On large sailing ships a spritsail is a square-rigged 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 ...

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 A bobstay is a part of the rigging of a sailing boat or ship. Its purpose is to counteract the upward tensio ...

. 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 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 people, derivative ...

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, Indonesi ...

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 Gui ...

. 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 until about 1800. Until the mid-18th century, most ships also flew a sprit-topsail from the short sprit topmast that rose vertically ''above'' the fore end of the bowsprit. The full-rigged ships of the

golden age of sail The Age of Sail is a period that lasted at the latest from the mid-16th (or mid- 15th) to the mid-19th centuries, in which the dominance of sailing ships in global trade and warfare culminated, particularly marked by the introduction of nava ...

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 jibs.

Notes

Sailing rigs and rigging {{shipbuilding-stub