Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 5.8.
Part of a fourteenth-century portolan chart, showing Italy and surround-
ing areas. This detail is from the same chart as that of figure 5.2. The radiating lines
are rhumb lines, for the benefit of mariners.
earlier. Crucially, European ships were also improving at this time, owing
to the convergence of two ship-building traditions. The Crusades had taken
Christian soldiers to the Middle East, in a series of invasions of Islamic
lands that still rankle there today. However, these invasions also brought
northern European clinker-built ships, with their newly invented rud-
ders, into Mediterranean waters, where the European sailors encountered
southern European carvel-built ships.
17
Over the next couple of centuries,
17.
Clinker
(also known as
lapstrake
) and
carvel
refer to the method of constructing the
outer hull of a wooden sailing ship. Clinker-built ships had overlapping planks, as with the
famous Viking longboats. Such boats were strong—and beautiful—but were limited in size
by the plank length. Carvel-built ships had the planks abutting, like siding on the wall of a
house, and were not restricted in size to the length of a plank; planks could be abutted end-
