room for huge cargoes and the supplies to feed a crew. Where did such a ship come from, and what is the odd word that names it? How did one design carry silk, silver and pepper across half the globe? And did anyone outside Europe sail ships of the same kind?

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• 2. A Word Older Than Ships

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  In the late 14th century, English borrowed the word carrack from the Old French caraque. The French had taken it from carraca, a term in Spanish, Italian and Middle Latin for a large, square-rigged sailing vessel. Each seafaring people had its own version. The Portuguese said nau. Genoese and Spanish sailors said carraca. The French used caraque or nef, and the Dutch said kraak.

  Where carraca itself came from is unclear. One suggestion is the Arabic qaraqir, meaning merchant ship, a word whose own origin is unknown. That Arabic word may in turn come from the Latin carricare, which means to load a car. Another candidate is the Greek word καρκαρίς, meaning a load of timber.

  A second route runs through the Arabic al-qurqoor to the Greek kerkouros, which meant roughly a lighter, or barge. Literally, the Greek means shorn tail, perhaps a reference to a flat stern. In Greek literature the word clusters in two regions. One lies around Cyprus and Corfu, where it describes light, fast merchant ships. The other is the Oxyrhynchus corpus, where it most often names the Nile barges of the Ptolemaic pharaohs.

  Both uses may lead back through the Phoenician to the Akkadian kalakku, a type of river barge. The Akkadian is itself assumed to come from a Sumerian ancestor. A faint echo survives today in the Arabic and Turkish word kelek, which means raft or riverboat.

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• 3. Borrowed From Many Ships

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  By the late Middle Ages, the cog and similar square-rigged ships with a rudder at the stern were common along European coasts, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. The Mediterranean added types of its own. Galleys were used extensively there, alongside various two-masted vessels, including caravels with their lateen sails. Portuguese navigators and shipwrights knew all of these.

  During the 15th century, the Portuguese and Spaniards pushed their trade ever farther south along Africa's Atlantic coast and islands. That demanded larger, more durable and more advanced ships for long ocean ventures. Over time they blended features of the Atlantic and Mediterranean ships they knew into oceanic carracks of their own. By the end of the century these were in general use for crossing oceans. A more advanced rig sailed far better in the heavy winds and waves of the Atlantic, and a bigger hull held larger cargoes.

  Some naus were built in the reign of John II of Portugal, though they became widespread only after the turn of the century. Portuguese carracks were very large ships for their time, often over 1000 tons displacement.

  In its mature form, the carrack had a carvel-built hull. It was big enough to stay stable in heavy seas and roomy enough for a large cargo and the provisions of a long voyage. Later carracks carried square sails on the foremast and mainmast and a lateen sail on the mizzenmast. The stern was high and rounded, with an aftcastle, while a forecastle and a bowsprit stood at the front.

  The São Gabriel, a typical three-masted carrack, carried six sails. These were the bowsprit sail, foresail, mainsail, mizzensail and two topsails. Meanwhile, the Republic of Ragusa used its own three- or four-masted version, the Dubrovačka karaka, or Dubrovnik Carrack, to move cargo between the 14th and the 17th century.

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• 4. The Cape Route

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  Starting in 1498, Portugal opened direct and regular exchanges between Europe and India, and soon the rest of Asia, along the Cape Route. The voyage took about six months, an unprecedented length that called for more substantial vessels such as carracks.

  On average, four carracks connected Lisbon to Goa. They carried gold to buy spices and other exotic goods, but mainly pepper. From Goa, one carrack went on to Ming China to buy silks.

  In 1541, the Portuguese began trading with Japan, exchanging Chinese silk for Japanese silver. In 1550 the Portuguese Crown started to regulate that trade. It leased the annual captaincy to Japan to the highest bidder at Goa, which in effect gave exclusive trading rights to a single carrack bound for Japan each year. In 1557 the Portuguese acquired Macau to develop the trade in partnership with the Chinese.

  The arrangement continued with few interruptions until 1638. In that year Japan's rulers prohibited it, on the grounds that the ships were smuggling Catholic priests into the country. The Japanese had called the Portuguese carracks Black Ships, or kurofune, after the colour of their hulls. The term would eventually come to mean any Western vessel, not just Portuguese ones.

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• 5. Carracks Beyond Europe

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  A picture of an Ottoman barca on Piri Reis' map shows a deep-hulled ship with a tall forecastle and a lateen sail on the mizzenmast. The Islamic world built and used carracks, or at least carrack-like ships, in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

  Islamic texts also describe the harraqa, which Europeans rendered as karaque. It was a type of ship used to hurl explosives and inflammable materials, such as firebombs in earthenware pots, naphtha and fire arrows. The texts suggest two kinds. One was a cargo ship, and the other was a smaller, galley-like longship built for fighting. Whether the name connects to the European carraca, or whether one influenced the other, is unclear.

  In 1507, the Knights of St. John captured a Muslim harraqa named Mogarbina from the Ottoman Turks. They renamed it Santa Maria.

  In Asian waters, the Portuguese usually called Gujarati ships naos, their word for carracks. Gujarati naos operated between Malacca and the Red Sea and were often larger than Portuguese carracks. The Bengalis used carracks too, which the Portuguese sometimes called naos mauriscas, or Moorish carracks. Merchants of Mecca apparently sailed them as well, since Duarte Barbosa noted that the Bengali people had "great naos after the fashion of Mecca".

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• 6. Ships Of Discovery

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  In 1492, Christopher Columbus made his first voyage to America aboard the Santa María, a carrack. Five years later, in 1497, the São Gabriel served as flagship of Vasco da Gama on the Portuguese expedition from Europe to India, which circled Africa to get there.

  The Victoria sailed from 1519 to 1522 and became the first ship in history to circumnavigate the globe. She was the only survivor of Magellan's expedition for Spain.

  In 1524, La Dauphine carried Verrazzano along the Atlantic coast of North America. In 1535, the Grande Hermine took Jacques Cartier into the Saint Lawrence River. She was the first European ship to sail that river past the Gulf.

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• 7. Warships, Prizes And Wrecks

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  Built in the Low Countries in 1485, the Gribshunden served as flagship of the Danish-Norwegian King Hans. She remained in the crown's service until she sank in June 1495. Other rulers built carracks for war. The Mary Rose, Henri Grâce à Dieu and Peter Pomegranate were built during the reign of King Henry VIII of England, and English military carracks like these were often called great ships. Henry V had earlier commissioned the Grace Dieu, one of the largest ships in the world at the time. The Scottish Great Michael was at one time the largest ship in Europe.

  In 1522, the Knights Hospitaller commissioned the Santa Anna, a particularly modern design sometimes hailed as the first armoured ship. The Order of St. John also sailed La Gran Carracca during its rule over Malta. In India, the Portuguese built a war carrack called the Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai.

  Some carracks became legends for what they carried. The Flor do Mar served over nine years in the Indian Ocean. She sank in 1512 with Afonso de Albuquerque aboard, after the conquest of Malacca, carrying an enormous booty. The Santo António, personal property of King John III of Portugal, wrecked off Gunwalloe Bay in 1527. Salvaging her cargo almost led to a war between England and Portugal.

  The Hanseatic League sailed the Peter von Danzig in the 1460s and 1470s. In 1563, Queen Elizabeth I of England chartered the Jesus of Lübeck to a group of merchants. The ship became involved in the Atlantic slave trade under John Hawkins. In 1603 the Dutch East India Company seized the Portuguese carrack Santa Catarina off Singapore. And in 1610, a Japanese attack sank the Nossa Senhora da Graça near Nagasaki.

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• 8. Eclipsed By The Galleon

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  In the middle of the 16th century, shipbuilders developed the first galleons from the carrack. The galleon gradually replaced its parent in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Even so, carracks stayed in use as late as the middle of the 17th century, because they could carry more cargo.

  As the predecessor of the galleon, the carrack was one of the most influential ship designs in history. Ships grew more specialized in the following centuries, but the basic design remained unchanged.

  The name survives in odd corners of language. In Italian, the word caracca and related words are popularly used for a cumbersome person, an old vessel, or a vehicle in very bad condition. In the strategy games Civilization V and Civilization VI, the Portuguese word nau names a unique unit, so players can still command a carrack.

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