The topmasts, topgallantmasts, and others, too, by this time were no longer being lashed rigidly in place but were being arranged so that they could be partly lowered by sliding them lengthwise through their supports. All this time hulls were improving, and the ridiculous sterncastles finally reached their climax and began to recede. And then came a new development that gave the builder of ships the final thing they needed, so far as the sails themselves were concerned, to make possible the ultimate perfection of sailing ships. This was the adoption, in place of the awkward spritsails and sprit topsails, of the triangular “jibs” and staysails that are a conspicuous part of most modern sailing vessels. Perhaps this highly efficient triangular sail did not spring, Minerva-like, fully formed, from the head of any mediæval ship-designer. It first appeared in use on small boats, and perhaps appeared there in triangular form because of the impracticability of mounting a bowsprit capable of carrying the common but awkward spritsail. Another reason, perhaps, for its triangular form, was the fact that the stay leading from the bow to the masthead, while it lent itself to holding a sail, caused any such sail to be triangular in shape because of the angle at which the stay was stretched. Nor was a triangular sail in itself a change from the old order of things. For more than two thousand years the lateen sail had been in use, and a lateen sail is much the same shape as a jib or a staysail. Its principal difference lies in the fact that its direct support is a spar, while the support of a jib is a rope which serves also as a support for the mast. And so it is easy to imagine some old Dutch sailor—for the jib appeared first in Holland—rigging up a kind of makeshift sail on his fore stay, seeing that, because a lateen sail worked astern, another sail so similar in shape might work at the bow. Perhaps he was laughed at for his pains, for sailors are sensitive to appearances and a triangular sail at the bow of a boat in the early 16th Century was different from anything to which sailors were accustomed, and consequently, in their eyes, was, no doubt, ridiculous. But the “ridiculous” sail proved efficient, as sometimes happens in other things, and because of its efficiency and its simplicity it began to take its place as an accepted form. [Illustration: A CORVETTE OF 1780 _This ship shows the new sail plan overcoming the old. The masts carry topsails, topgallantsails, and royals, and what was formerly a lateen sail on the mizzenmast has become a spanker. Furthermore, while the ship carries jibs, she has not yet parted with her spritsails._ ]