On large

sailing ships A sailing ship is a sea-going vessel that uses sails mounted on masts to harness the power of wind and propel the vessel. There is a variety of sail plans that propel sailing ships, employing square-rigged or fore-and-aft sails. Some ships c ...

a spritsail is a

square-rigged 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'' and ...

sail carried on a

yard The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly 0.914 ...

below the

bowsprit The bowsprit of a sailing vessel is a spar extending forward from the vessel's prow. The bowsprit is typically held down by a bobstay that counteracts the forces from the forestays. The word ''bowsprit'' is thought to originate from the Middle L ...

. One of the earliest depictions of a spritsail is carved on

Borobudur ship A Borobudur ship is the 8th to 9th-century wooden double outrigger sailing Marine vessel, vessel of Maritime Southeast Asia depicted in some bas reliefs of the Borobudur Buddhist monument in Central Java, Indonesia. It is a ship of Javanese peopl ...

carving in

Borobudur temple Borobudur, also transcribed Barabudur ( id, Candi Borobudur, jv, ꦕꦤ꧀ꦝꦶꦧꦫꦧꦸꦝꦸꦂ, Candhi Barabudhur) is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in Magelang Regency, not far from the town of Muntilan, in Central Java, Indone ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. In some languages (such as German) it is known as a "blind" (German, ''(eine) Blinde'') because it effectively blocks forward vision when set. Spritsails were commonly used on sailing vessels from the first

carracks A carrack (; ; ; ) is a three- or four- masted ocean-going sailing ship that was developed in the 14th to 15th centuries in Europe, most notably in Portugal. Evolved from the single-masted cog, the carrack was first used for European trade ...

until about 1800. Until the mid-18th century, most ships also flew a sprit-topsail from the short

sprit topmast A sprit topmast is a small topmast that was sometimes carried on the end of the bowsprit of a large European warship during the Age of Sail. Its purpose as initially built was to assist the spritsail (square-rigged), spritsail (which hung below it ...

that rose vertically ''above'' the fore end of the bowsprit. The

full-rigged A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing ship, sailing vessel's sail plan with three or more mast (sailing), masts, all of them square rig, square-rigged. A full-rigged ship is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged. Such vessels ...

ships of the golden age of sail had no spritsails, as the area under the bowsprit was instead occupied by rigging ( martingales and

dolphin striker A dolphin striker (an older term for a martingale boom or simply a martingale; sometimes called a striker) is a small vertical or near vertical ancillary spar spanning between the bowsprit and martingale thereby redirecting the tension in the forw ...

) that reinforced the bowsprit and jib-boom against the forces of an increasing number of

jib A jib is a triangular sail that sets ahead of the foremast of a sailing vessel. Its tack is fixed to the bowsprit, to the bows, or to the deck between the bowsprit and the foremost mast. Jibs and spinnakers are the two main types of headsail ...

Notes

Sailing rigs and rigging {{shipbuilding-stub