The true home of the square-sailed craft, however, was northern Europe, where the Norwegian, Dutch, and Norman coasters and fishermen of to-day probably represent fairly well the rigs of the bold viking boats of twelve or fifteen centuries ago. Of the slow development of ship-building during the middle ages we have little information, but in the fourteenth century we begin to hear of a revival in the art, as, indeed, was needful when the long voyages were to be undertaken which the discovery of the mariner’s compass had then rendered possible. In this revival the Venetians and Genoese took the lead, but the English were not far behind. There was a large variety of vessels in that day, rude though they were, and called by names we should hardly recognize. Though the hulls of these vessels were large and tight, their shape was poorly adapted for speed or for safety in bad weather. Their decks were built up into immensely high structures at the stern and bows, after the old galley model, and to form forts for soldiers. Our word “forecastle” reminds us of this old usage. Their masts were single sticks,—not divided into topmasts,—and hence, necessarily, were thick and heavy; and they bore upon their summits large “top-castles” where marines stood in battle to shoot down upon the enemy’s decks. This weight above, with the height of surface exposed to the wind and the clumsy rigging, made it impossible for them to sail safely except with a fair and gentle wind (they never attempted it otherwise), and they were required to carry an enormous quantity of ballast. There was so little room for anything except armament, sleeping-berths, and a cooking-room in the war-ships that every war fleet had to take with it small vessels carrying provisions; and the case was little better in respect to merchant vessels. The ships in which Vasco da Gama, Columbus, the Cabots, and other explorers did their marvelous work were no better than this. Strangely inefficient they seem to us, and we wonder that some of the simplest contrivances in rigging were not adopted centuries before they came into use until we remember that it was not for long, speedy voyages that vessels were intended previous to the sixteenth century (with certain exceptions in northern seas), but simply as a means of carrying slowly from one coast-port to another a great number of men or huge cargoes.