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For the rocks off the Cornish coast, see The Carracks.
A Portuguese Carrack, as depicted in a map made in 1565.


Carracks were ocean-going ships: large enough to be stable in heavy seas, and roomy enough to carry provisions for long voyages. They were the ships in which the Portuguese and the Spanish explored the world in the 15th and 16th centuries. In Portuguese this type was called a nau, while in Spanish it is called a carraca or nao. In French it was called a caraque or nef.

As the forerunner of the great ships of the age of sail, the carrack was one of the most influential ship designs in history; while ships became more specialized, the basic design remained unchanged throughout the Age of Sail.[1]

Famous nau Frol de la Mar (launched in 1501 or 1502), in the 16th century "Roteiro de Malaca"


Nao Victoria, one of the most famous carracks, a replica of Magellan's ship

By the Late Middle Ages the cog, and cog-like square-rigged vessels, were widely used along the coasts of Europe, in the Baltic, and also in the Mediterranean. Given the conditions of the Mediterranean, but not exclusively restricted to it, galley type vessels were extensively used there, as were various two masted vessels, including the caravels with their lateen sails. These and similar ship types were familiar to Portuguese navigators and shipwrights. As the Portuguese gradually extended their explorations and trade ever further south along Africa's Atlantic coast during the 15th century they needed a larger and more advanced ship for their long oceanic adventures. Gradually, they developed the carrack[2] from a fusion and modification of aspects of the ship types they knew operating in both the Atlantic and Mediterranean and a new, more advanced form of sail rigging that allowed much improved sailing characteristics in the heavy winds and waves of the Atlantic ocean.

A typical three-masted carrack such as the São Gabriel had six sails: bowsprit, foresail, mizzen, spritsail, and two topsails.

Carracks in Asia[edit]

From around 1515, Portugal had trade exchanges with Goa in Portuguese India, consisting of 3 to 4 carracks leaving Lisbon with silver to purchase cotton and spices in India. Out of these, only one carrack went on to Ming China in order to purchase silk, also in exchange for Portuguese silver.

From the time of the acquisition of Macau in 1557, and their formal recognition as trade partners by the Chinese, the Portuguese Crown started to regulate trade to Japan, by selling to the highest bidder the annual "Captaincy" to Japan, in effect conferring exclusive trading rights for a single carrack bound for Japan every year. That trade continued with few interruptions until 1638, when it was prohibited on the grounds that the ships were smuggling priests into Japan.


Famous carracks[edit]

Columbus' Ships (G.A. Closs, 1892): The Santa Maria and Pinta are shown as carracks; the Niña (left), as a caravel.

See also[edit]


  2. ^ The origin of the word carrack is usually traced back through the medieval European languages to the Arabic, and from thence to the Greek κέρκουρος (kerkouros) meaning approximately "lighter (barge)" (literally, "shorn tail", a possible reference to the ship's flat stern). Its attestation in Greek literature is distributed in two closely related lobes. The first distribution lobe, or area, associates it with certain light and fast merchantmen found near Cyprus and Corfu. The second is an extensive attestation in the Oxyrhynchus corpus, where it seems most frequently to describe the Nile barges of the Ptolemaic pharaohs. Both of these usages may lead back through the Phoenician to the Akkadian kalakku, which denotes a type of river barge. The Akkadian term is assumed to be derived from a Sumerian antecedent. Sumerian antecedent A modern reflex of the word is found in Arabic and Turkish kelek "raft; riverboat". Gong, Y (1990). "kalakku: Überlegungen zur Mannigfaltigkeit der Darstellungsweisen desselben Begriffs in der Keilschrift anhand des Beispiels kalakku". Journal of Ancient Civilizations 5: 9–24. ISSN 1004-9371. 

Further reading[edit]


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