nautical technology 167
Such were the ships of the line that, by the end of the seventeenth century, replaced
galleons as warships. The caravels, galleons and the ships of the line display the last
phase in shipbuilding technology of warships that were only sailers. The shipbuilding
technology of merchant vessels evolved from the late-eighteenth century through the
nineteenth until the advent of the iron steamship. The vessel types had different
names but the most common was the brigantin and the common feature was the
influence of northern shipbuilding technology. This is the second phase of north-
ern influence: the penetration, from the early seventeenth century, of Dutch and
English shipping into the Mediterranean. (The first, as mentioned above, was through
the cog/cocha.) From the last quarter of the eighteenth century, adjustment to
northern-European types must have been an indispensable precondition for the con-
trol of the main Mediterranean trade routes by local fleets, such as those of the
Ottomans or the Ragusans, which experienced a considerable growth during the
French wars thanks to their status as neutral carriers.
From the 1870s Mediterranean wooden shipbuilding became more and more mar-
ginalized, due to the flood of cheap second-hand northern iron-and-steel British and
wooden French Atlantic, American and Canadian sailing vessels. The introduction in
1887 of the triple expansion engine in steamships put an end to the domination of
sailing ships as the main sea cargo carriers (Dellis, 2012).
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