The settee sail was a

lateen A lateen (from French ''latine'', meaning "Latin") or latin-rig is a triangular sail set on a long yard mounted at an angle on the mast, and running in a fore-and-aft direction. The settee can be considered to be an associated type of the same o ...

sail with the front corner cut off, giving it a quadrilateral shape. It can be traced back to

Greco-Roman The Greco-Roman civilization (; also Greco-Roman culture; spelled Graeco-Roman in the Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and countries that culturally—and so historically—were di ...

navigation in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

late antiquity Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English ha ...

; the oldest evidence is from a late-5th-century AD ship

mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

at Kelenderis,

Cilicia Cilicia (); el, Κιλικία, ''Kilikía''; Middle Persian: ''klkyʾy'' (''Klikiyā''); Parthian: ''kylkyʾ'' (''Kilikiyā''); tr, Kilikya). is a geographical region in southern Anatolia in Turkey, extending inland from the northeastern coa ...

. It lasted well into the 20th century as a common sail on Arab

dhow Dhow ( ar, داو, translit=dāwa; mr, script=Latn, dāw) is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with settee or sometimes lateen sails, used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Typically spor ...

s. The settee sail requires a shorter yard than does the lateen, and both settee and lateen have shorter masts than square-rigged sails. Model of a sambuk with two settee sails Settees (or ''saëtia'') then were a sharp-prowed, single-decked merchant sailing vessel found in the Mediterranean (more in the Levant than in the Western Mediterranean), in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Spaniards also used them in the New World. Settees had two lateen-rigged masts, like

xebec A xebec ( or ), also spelled zebec, was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading. Xebecs had a long overhanging bowsprit and aft-set mizzen mast. The term can also refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth ...

s or

galley A galley is a type of ship that is propelled mainly by oars. The galley is characterized by its long, slender hull, shallow draft, and low freeboard (clearance between sea and gunwale). Virtually all types of galleys had sails that could be used ...

s, but carrying settee sails. They sailed well to windward and could sail downwind. Some

polacca A polacca (or ''polacre'') is a type of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century sailing vessel, similar to the xebec. The name is the feminine of "Polish" in the Italian language. The polacca was frequently seen in the Mediterranean. It had two or th ...

s carried a settee sail, giving rise to the polacca-settee (or polacre-settee). Between the 1880s and the 1960s,

Gozo boat The Gozo boat ( mt, Dgħajsa ta' Għawdex, tal-latini, tat-tagħbija, tal-pass or ) was a type of Settee (sail), settee-rigged boat originating from Malta. Gozo boats were the main means of transport across the Gozo Channel between Gozo and the M ...

s had a settee rig. Mediterranean settee PW0054 (cropped)

References

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* {{ship-type-stub Sailing rigs and rigging Ship types

See also

References

Sources