two-masted ship, its foremast showing a typically strong forward rake The oldest evidence for the use of masts comes from the
Ubaid period site of
H3 in Kuwait, dating to the second half of the sixth millennium BC. Here, a clay disc made from a sherd that appears to depict a reed bundle boat with two masts has been recovered. In the West, the concept of a ship carrying more than one mast, to give it more speed under sail and to improve its sailing qualities, evolved in northern
Mediterranean waters: The earliest foremast has been identified on an
Etruscan pyxis from
Caere,
Italy, dating to the mid-7th century BC: a warship with a furled
mainsail is engaging an enemy vessel, deploying a
foresail. A two-masted
merchant vessel with a sizable foresail rigged on a slightly inclined foremast is depicted in an Etruscan
tomb painting from 475 to 450 BC. An
artemon (
Greek for foresail) almost the same size as the
galley's mainsail can be found on a
Corinthian
krater as early as the late 6th century BC; apart from that
Greek longships are uniformly shown without it until the 4th century BC. In the East, ancient Indian Kingdoms like the
Kalinga from as early as 2nd century are believed to have commanded naval sail ships. One of the earliest documented evidence of Indian sail building comes from the mural of the three-masted ship in Ajanta caves that date back to 400–500 CE. The foremast became fairly common on
Roman galleys, where, inclined at an angle of 45°, it was more akin to a
bowsprit, and the foresail set on it, reduced in size, seems to be used rather as an aid to steering than for propulsion. While most of the ancient evidence is iconographic, the existence of foremasts can also be deduced
archaeologically from slots in foremast-feets located too close to the
prow for a mainsail.
Artemon, along with mainsail and
topsail, developed into the standard rig of seagoing vessels in
imperial times, complemented by a
mizzen on the largest freighters. The earliest recorded three-masters were the giant
Syracusia, a prestige object commissioned by king
Hiero II of Syracuse and devised by the polymath
Archimedes around 240 BC, and other
Syracusan merchant ships of the time. The imperial grain freighters travelling the routes between
Alexandria and
Rome also included three-masted vessels. Special craft could carry many more masts:
Theophrastus (
Hist. Plant. 5.8.2) records how the
Romans imported
Corsican timber by way of a huge
raft propelled by as many as fifty masts and sails. three-master by
Lorenzo Costa Throughout
antiquity, both foresail and mizzen remained secondary in terms of canvas size, although large enough to require full
running rigging. The
dromon, the lateen-rigged and oared
bireme of the
Byzantine navy, almost certainly had two masts, a larger foremast and one midships. Their length has been estimated at 12 m and 8 m respectively, somewhat smaller than the
Sicilian war galleys of the time. Multiple-masted
sailing ships were reintroduced into the Mediterranean Sea by the
Late Middle Ages. Large vessels were coming more and more into use and the need for additional masts to control these ships adequately grew with the increase in tonnage. Unlike in antiquity, the mizzen-mast was adopted on medieval two-masters earlier than the foremast, a process which can be traced back by pictorial evidence from
Venice and
Barcelona to the mid-14th century. To balance out the sail plan the next obvious step was to add a mast fore of the main-mast, which first appears in a
Catalan ink drawing from 1409. With the three-masted ship established, propelled by square rig and lateen, and guided by the
pintle-and-
gudgeon rudder, all advanced ship design technology necessary for the
great transoceanic voyages was in place by the beginning of the 15th century. The first hollow mast was fitted on the American
sloop Maria in 1845, long and built of staves bound with iron hoops like a barrel. Other hollow masts were made from two tapered timbers hollowed and glued together. == Modern masts ==