1.
Mediterranean Sea
–
The sea is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, although it is usually identified as a separate body of water. The name Mediterranean is derived from the Latin mediterraneus, meaning inland or in the middle of land and it covers an approximate area of 2.5 million km2, but its connection to the Atlantic is only 14 km wide. The Strait of Gibraltar is a strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Gibraltar. In oceanography, it is called the Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea or the European Mediterranean Sea to distinguish it from mediterranean seas elsewhere. The Mediterranean Sea has a depth of 1,500 m. The sea is bordered on the north by Europe, the east by Asia and it is located between latitudes 30° and 46° N and longitudes 6° W and 36° E. Its west-east length, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Iskenderun, the seas average north-south length, from Croatia’s southern shore to Libya, is approximately 800 km. The Mediterranean Sea, including the Sea of Marmara, has an area of approximately 2,510,000 square km. The sea was an important route for merchants and travelers of ancient times that allowed for trade, the history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies. In addition, the Gaza Strip and the British Overseas Territories of Gibraltar and Akrotiri, the term Mediterranean derives from the Latin word mediterraneus, meaning amid the earth or between land, as it is between the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe. The Ancient Greek name Mesogeios, is similarly from μέσο, between + γη, land, earth) and it can be compared with the Ancient Greek name Mesopotamia, meaning between rivers. The Mediterranean Sea has historically had several names, for example, the Carthaginians called it the Syrian Sea and latter Romans commonly called it Mare Nostrum, and occasionally Mare Internum. Another name was the Sea of the Philistines, from the people inhabiting a large portion of its shores near the Israelites, the sea is also called the Great Sea in the General Prologue by Geoffrey Chaucer. In Ottoman Turkish, it has also been called Bahr-i Sefid, in Modern Hebrew, it has been called HaYam HaTikhon, the Middle Sea, reflecting the Seas name in ancient Greek, Latin, and modern languages in both Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, in Modern Arabic, it is known as al-Baḥr al-Mutawassiṭ, in Turkish, it is known as Akdeniz, the White Sea since among Turks the white colour represents the west. Several ancient civilisations were located around the Mediterranean shores, and were influenced by their proximity to the sea. It provided routes for trade, colonisation, and war, as well as food for numerous communities throughout the ages, due to the shared climate, geology, and access to the sea, cultures centered on the Mediterranean tended to have some extent of intertwined culture and history. Two of the most notable Mediterranean civilisations in classical antiquity were the Greek city states, later, when Augustus founded the Roman Empire, the Romans referred to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum
2.
Sailing ship
–
A modern sailing ship or sailship is any large wind-powered vessel. Traditionally a sailing ship is a vessel that carries three or more masts with square sails on each. Large sailing vessels that are not ship-rigged may be more referred to by their sail rig, such as schooner, barque, brig. There are many different types of sailing ships, but they all have certain basic things in common, every sailing ship has a hull, rigging and at least one mast to hold up the sails that use the wind to power the ship. The crew who sail a ship are called sailors or hands and they take turns to take the watch, the active managers of the ship and her performance for a period. Watches are traditionally four hours long, some sailing ships use traditional ships bells to tell the time and regulate the watch system, with the bell being rung once for every half hour into the watch and rung eight times at watch end. A severe storm could lead to shipwreck, and the loss of all hands, Sailing ships are limited in their maximum size compared to ships with heat engines, so economies of scale are also limited. The heaviest sailing ships never exceeded 14,000 tons displacement, there are many types of sailing ships, mostly distinguished by their rigging, hull, keel, or number and configuration of masts. There are also types of smaller sailboats not listed here. The steam power was used to drive the winches, hoists, a similar ship Kruzenshtern, a very large sailing vessel without mechanical assists, had a crew of 257 men, compared to the Preussen, which required only 48 men. In 2006, automated control had been taken to the point where sails could be operated by one using a central control unit. The DynaRig technology was first developed in the 1960s in Germany by W. Prolls as an alternative for commercial ships to prepare for a possible future energy crisis. The technology is a version of the same type of sail used by the Preussen. The main difference is that the yards do not swing around a fixed mast but are attached to a rotating mast. DynaRig along with extensive computerization was used in the proof-of-concept Maltese Falcon to enable it to be sailed with no crew aloft, as of 2013, with increasing restrictions on use of bunker fuel, attempts were underway to develop hybrid sailing ships using automated sail and alternative fuels. Tall ship Rigging Sail-plan List of large sailing vessels Cruising Shipbuilding, the History of a Ship from Her Cradle to Her Grave, With a Short Account of Modern Steamships and Torpedoes. The sailing-ship, six years of history. Media related to Sailing ships at Wikimedia Commons
3.
Bowsprit
–
The bowsprit of a sailing vessel is a spar extending forward from the vessels prow. It provides a point for the forestay, allowing the fore-mast to be stepped farther forward on the hull. The word bowsprit is thought to originate from the Middle Low German word bōchsprēt - bōch meaning bow, early ocean-going vessels tended to tilt the bowsprit, also known in centuries past as a boltsprit, at a high angle, and hung one or two square spritsails from yards. Many types of pleasure and work vessels ship bowsprits, generally short in length. Once popular on large and small, even after the popularization of the Bermuda rig. On some modern racing yachts and dinghies, the bowsprit is retractable, the bowsprit on a tall ship may be of considerable length and carry several forestays supporting the foremast. Headsails are stowed by tying onto the bowsprit when not in use, to minimise the risk of bowsprit and crew handling sail on it being buried in large waves, it is normally angled upwards from the horizontal. Some hang gliders use a bowsprit, rather than a spar to spread their wings, the bowsprit is formed by extending the keel tube about a metre beyond the leading edge of the wing. In 1879 a patent in England by F. W. Brearey was filed that taught bowsprit structure for flying machines, in the modern mid-1900s renaissance in hang gliding a Dial Soap TV commercial featured in 1973 a bowsprit cross-sparless hang glider. Other examples of bowsprit hang gliders were exampled in the manufactured by Bautek in the 1980s
4.
Mast (sailing)
–
The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sail, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a light, look-out position, signal yard, control position. Large ships have several masts, with the size and configuration depending on the style of ship, nearly all sailing masts are guyed. Until the mid-19th century all vessels masts were made of wood formed from a single or several pieces of timber which typically consisted of the trunk of a conifer tree. From the 16th century, vessels were built of a size requiring masts taller and thicker than could be made from single tree trunks. On these larger vessels, to achieve the height, the masts were built from up to four sections, known in order of rising height above the decks as the lower, top, topgallant. Giving the lower sections sufficient thickness necessitated building them up separate pieces of wood. Such a section was known as a made mast, as opposed to sections formed from pieces of timber. Jigger-mast, typically, where it is the shortest, the aftmost mast on vessels with more than three masts. On a two-masted vessel with the main-mast forward and a smaller second mast, such as a ketch, or particularly a yawl. Although two-masted schooners may be provided with masts of identical size, the aftmost is still referred to as the main-mast, schooners have been built with up to seven masts in all, with several six-masted examples. On square-rigged vessels, each mast carries several horizontal yards from which the sails are rigged. A two-masted merchant vessel with a sizable foresail rigged on a slightly inclined foremast is depicted in an Etruscan tomb painting from 475–450 BC. While most of the ancient evidence is iconographic, the existence of foremasts can also be deduced archaeologically from slots in foremast-feets located too close to the prow for a mainsail. Artemon, along with mainsail and topsail, developed into the rig of seagoing vessels in imperial times. The imperial grain freighters travelling the routes between Alexandria and Rome also included three-masted vessels, a mosaic in Ostia depicts a freighter with a three-masted rig entering Romes harbour. Special craft could carry many more masts, Theophrastus records how the Romans imported Corsican timber by way of a raft propelled by as many as fifty masts. Throughout antiquity, both foresail and mizzen remained secondary in terms of size, although large enough to require full running rigging
5.
Galley
–
A galley is a type of ship that is propelled mainly by rowing. The galley is characterized by its long, slender hull, shallow draft, virtually all types of galleys had sails that could be used in favorable winds, but human strength was always the primary method of propulsion. This allowed galleys to navigate independently of winds and currents, Galleys were the warships used by the early Mediterranean naval powers, including the Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans. They remained the dominant types of vessels used for war and piracy in the Mediterranean Sea until the last decades of the 16th century and they were the first ships to effectively use heavy cannons as anti-ship weapons. As highly efficient gun platforms they forced changes in the design of medieval seaside fortresses as well as refinement of sailing warships. The zenith of galley usage in warfare came in the late 16th century with battles like that at Lepanto in 1571, by the 17th century, however, sailing ships and hybrid ships like the xebec displaced galleys in naval warfare. From the mid-16th century galleys were in intermittent use in the Baltic Sea, with its short distances, there was a minor revival of galley warfare in the 18th century in the wars between Russia, Sweden and Denmark. The term galley derives from the medieval Greek galea, a version of the dromon. The origin of the Greek word is unclear but could possibly be related to galeos, the word galley has been attested in English from c. It was only from the 16th century that a unified galley concept came in use, before that, particularly in antiquity, there was a wide variety of terms used for different types of galleys. Ancient galleys were named according to the number of oars, the number of banks of oars or lines of rowers, the terms are based on contemporary language use combined with more recent compounds of Greek and Latin words. The earliest Greek single-banked galleys are called triaconters and penteconters, for later galleys with more than one row of oars, the terminology is based on Latin numerals with the suffix -reme from rēmus, oar. A monoreme has one bank of oars, a two and a trireme three. Since the maximum banks of oars was three, any expansion above that did not refer to additional banks of oars, but of additional rowers for every oar. Quinquereme was literally a five-oar, but actually meant that there were several rowers to certain banks of oars which made up five lines of oar handlers, for simplicity, they have by many modern scholars been referred to as fives, sixes, eights, elevens, etc. Anything above six or seven rows of rowers was not common, any galley with more than three or four lines of rowers is often referred to as a polyreme. Oared military vessels built on the British Isles in the 11th to 13th centuries were based on Scandinavian designs, many of them were similar to birlinns, close relatives of longship types like the snekkja. By the 14th century, they were replaced with balingers in southern Britain while longship-type Irish galleys remained in use throughout the Middle Ages in northern Britain, Medieval and early modern galleys used a different terminology than their ancient predecessors
6.
Algeria
–
Algeria, officially the Peoples Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a sovereign state in North Africa on the Mediterranean coast. Its capital and most populous city is Algiers, located in the far north. With an area of 2,381,741 square kilometres, Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, the country is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 48 provinces and 1,541 communes. Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been President since 1999, Berbers are the indigenous inhabitants of Algeria. Algeria is a regional and middle power, the North African country supplies large amounts of natural gas to Europe, and energy exports are the backbone of the economy. According to OPEC Algeria has the 16th largest oil reserves in the world, Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa. Algeria has one of the largest militaries in Africa and the largest defence budget on the continent, most of Algerias weapons are imported from Russia, with whom they are a close ally. Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, OPEC, the countrys name derives from the city of Algiers. The citys name in turn derives from the Arabic al-Jazāir, a form of the older Jazāir Banī Mazghanna. In the region of Ain Hanech, early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa were found, neanderthal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles similar to those in the Levant. Algeria was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic Flake tool techniques, tools of this era, starting about 30,000 BC, are called Aterian. The earliest blade industries in North Africa are called Iberomaurusian and this industry appears to have spread throughout the coastal regions of the Maghreb between 15,000 and 10,000 BC. Neolithic civilization developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghreb perhaps as early as 11,000 BC or as late as between 6000 and 2000 BC and this life, richly depicted in the Tassili nAjjer paintings, predominated in Algeria until the classical period. The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a native population that came to be called Berbers. These settlements served as market towns as well as anchorages, as Carthaginian power grew, its impact on the indigenous population increased dramatically. Berber civilization was already at a stage in which agriculture, manufacturing, trade, by the early 4th century BC, Berbers formed the single largest element of the Carthaginian army. In the Revolt of the Mercenaries, Berber soldiers rebelled from 241 to 238 BC after being unpaid following the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War. They succeeded in obtaining control of much of Carthages North African territory, the Carthaginian state declined because of successive defeats by the Romans in the Punic Wars
7.
Barbary pirates
–
This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber inhabitants. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture Christian slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Muslim slavery market in North Africa and the Middle East. In that period Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli came under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, similar raids were undertaken from Salé and other ports in Morocco. Corsairs captured thousands of ships and repeatedly raided coastal towns, as a result, residents abandoned their former villages of long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy. The raids were such a problem coastal settlements were seldom undertaken until the 19th century, from the 16th to 19th century, corsairs captured an estimated 800,000 to 1.25 million people as slaves. Some corsairs were European outcasts and converts such as John Ward, Hayreddin Barbarossa and Oruç Reis, Turkish Barbarossa Brothers, who took control of Algiers on behalf of the Ottomans in the early 16th century, were also notorious corsairs. The European pirates brought advanced sailing and shipbuilding techniques to the Barbary Coast around 1600, the effects of the Barbary raids peaked in the early to mid-17th century. However, the ships and coasts of Christian states without such effective protection continued to suffer until the early 19th century. Following the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15, European powers agreed upon the need to suppress the Barbary corsairs entirely and the threat was largely subdued. Occasional incidents occurred, including two Barbary wars between the United States and the Barbary States, until terminated by the French conquest of Algiers in 1830. Piracy by Muslim populations had been known in the Mediterranean since at least the 9th century, in the 14th century Tunisian corsairs became enough of a threat to provoke a Franco-Genoese attack on Mahdia in 1390, also known as the Barbary Crusade. The Barbary pirates had long attacked English and other European shipping along the North Coast of Africa and they had been attacking English merchant and passengers ships since the 1600s. Regular fundraising for ransoms was undertaken generally by families and local church groups, the government did not ransom ordinary persons. The English became familiar with captivity narratives written by Barbary pirates prisoners and ransomed captives, during the American Revolution the pirates attacked American ships. The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship stands as the U. S. s oldest non-broken friendship treaty with a foreign power, in 1778 Morocco became the first nation to recognize the new United States. As late as 1798, an islet near Sardinia was attacked by the Tunisians, throughout history, geography was on the pirates side on the Northern coast of Africa. The coast was ideal for their wants and needs, with natural harbours often backed by lagoons, it provided a haven for guerrilla warfare, such as attacks on shipping vessels venturing through their territory. On the coast, mountainous areas provided ample reconnaissance for the corsairs as well, ships were spotted from afar, the pirates had time to prepare their attacks and surprise the ships
8.
Stern
–
The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite of the bow, the foremost part of a ship, originally, the term only referred to the aft port section of the ship, but eventually came to refer to the entire back of a vessel. The stern end of a ship is indicated with a navigation light at night. Sterns on European and American wooden sailing ships began with two forms, the square or transom stern and the elliptical, fantail, or merchant stern. This frame is designed to support the beams that make up the stern. In 1817 the British naval architect Sir Robert Seppings first introduced the concept of the round or circular stern, the square stern had been an easy target for enemy cannon, and could not support the weight of heavy stern chase guns. The United States began building the first elliptical stern warship in 1820, USS Brandywine became the first sailing ship to sport such a stern. In naval architecture, the term transom has two meanings, in this sense, a transom stern is the product of the use of a series of transoms, and hence the two terms have blended. But until a new form of stern appeared in the 19th century, the stern was a floating house—and required just as many timbers, walls, windows. The stern frame provided the structure of the transom stern, and was composed of the sternpost, wing transom. If the stern had transoms above the transom, they would no longer be affixed to the sternpost. The first of these might be called a counter transom, next up was the window sill transom, above that, the larger the vessel, the more numerous and wider the transoms required to support its stern. Stern timbers – These timbers are mounted vertically in a series, each timber typically rests or steps on the transom and then stretches out. Those not reaching all the way to the taffrail are called short stern timbers, the two outermost of these timbers, located at the corners of the stern, are called the side-counter timbers or outer stern timbers. The flat surface of any transom stern may begin either at or above the waterline of the vessel. The geometric line which stretches from the transom to the archboard is called the counter. The visual unpopularity of Seppings circular stern was soon rectified by Sir William Symonds, in this revised stern, a set of straight post timbers stretches from the keel diagonally aft and upward. It rests on the top of the sternpost and runs on either side of the rudder post to a point well above the vessels waterline, the finished stern has a continuous curved edge around the outside and is raked aft
9.
Frigate
–
A frigate /ˈfrɪɡᵻt/ is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries. In the 17th century, this term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability and these could be warships carrying their principal batteries of carriage-mounted guns on a single deck or on two decks. The term was used for ships too small to stand in the line of battle. In the late 19th century, the frigate was a type of ironclad warship that for a time was the most powerful type of vessel afloat. The term frigate was used because such ships still mounted their principal armaments on a continuous upper deck. Ship classes dubbed frigates have more closely resembled corvettes, destroyers, cruisers. The rank frigate captain derives from the name of type of ship. The term frigate originated in the Mediterranean in the late 15th century, referring to a lighter galleass type ship with oars, sails and a light armament, built for speed and maneuverability. The etymology of the word is unknown, although it may have originated as a corruption of aphractus, aphractus was, in turn, derived from the Ancient Greek phrase ἄφρακτος ναῦς, or undefended ship. In 1583, during the Eighty Years War, Habsburg Spain recovered the Southern Netherlands from the rebellious Dutch and this soon led to the occupied ports being used as bases for privateers, the Dunkirkers, to attack the shipping of the Dutch and their allies. To achieve this they developed small, maneuverable, sailing vessels that came to be referred to as frigates, in French, the term frigate became a verb, meaning to build long and low, and an adjective, adding further confusion. Even the huge English Sovereign of the Seas could be described as a frigate by a contemporary after her upper decks were reduced in 1651. The navy of the Dutch Republic was the first navy to build the larger ocean-going frigates, the first two tasks required speed, shallowness of draft for the shallow waters around the Netherlands, and the ability to carry sufficient supplies to maintain a blockade. The third task required heavy armament, sufficient to fight against the Spanish fleet, the first of these larger battle-capable frigates were built around 1600 at Hoorn in Holland. The effectiveness of the Dutch frigates became most visible in the Battle of the Downs in 1639, encouraging most other navies, especially the English, to adopt similar designs. The fleets built by the Commonwealth of England in the 1650s generally consisted of ships described as frigates, the largest of which were two-decker great frigates of the third rate. Carrying 60 guns, these vessels were as big and capable as great ships of the time, however, most other frigates at the time were used as cruisers, independent fast ships. The term frigate implied a long hull design, which relates directly to speed and also, in turn, in Danish, the word fregat is often applied to warships carrying as few as 16 guns, such as HMS Falcon which the British classified as a sloop
10.
Square rig
–
These spars are called yards and their tips, beyond the last stay, are called the yardarms. A ship mainly so rigged is called a square-rigger, the square rig is aerodynamically the most efficient running rig, and stayed popular on ocean-going sailing ships until the end of the Age of Sail. The last commercial sailing ships, windjammers, were usually square-rigged four-masted barques, square-rigged masts may also have triangular staysails that are deployed fore-and-aft between masts. Square-rigged is also used for the uniform of a rating in the Royal Navy since 1857 and it is slang and refers to anyone wearing the famous blue square collar on the shoulders and bell-bottomed trousers. The name perhaps reflects the fact that it was men who managed the square-rigged sails. The peaked cap worn by Senior Ratings and Officers is known colloquially as fore-and-aft rig. A mast is considered square-rigged if its lowest sail or course is square-rigged, if the course is fore-and-aft, square topsails can still be carried in front of the mast. In their heyday, square-rigged vessels ranged in size from small boats to full rigged ships, but this rig fell from favour to fore-and-aft gaff rigs and bermuda rigs after the development of steam power and new materials. Ocean-going sailing ships stayed mostly square-rigged, Square rigs allowed the fitting of many small sails to create a large total sail area to drive large ships. 18th century warships would often achieve speeds of 12–13 knots. Some clipper ships that had square rigs and for speed was critical could be much faster. The late windjammers were as fast as the clippers, being much bigger, not only could a smaller sail be managed by a smaller crew but also these smaller sails constrained the impact of weapons on them. A hole from a cannonball affected only one area, whilst a hole in a large sail would eventually tear the whole larger area. This reduced running costs and also enlarged the space available in the ship for profitable cargoes, new materials also changed sail designs, particularly on hybrid vessels carrying some square-rigged sails. The low aspect ratio of square-rigged sails produces much drag for the lift produced, so they have poor performance to windward compared to modern yachts, the Bermuda rig is the undisputed champion of windward performance in soft sails, due to its very low drag and high lift-to-drag ratio. One advantage of square rigs is that they are efficient when running, where the high lift to drag is irrelevant. Square-rigged sails are also prone to broaching when running than Bermuda rigs. Ocean-going vessels take advantage of e. g. the trade winds, on a square-rigged mast the sails had names which indicated their vertical position on the mast
