What did Juan Ponce DE Leon's ships look like?

Answer 1

Juan Ponce de Leon's famous expedition to Florida included three ships.

Two were caravels; the Santiago, which was the flagship, and the Santa Maria de la Consolacion. The third was the brigantine San Cristobal. Brigantines were smaller and could go closer to shore than the caravels could.

Caravels of that time were of two forms. The older style was 'lanteen' rigged, meaning it carried two triangular sails in a form adapted from qarib ships used by Muslim explorers, and a newer square-rigged style called 'caravela redonda' by the Portuguese, in the Iberian (Spanish) style. Some caravels could mount either kind of sail, or both at once, square sails above and triangular ones below, fore, and aft.

One existing drawing (see link below) shows that the Santiago and the Santa Maria de la Consolacion were of this newer, square-rigged type, perhaps with square sails at topmast and lanteen sails below.

A caravela redonda like the Santiago might be as much as 30 meters long, carry three or four masts (the drawing seems to indicate three masts) and a few cannon.

These caravels had no forecastle (the raised section on the front of the ship) and a shorter sterncastle (the reaised section to the rear of the ship) than the earlier 'carrick' design. This made them handle much better at sea.

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