The History of the Sail

by Read Listen Learn

Boats have probably been here since the beginning of human history. Humans are good in water and eat fish. They made the first boats, small and simple, to fish in the middle of lakes or to cross rivers. They carried only one or two people. To make them, they put animal skin over a wooden frame and covered everything in tar or fat to stop the water coming in. They used a paddle to move the boat.

With time the boats got bigger. Wood became the usual material and the boat or ship often had oars, sometimes hundreds of them, to move it quickly through the water. This kind of ship was called a 'galley' and it needed hundreds of men to row it. Normally, these men were slaves who died while they were working.

At some time, a few thousand years ago, people began to put a sail on ships. The sail was a big square of material. It stayed at a ninety degree angle to the ship. When the wind came from behind the ship, the sail filled and pushed it forward. They did not need men to move the ship, only to steer it, put the sail up, bring it down and make it stop. Just a dozen men could take a big ship a long way.

The wind cost nothing but it did not always blow the right way for the ship; sometimes, it didn't blow at all. When this happened, the ship and the crew or passengers could only wait. Sometimes, they waited six months or more for the wind to change.

Then, about one thousand years ago, the Arabs invented a new sail. It was not square but triangular and it could move one hundred and eighty degrees or a semi-circle. Now, a ship could go in any direction it liked if there was wind in any direction. If the wind was blowing in the exact direction the ship wanted to go, then the sail would be square, or at ninety degrees to the ship. But, if the wind was blowing, roughly, in the opposite direction, the sail was set at an angle to the wind which then still filled the sail and pushed the ship forwards.

If the ship needed to travel exactly against the wind, it had only to zigzag up it. In open sea, the ship didn't zigzag - which is a lot of work for the crew, but just followed two sides of a 'triangle', with the third side being the direction of the wind. This indirect, two-part course is called a 'broad reach'. While trying to reach the bottom of Africa, a Portuguese ship in the Atlantic did a very big broad reach and went so far west that they accidentally discovered Brazil.

The new sailing ships took Europeans all over the world, finding new places and bringing exciting new things back but all of them to make money. The sail made the world one place, connected by trade and war.

Now, though, sailing ships are a thing of the past. Just a few fishermen still use the sail and, of course, those who sail yachts for sport.