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carrack (KAR-uhk) - n., a large, beamy sailing ship with three or four masts, square-rigged on the two foremost masts and lateen-rigged after, with a high forecastle and aftcastle, used by Mediterranean countries from the 1400s through 1600s.
Large enough to hold a lot of cargo or supplies but not so wide as to be unstable, this was the preferred vessel for long-distance trade until the galleon was developed from it. As mentioned yesterday, Columbus's Santa María was a carrack, as was the Victoria, the last surviving ship of Magellan's circumnavigation. Here's a picture, a detail from Bruegel's Fall of Icarus:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
The etymology is a bit obscure. We know the direct source, when it first appeared around 1400 as carike, was Middle French carraque/caraque, but whether that came from Spanish carraca or Medieval Latin carrica is uncertain, and where either of those came is unclear -- a connection is frequently suggested to Arabic qarāqīr, plural of qurqūr, merchant ship, from Greek kerkouros, light vessel, as is sometimes a connection to Classical Latin carrus, wagon, from a Gaulic source.
---L.
Large enough to hold a lot of cargo or supplies but not so wide as to be unstable, this was the preferred vessel for long-distance trade until the galleon was developed from it. As mentioned yesterday, Columbus's Santa María was a carrack, as was the Victoria, the last surviving ship of Magellan's circumnavigation. Here's a picture, a detail from Bruegel's Fall of Icarus:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
The etymology is a bit obscure. We know the direct source, when it first appeared around 1400 as carike, was Middle French carraque/caraque, but whether that came from Spanish carraca or Medieval Latin carrica is uncertain, and where either of those came is unclear -- a connection is frequently suggested to Arabic qarāqīr, plural of qurqūr, merchant ship, from Greek kerkouros, light vessel, as is sometimes a connection to Classical Latin carrus, wagon, from a Gaulic source.
---L.
