Search Results: Carrack

The carrack (nao in Spanish, nau in Portuguese, and nef in French) was a type of large sailing vessel used for exploration, to carry cargo and as a warship in the 15th and 16th centuries. Famous carracks include the Santa Maria of Christopher...

A mid-16th century painting of Portuguese carrack ships. Carrack and caravel ships were the mainstay of the Portuguese Empire, permitting the Portuguese to dominate the seas and bring precious cargo like spices back to Europe. (Royal Museums...

An illustration of a Portuguese carrack ship from a 16th-century map. (Digital Library, University of Minnesota)

A detail of a c. 1558 CE painting by Pieter Bruegel showing a carrack ship, the type of vessel used by the Spanish and Portuguese in the 16th century CE to transport treasure and precious cargo from the New World and Asia to Europe.

An illustration of the carrack Jesus of Lubeck, used by John Hawkins (1532-1595 CE) to transport slaves from West Africa to the Americas in the 1560s CE. Anthony Roll, 1546 CE. (British Library, London)

The galleon (Spanish: galeón, French: galion) was a type of sailing ship used for both cargo carrying and as a warship. Galleons dominated the seas in the second half of the 16th century, and with their lower superstructures, they were much...

The Mary Rose was a carrack warship built for the Royal Navy of Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547). The ship infamously sank in the Solent off the south coast of England on 19 July 1545, probably because water entered its open gun ports...

The treasure ship Madre de Deus (aka Madre de Dios) was a Portuguese vessel carrying hugely valuable cargo from the East Indies which was attacked and captured by a fleet of English privateers in the Azores in September 1592 CE. The ship...

The Portuguese Empire was established from the 15th century and eventually stretched from the Americas to Japan. Very often a string of coastal trading centres with defensive fortifications, there were larger territorial colonies like Brazil...

Nagasaki, on the northwest coast of Japan’s Kyushu Island, was an important Portuguese trading base from c. 1571 to 1639, and the most eastern outpost of the Portuguese empire. The Portuguese presence transformed Nagasaki from a small fishing...