lateen

Lateen is an English rendering of the French voile latine, meaning 'Latin sail.' The adjective latine in French means 'of the Latin people' or 'Mediterranean,' and the sail was so called because European sailors associated it with Mediterranean usage, specifically with the seafaring cultures of the Latin or Roman world. The term appears in French from at least the sixteenth century and in English from the seventeenth. The sail itself, however, is far older than any French label for it and was probably not invented in the Latin Mediterranean at all. Scholars of maritime history believe the lateen sail originated in the Arab world, possibly in the Indian Ocean or the Arabian Sea, and was carried westward into the Mediterranean through Arab expansion in the seventh and eighth centuries CE.

The lateen sail is defined by its triangular shape and its attachment to a long yard slung at an angle from a short mast. Unlike the square sail, which catches the wind best when blowing from behind, the lateen can be adjusted to take the wind from the side or even slightly ahead — what sailors call 'going to windward.' This ability to sail toward the wind opened new navigational possibilities. A square-rigged ship trying to sail upwind could only make headway by tacking back and forth at a wide angle; a lateen-rigged vessel could point significantly higher into the wind, dramatically reducing the time required for upwind passages. In a sea where the prevailing winds varied by season and geography, the lateen's windward ability was a decisive advantage.

Arab dhow builders had been exploiting the lateen sail's properties for centuries before European sailors fully adopted it. When Arab traders reached the east coast of Africa and the Malabar coast of India, their lateen-rigged dhows could make the passage against the seasonal monsoon winds that would have defeated a square-rigged vessel. The Portuguese navigators who began their systematic exploration of the African coast in the early fifteenth century encountered Arab dhows and their triangular sails, and Portuguese shipbuilders developed the caravel — the characteristic Portuguese exploration vessel — partly around the lateen rig. Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama, and Christopher Columbus all sailed ships equipped with lateen sails.

The lateen sail proved too demanding for large vessels on very long voyages: handling a long lateen yard in heavy weather required large crews and was physically punishing. As the age of exploration gave way to the age of empire, larger square-rigged ships became preferred for ocean crossings. But the lateen was never abandoned. It remained the standard rig of Mediterranean fishing and trading craft into the twentieth century; it shaped the development of Bermudian and fore-and-aft rigs; and its windward ability is encoded in every modern yacht's sail plan. Contemporary racing yacht sails are the direct descendants of the Arab triangle that sailors named 'Latin' by mistake.