Caravel

The caravel was a small, highly maneuverable Iberian sailing ship of the fifteenth century, typically lateen-rigged on two or three masts for windward work along the African coast. Portuguese explorers under Henry the Navigator used caravels to push past Cape Bojador and down the Guinea coast, and a caravel-square-rig hybrid, the caravela redonda, served on longer ocean passages. Columbus’s Nina and Pinta were caravels. The type was the workhorse of early Atlantic exploration before the larger carrack took over deep-sea cargo work.