In the period immediately before the 12th century an observant traveller voyaging in both southern waters (the Mediterranean and the Black Sea) and northern waters (the eastern fringes of the Atlantic, the Channel, the North Sea and the Baltic) would have noticed that in both areas there were broadly speaking two types of vessels. In the south there were ships long in proportion to their beam, with a low freeboard and propelled principally by a large number of oars, generally known as ‘galleys’ or ‘long ships’, and other ships with a greater beam and deeper hulls, which relied more on sails than oars, often described as‘round ships’. In more northerly waters the same division between ‘long ships’ and ‘round ships’ seemed to exist but, if the traveller had looked more closely at vessels in both regions, he would have very soon been aware that ships in these two areas in fact differed markedly in design and construction (Figure 1).

SHIP TYPES IN SOUTHERN WATERS

In southern waters, shipbuilders drew on a long-established tradition which reached back to the days of the Greek and Romans.