Xebecs, Scows, and Things That Float Quiz

Answer: Clipper

In the 17th century (and possibly even earlier), "clip" meant "run or move swiftly" - which explains why the fastest ships built in the 19th century, before the advent of the age of steam, were named "clippers". The earliest use of the term in reference to ships dates from the 1820s. Mainly built in the UK and the US, clippers were designed for speed, with a long, narrow hull, three square-rigged masts, and a large total sail area. One important factor in clipper design was the ability to withstand the strong winds these vessels encountered on their route - essential for ships that had to sail around Cape Horn on their route back to Europe from Asia, Australia, or Oceania, or from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of the US.

The golden age of clipper ships were the 1850s, when many "extreme" clippers (which privileged speed over cargo capacity, with a bow lengthened over the water) were built. The most remarkable clippers of that era were the so-called "China clippers", which sailed between Europe and East Asia to trade highly coveted goods such as tea, spices, silk, and opium. However, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 made clippers redundant, and the competition from the much faster steamers put the final nail in their coffin.

Only one of the many clipper ships built in the mid-19th century has survived intact to this day - the famous "Cutty Sark", one of the last tea clippers built in the 1860s, preserved as a museum in Greenwich (London).

Answer: Corvette

The corvette (from Middle French, meaning "small basket") is the smallest class of warship. During the Age of Sail (mid-16th to mid-19th centuries), corvettes carried a single deck of guns, and were mostly involved in a support role for larger ships. The name "corvette" was first used in 1670 in reference to such small ships in the French Navy. In the late 19th century, when steam had largely replaced sails, corvettes were often used alongside gunboats in colonial missions, being smaller and easier to maneuver than larger vessels.

The modern corvette made its appearance during WWII, when it was widely employed as a patrol and convoy-escort ship. The current trend is for building smaller, more maneuverable corvettes, usually armed with small- and medium-calibre guns, surface-to-surface or surface-to-air missiles, and anti-submarine weapons. Corvettes are extensively used for coastal patrol by countries with large coastlines or bordering smaller seas. The European Union has a Permanent Structured Cooperation project called European Patrol Corvette, launched in 2019, with the purpose of designing and developing a new class of corvettes for the 21st century.

The sports car first produced by Chevrolet in 1953 was named after the warship, emphasizing the car's agility and small size.

Answer: Quinquereme

Before the 4th century BC, the most common warships in the Mediterranean region were triremes - vessels with three rows of oars, mostly manned by highly skilled free men (one per each oar). In the Hellenistic era, new, larger ships were developed in the Near East, which were readily adopted by the two main naval powers of the Western Mediterranean - Rome and Carthage. These ships were named after numbers, referring to their rows of oars: thus, a quinquereme (literally "five-oared") had five rows of oars. As visual evidence of the design of these massive ships is fragmentary, there are many theories on the arrangement of oarsmen: according to one of them, they were arranged on five levels, rather than having five rowers sharing the same bench.

Quinqueremes, which later became the standard Roman warships, were the heaviest in the Mediterranean for most of the 4th century BC. However, in the last two decades of the century, even larger ships made their appearance, notably in Ptolemaic Egypt. Some of these polyremes were present in both of the fleets involved in the decisive Battle of Actium (31 BC): Mark Antony's flagship was a "ten" ("deceres"), while the heaviest ships in Octavian's fleet were "sixes" (hexaremes). In some sources there is even mention of a huge "forty" ("tessarakonteres") manned by 4,000 rowers - which was, however, probably built as a prestige vessel for Ptolemy IV Philopator.

A quinquereme (spelled "quinquireme") from Nineveh is mentioned in the first stanza of John Masefield's 1903 poem "Cargoes", which describes three very different ships from different historical periods.

Answer: Dhow

The name "dhow" denotes various kinds of sailing vessel with one or two masts traditionally used in countries bordering the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The origins of both the vessel and its name (adapted from the Arabic "dāw") are unknown, but likely to be ancient. The different types of dhow have individual names - one of the largest being known as "sambuk". Dhows have long, thin wooden hulls (traditionally lashed together with coconut fibres), and characteristic triangular (lateen) or quadrilateral (settee) sails.

Usually manned by crews of 12 to 30 people, dhows are primarily used as trading vessels to carry merchandise such as fish, timber, and dates around the coasts of the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean. In the past, they used sails as their only means of propulsion, taking advantage of the seasonal winds that blow in the region. Now, especially in the Gulf, motorized dhows are common.

As one of the symbols of the culture of those regions, dhows have been depicted on stamps and currency, and have also inspired the architects of one of the world's most iconic luxury hotels, the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, was designed to resemble the billowing sail of a dhow. In the wealthy countries of the Gulf, dhow cruises are regularly offered to tourists. The felucca, a wooden sailing boat used in the eastern Mediterranean and on the Nile, is similar in design to the dhow, though smaller.

Answer: Scow

The word "scow" (from the Dutch "schouw", meaning "ferry" or "pole-driven boat") denoted a smaller type of barge, a flat-bottomed vessel capable of navigating shallow coastal waters or inland waterways. Scows typically have a rectangular hull with sloping ends, and can be propelled by poles, oars, or sails, or towed by steamers. Frequently employed in the Great Lakes region of North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, scows were useful for moving cargo from areas that could not be reached by keelboats. In 19th-century New Zealand, American-style, schooner-rigged sailing scows were widely employed in the trade of kauri gum and logs. In modern times, scows have been used as racing boats on lakes, or as the basis for various types of houseboats.

Often found in coastal cities, garbage scows (usually towed by tugboats) are used to transport large loads of collected refuse for disposal. They have also proved a convenient way for smugglers to hide and transport various illegal goods, especially drugs.

Answer: Dreadnought

In the early years of the 20th century, the dreadnought (also spelled "dreadnaught") was the predominant battleship type. These fearsome, heavily armed naval vessels were named after the first of their kind, HMS "Dreadnought", a ship of the British Royal Navy (launched in 1906) whose design revolutionized the very concept of warship. HMS "Dreadnought" was exclusively armed with big guns, and was propelled by steam turbines. Such was the influence of this new design that warships built in the previous 20 years became known as "pre-dreadnoughts". The launch of this cutting-edge battleship - the fastest in the world at that time - sparked a naval arms race in the years prior to the start of WWI, involving both major and second-rank powers.

HMS "Dreadnought" had ten 45-calibre, 12-inch guns, but some of the super-dreadnoughts built in the 1910s had a higher number of even larger guns. WWI, however, did not bring the kind of large-scale naval engagements that had characterized some previous conflicts: the only clash of dreadnought battleships in history occurred in the Battle of Jutland (1916), in which HMS "Dreadnought" did not participate. The ship ended its career being sold as scrap in 1921, and the word "dreadnought" gradually became obsolete - as did the older generation of battleships after WWI.

The first ship to be named "Dreadnought" ("fear nothing" - a name that sounds very much like a statement of intent) was a galleon of the Tudor navy, launched in 1573, which boasted 41 guns.

Answer: Xebec

Smaller and faster - not to mention cheaper to build - than galleys, in the 17th and18th centuries xebecs became the favoured sailing vessels of the notorious Barbary pirates of North Africa. These ships of Arab origin (their name comes from Arabic "shabbak" through French "chebec") were characterized by their long, overhanging bowsprit and three masts with lateen (triangular) sails; they could also use oars for propulsion, and were armed with cannons (usually about 20, but more on larger ships).

Due to their speed and maneuverability, xebecs were adopted as naval ships by the Spanish Navy, which in the mid-18th century. counted 47 xebecs - mostly employed in the fight against Barbary pirates. The French Navy also built a number of xebecs that were also used during the Napoleonic Wars. A famous Spanish xebec-frigate named "El Gamo", equipped with 32 guns, was captured in single-ship action by the much smaller British brig "Speedy" on 6 May 1801.

Even though associated with piracy and naval action, xebecs evolved from Moorish fishing vessels used in southern Spain. They were also used as trading vessels in most of the Mediterranean region; their commercial use outlasted the military one, as merchant xebecs did not disappear until after WWI.

Answer: Galleon

Massive and imposing, galleons are often identified with the Age of Sail and the struggle for dominance of the seas in the 16th and 17th centuries. The name "galleon" derives from Medieval Greek "galea" ("galley"), with an augmentative suffix emphasizing its large size. The galleon developed from an older type of large, ocean-going ship, the carrack, probably the largest of the 14th-16th centuries. Galleons were primarily conceived as warships: in 1588, both the Spanish Armada and the British fleet consisted mostly of galleons. The Spanish and Portuguese "Manila galleons", on the other hand, sailed annually between Acapulco (on Mexico's Pacific coast) and the Philippines for about 250 years (1565-1815), bringing valuable Asian trade goods to the New World in exchange for silver.

A galleon had three or four masts: the rearmost were lateen-rigged, while the mainmast and the foremast were square-rigged. Built of various hardwoods, galleons were very expensive to put together, and required months of work by many skilled tradesmen before they were seaworthy. Among their distinguishing features there were a protruding beakhead, often elaborately decorated with statues and sculptures, and a high, square forecastle. Being warships, galleons were heavily armed, and some of the larger ones - such as the 16th-century Portuguese ship known as "Botafogo" ("spitfire") - were believed to carry over 200 guns.

Some of the most famous historic ships were galleons: among them, Sir Francis Drake's "Golden Hind" and "Revenge", and the Swedish warship "Vasa" - the only original galleon to have survived, now a museum ship in Stockholm.

Answer: Trawler

A fishing trawler is a vessel that operates one or more fishing trawls - nets that are dragged or pulled behind the boat, sometimes reaching to the bottom of the sea. Like many nautical terms, "trawl" comes from the Dutch language ("tragel", related to "trail"). The earliest kind of trawler, called "dogger", was developed in the 17th century by the British for use in the North Sea, while the modern trawler dates from the mid-19th century. Early trawlers were rigged with sails, but the advent of steam power in the 1870s led to a considerable expansion of the fishing industry in the ports of east and northeast England.

Modern fishing trawlers are engine-powered, and come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The largest are factory ships, equipped with fully automated facilities for freezing and processing their catch; the smallest are open boats that ply their trade in coastal waters. While most trawlers that sail on the high seas have facilities for freezing fish, those that do not are unable to operate too far from their landing place. Some trawlers use outriggers (projecting structures such as poles) to tow the trawl, while others deploy the trawl over the side, and others from the stern.

During both world wars, some countries (such as the UK) converted fishing trawlers into small warships, or built new ships that resembled trawlers in design. Armed naval trawlers are still used in some parts of the world to protect fisheries. There are also pleasure boats, known as trawler cruisers or trawler yachts, built to resemble fishing trawlers.

Answer: Junk

The name "junk" came into English from the Portuguese "junco", a rendition of the Chinese "chuan" or the Javanese "jong". The word denotes a sailing ship of unknown origin characterized by its fully battened sails - that is, sails whose entire width is spanned by long, thin strips of flexible material (traditionally wood, now more often vinyl or fiberglass). Northern junks developed from Chinese river boats, while southern junks were influenced by Southeast Asian ship designs. Though generally associated with China, junks are also found in India and Southeast Asia, where they were historically used for a variety of purposes. Despite of often significant regional differences in design, all junks employ fully battened sails.

The traditional junk design is highly efficient, allowing these vessels to carry both people and cargo on Asia's vast inland waterways as well as on the high seas. These ships were generally built of softwoods (wood from conifers), and had multiple, watertight internal compartments (bulkheads). River junks were flat-bottomed, with no keel. Seagoing junks could be quite large (as described in the 15th century by Italian traveler Niccolò de' Conti), with three or four masts: at least one of them, according to the famous Fra Mauro map (1456), rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Atlantic Ocean. The largest junks ever built are likely to have been those that took part in Admiral Zheng He's seven expeditions in the Indian Ocean (1405-1433).

Junks are still used in 21st-century Asia, though mainly for recreational purposes. Junk boat cruises are offered to tourists visiting popular sites such as Ha Long Bay (Vietnam) and Hong Kong.