First great improvement in the Genoese ships.
Various causes and circumstances rendered the
middle of the fifteenth century a remarkable epoch
in the annals of marine architecture, and not the
least of these was the competition for maritime
supremacy between the great Italian republics. But
when Genoa and Venice wisely gave up quarrelling,
there was a still more marked improvement in the
form and equipment of their vessels. The rivalry of
commerce took the place of those foolish contentions
which invariably resulted in war. Each nation
then strove to produce, not the best fighting ship,
but the one most suited to yield remunerative returns.
From that period the improvement steadily increased,
until vessels not unlike those of our own
time were constructed towards the middle of the
sixteenth century.
Genoese carrack. The Genoese, though inferior in, perhaps, all other respects to the Venetians, then surpassed them in the art of ship-building; and they were, so far as can now be traced, the first to construct a ship approaching to the modern form and rig, of which any account and drawing has been preserved. The following, copied from Charnock,[1] affords an excellent and, we believe, accurate illustration of the large Genoese merchant carrack of the first half of the sixteenth century,[2] some of which are said to have been of no less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand tons burden.
The Genoese, more especially in the early part of their history, had, as we have seen, their lawless
