A royal is a small

sail A sail is a tensile structure—which is made from fabric or other membrane materials—that uses wind power to propel sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and even sail-powered land vehicles. Sails ma ...

flown immediately above the topgallant on

square rig Square rig is a generic type of sail and rigging arrangement in which the primary driving sails are carried on horizontal spars which are perpendicular, or square, to the keel of the vessel and to the masts. These spars are called '' yards'' a ...

ged sailing ships. It was originally called the "topgallant royal" and was used in light and favorable winds. Royal sails were normally found only on larger ships with masts tall enough to accommodate the extra canvas. Royals were introduced around the turn of the 18th century, but were not usually flown on the

mizzenmast The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sails, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a navigation li ...

until the end of that century. It gave its name to a Dutch term for a light breeze—the Royal Sail Breeze or ''bovenbramzeilskoelte'' was a Force 2 wind on the

Beaufort Scale The Beaufort scale is an empirical measure that relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land. Its full name is the Beaufort wind force scale. History The scale was devised in 1805 by the Irish hydrographer Francis Beaufor ...

.García-Herrera, R., D. Wheeler, G.P. Können, F.B. Koek and M.R. Prieto (2003).
CLIWOC multilingual meteorological dictionary, An English-Spanish-Dutch-French Dictionary of wind force terms used by mariners from 1750–1850
'. KNMI, De Bilt (Netherlands), p. 22. .

Notes

{{Sail Types, state=expanded Sailing rigs and rigging