Caravel

Assembled from 9 blocks · 1 evidence · 3 related

1. Story
2. A small, shallow-draught exploring vessel, typically two- or three-masted and commonly given as between about 50 and 160 tons burthen — a fraction of the size of the ships that later carried the cargo. Its defining feature was rig rather than hull: the caravela latina carried triangular lateen sails on all masts, which let it sail materially closer to the wind than a square rig and therefore work back up a coast against a foul breeze. That is exactly the capability needed to explore an unknown shoreline you may have to retreat from. Its shallow draught let it enter river mouths and lagoons that a deep-hulled trader could not. For long open-ocean running, crews preferred square canvas on the fore and main — the caravela redonda, a hybrid — because a lateen yard is heavy, slow to shift and dangerous in a squall. The Niña and the Pinta of 1492 were caravels; the Santa María was not, and the ships that later ran the India route were not either. The caravel is the instrument of reconnaissance, not of trade.
3. Knowledge
4. Caravel
5. Connections
6. Carrack (nau)
7. Gil Eanes passes Cape Bojador
8. Evidence
9. The standard single-volume account of Portuguese expansion: Ceuta, the African coast, the Cape route, the carreira da Índia, the Estado da Índia and the institutions that ran them. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session. Boxer is a mid-twentieth-century imperial history and its framing has been substantially revised by later work, particularly on Asian agency and on the limits of Portuguese control; this pack uses it for structure, not for interpretation.