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Sailor Apprentice
modernknight1 I can't help much with portuguese sources as I never interested my self about portuguese ship building, but "da armada" usualy means "of the fleet", meaning the permanent war fleet, so perhaps more guns would be logical and a heavier square rigged main mast.
In the case of this ship and with that big forecastle her hull isn't very caravela like (pure caravelas didn't have forecastles at all and the majority were rigged with 3 masts) and more close to a carrack or light galleon, this one rigged as she is would be just a fast escort, of course over a century, from the early 16th up to the early 17th centuries, rigging and hull works changed a lot, in the portuguese case more escorting was needed and heavier cargo capabilities.
Another small note, we never really had a full war fleet, much like the early days of Holland, the majority of our shiping was cargo.
pgargon mate she looks beautiful
When I'm done with the small unrated ships and 6th rate photo set I'm working on now, I'm going to do one on Naos, urcas, caravels and carracks.
There do seem to be more three masted versions in my comprehensive sources. However, four masted caravels were actually very common. The caravel borrowed many aspects of her design from Moorish ship builders including her lateen rig. However her hull was more heavily influenced by Iberian, Catalan and Basque fisherman to be easily handled and stable in heavy weather. She was a medieval ship coming into her own in the mid 1400s, but as she evolved into the heavier Nao and Carrack, she underwent her own transitions as well. Earlier she had begun with only 2 lateen rigged masts and that variant is known as the Caravella Lateena. Then three masts. The four masted versions were the highest level of her evolution in the mid 1500s when she slowly came to the end of her usefulness as a commonly used/built vessel giving way to the four masted Galleon that came soon after. I would bet you would still have seen them occassionally well into the 17th century. Looking through a google image search you will see there are several good four masted variant examples. http://www.google.com/search?q=caravel+pictures&hl=en&biw=1360&bih=587&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=5Y0gTp3AD8y40AHg9PWiBA&sqi=2&ved=0CBkQsAQ
I have attached a couple examples from my own collection by Joseph Wheatley and Roger Morris, one being with the main mast square rigged. Pgargon's ship could be done in several differing variants and I would enjoy seeing them all in game.
MK
There you go, much of what you write is news to me. My perception comes from that more classical design of the ship and we tend to call heavier caravelas, carracks or naos. She did handle very well with strange winds and as you know in the basque country and the cataloña coast there was really bad weather sometimes, perhaps thats where her hard hull design stems from. As for her sails we call them latin sails in portuguese, still they were very much of muslim origim as you point out, there's some speculation on some indian influences of that type of sail also. From what I know these types of sails were very common in the mediterranean ocean as for example used in the xebecs and hebecs or in some galleas as well.
From what I've read she was outclassed by the fluyt as a cargo or freighter ship by 17th century, the carrack and galleon were also used as freighters but had horrible handling and Portugal at least used extensively the caravel.
Yes, hes ship would look great with different riggings, I've seen the newest versions of the heavy galleon (his model if I'm correct) and they look great also.
I'll keep an eye out for those pics, your photo albums have grown quite a bit.
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