Large merchant ships in Roman times: the Spritsail legacy, Part II

Abstract

Iconographic evidence and the shipwreck archaeological record seem to indicate that merchant ships dramatically increased in size and tonnage toward the end of the 2nd century BC. The experience gained from sailing replicas, such as the Kyrenia II, has demonstrated that ships powered by a single mainsail lacked controlled manoeuvrability and sometimes needed to resort to auxiliary power such as oars. It is argued that the development of the spritsail-artemon discussed previously (Davey 2015) provided the necessary means to control ships and thereby facilitated this increase in size.