Carrack

The carrack was a three- or four-masted ocean-going merchantman and warship developed in fifteenth-century Iberia and the Mediterranean, combining a square-rigged fore and mainmast with a lateen mizzen and high fore and aft castles. Its size and seaworthiness suited it to the long Atlantic and Indian Ocean passages of the Age of Discovery; Columbus’s Santa Maria and Portuguese India carriers were carracks. The type carried the spice and treasure trades before the galleon refined its lines for combat. It is also called the nau in Portuguese sources.