rudders; one to starboard, and the other to larboard. Her sparring consisted, also, of two masts; one at the prow, and the other amidships. The mainmast was smaller and lower than the foremast. It had only twenty-six braces, while the other had twenty-eight. The sails of almost all the fleet were of cotton. All the sails were rectangular triangles with the hypothenuse attached to the yard, and were called antennal. Still, it is proper to mention the assertion of some authors, that the sails of St. Louis' vessels were square. Their assertions were only founded on the form and dimensions of the yards, which all the documents of the time represent as very long and slung by the middle. We ought to observe that, in speaking of the St. Mary and the Rochefort, Venetian ships, we have indirectly spoken of naval constructions coming from the ports of France and those of other European countries. At this period, all vessels, Genoese, Castilian, French, etc., resembled each other; and to be acquainted with one was to know all. The galleys of the thirteenth century were thus somewhat changed. Lighter, sharper than those of the preceding century, in the fourteenth, the kind called 'subtle galleys,' were observed to preponderate. These galleys, extremely light and swift, were furnished on each side with from twenty-four to twenty-six oars, and might have been from one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty feet in length. Still, in the fourteenth century, and even in the fifteenth and sixteenth, the most celebrated ships were the carracks. Their tonnage may be estimated by their cargoes, which sometimes amounted to fourteen hundred casks.
9. Seventeenth Century.—Store Ship.
In 1359, the Castilians took a Venetian carrack, which had three 'covers' (decks), and must consequently have been as high as the great storeships of the seventeenth century. In 1545, a French carrack, the Carraquon, which passed for the finest ship and fastest sailer of the western ocean, was of eight hundred tons burthen, and had one hundred pieces of artillery of all calibers for armament. The carracks of the fourteenth century had only two masts; in the fifteenth, they took three, and after-*
