It would, of course, be impossible to trace in detail here the entire history of ships and shipbuilding in the Mediterranean from the late Roman period to the sixteenth century. Moreover, such a study would be unnecessary since we are concerned not so much with the naval architecture of ships for its own sake as with certain technological properties and performance characteristics of the major types of oared warships on the one hand and both oared and sailing merchant ships on the other. The parameters of those properties and characteristics are related to problems of performance and to logistical capabilities and limitations which affected the course and outcome of both the naval struggle at sea and also competition in maritime traffic.

COMMERCIAL SHIPPING

The early Middle Ages to the end of the thirteenth century

Information about early medieval shipping is meagre in the extreme. For wind-powered sailing ships it is only in the middle Byzantine period that we begin to acquire a few details about ship construction. In recent years the work of nautical archaeologists has added immeasurably to the skeletal information which had been derived previously from written sources and art history. By around the seventh century a number of important changes had occurred since the late Roman period. Ships had become much smaller, or at least the very large grain ships of the Roman empire had disappeared.