Golden Age of Dubrovnik`s Maritime History (2)
Thu, Feb 21, 2008
The 16th century was Dubrovnik’s (Ragusa’s) maritime golden age. She owned more ships than ever before: ocean-going carracks and galleons and smaller coastal vessels for navigation within the Adriatic, in all employing some 5000 sailors, about a seventh of the Republic’s total population.
In the first part of the 16th century, Dubrovniks fleet of ocean-going vessels was third in the world after Spain and Netherlands, and her shipwrights said to be second at skill only to the Pourtuguese.
In the late 16th-century heyday, the Ragusan fleet had around 180 ships and a total freight capacity of 700 000 hectolitres (the equivalent of a hundred million bottles of wine). Ships were, from the smallest to the largest:
The Saggita (Literally ‘arrow’) - light, speedy, often used as passenger of fishing craft
The Caravel - Fast trading boat for carrying light cargoes
The Brigantine - Two or three-masted, square-rigged merchantman
The Galleon - Three-masted trading vessel with raised decks fore and aft
The Carrack - Three or four-masted merchant ship and man-of-war, with a tonnage of over 2000 hectolitres.
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by: Tomislav Kovac