You are planning an ocean voyage. What kind of vessel do you choose? In the time of the Vikings, you would have rowed your ships to windward and used a big square sail to go downwind. In Columbus's day, you could have chosen between a number of small sailing ships, depending on where you intended to go and what you needed to take with you. By 1492, sailors knew that, to go downwind, they could set a big square sail across their ship and let the wind push them where they wanted to go. They also had learned, from the Arab boats they saw during their voyages across the Mediterranean Sea and around Africa, that a lateen, or fore-and-aft, sail helped them make progress into the wind. Many early oceanic explorers chose ships with combination rigs—some sails square and some fore-and-aft—to allow them to travel in any direction, no matter where the wind was coming from.
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