Merely mentioning the _palandres_, the _hourques_, the _pataches_, and the _mahones_, which were smaller than the galliot, but which had certain advantages of their own, we come to a craft whose diminutive dimensions have not prevented it from acquiring a kind of historical renown, in consequence of the important events at the close of the fifteenth century in which it played a part. The craft we refer to is the _caravel_ (Fig. 77), which had the honour of carrying Columbus to the New World. The design of the caravel was taken from the _caravo_, a small barque used by the Spaniards. The grace, the lightness, the fine outlines, and the speed of the caravel, recommended it to the hardy mariners who sailed, in search of new continents, across the Atlantic Ocean. Narrow at the poop, wide at the prow, carrying a double tower at its stern, and a single one at its bows, the caravel carried four vertical masts and one inclined one. Two square sails were bent from the foremast, while the three others each bore a single triangular one (Fig. 78). The caravel sailed as well against the wind as before it, and tacked as easily as a row boat; so, at least, we are told in the log of the first voyage of Columbus. [Illustration: Fig. 76.--Three-masted Galley, with Square Sails, of the Sixteenth Century.--From a Picture by Raphael in the Cathedral of Sienna.] It is, therefore, an undeniable fact that the sailors of the Middle Ages did not lack large and handsome ships, though the boldest mariner did not care to put too much salt water between his craft and the shore, and, as a rule, the longest voyages were made by following the outline of the coast. The Middle Ages, moreover, could often boast the possession of considerable fleets. In 1242 the Genoese put to sea with ninety-three galleys, thirty traders, and three large ships, to struggle for the supremacy of the seas with a hundred and ten Pisan and Imperial galleys. At the beginning of the same century the Crusaders, when they set sail to attack Constantinople, had a fleet of three hundred vessels according to one writer, and of four hundred and eighty according to another. Amongst them there was one called _The World_, of such large size and so beautifully finished that it was the admiration of all the ports along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Joinville, the ingenuous historian of the crusades of Louis IX., tells us that that sainted king sailed from the port of Aigues-Mortes with a fleet of “eighteen hundred vessels, large and small,” some of which carried as many as a thousand passengers, and some a hundred horses. [Illustration: Fig. 77.--Spanish Caravel in which Columbus discovered America.--From a Drawing attributed to Columbus, and placed in the “Epistola Christofori Columbi:” undated edition (1494?), 8vo.]