But now we come to a time when ship designers began consciously to refine the crude ships with which they were familiar. As a result, sails from 1450 to 1850 went through a process of development far exceeding the development that had taken place during those unnumbered centuries from the time of the first sail up to 1450. So complicated is the story of this development and so limited is the space in a single book that I must content myself with utilizing only the remainder of this chapter for the story of the development of sails during the first 350 of these 400 memorable years, leaving for the following chapter the story of the final perfection of sailing ships which took place in the first half of the 19th Century. [Illustration: A GALLEON OF THE TIME OF ELIZABETH _The extremely high stern and the low bow shown in this drawing are about as extreme as any in use during the period when high bows and low sterns were thought to be good design._ ] It is not difficult to see what happened to make the development of sails so slow a process. Not only sails, but also practically every art and interest of mankind had received a serious setback with the decay of Rome. The Dark Ages followed with their woeful ignorance, and it was not until after the Crusades had been followed by the Renaissance, which brought with it a renewed interest in every subject the people of Europe knew anything about, that ships—and practically everything else—began to recover from the fearful retrogression that had taken place during the better part of ten centuries. It was not, for instance, until the latter part of the 15th Century that the bowsprit appeared in common use in northern Europe, although this feature had, fifteen hundred or more years before, been in common use on Roman ships, where it was used to carry a small square sail called the “artemon.” The bowsprit seems to have originated as a sort of mast that was set far forward in the bow, in order that a sail spread from it would be in the best position to aid in swinging a ship from one side to the other. In order to make this sail still more effective by giving it greater leverage on the hull the mast was tilted more and more forward until it projected far over the bow. From this bowsprit a small square sail was spread, called, later, a spritsail, and this development began to make real sailing ships of ships that formerly had used sails for little more than auxiliary work. But the Dark Ages ruined everything, and it was not until the Crusades later re-introduced the people of northern Europe to those of the Mediterranean that the northerners, who later became the greatest seamen the world has ever seen, began to get away from the Viking influence in the building of ships.