1100s

Her Princes are Come Home Again “O, let us pay the time but needful woe, Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs. This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come...

The Byzantine Dromon had lateen sails which could sail against the wind. What if sometime from 900-1100, the dromon made it to Iberia and France, where it could be refined to work on the Atlantic coast, creating an earlier 'caravel'? Remove the oars, add another mast of sails (which could easily...