What if caravels were invented much sooner?

If my memory serves me, caravels were the ships that allowed Portugal and Castile to dominate the Age of Exploration. What would happen if they were built earlier? You can have any civilization (well, any coastal civilization, that is) you want build them, and any time period you think is feasible.
 
This is something I'd like to see. I've wanted to write a timeline where reliable trans-Atlantic ship technology emerges by 1000, with subsequent Islamic Moroccan/Iberian exploration of the Americas. But I'm not sure how such a speed-up in the development of ship technology would be accomplished, or what would stimulate it.
 
I am by no means an expert when it comes to shipbuilding despite having family members in the past doing some privateering and, most recently, enlisting in the U.S. Navy. However, shipbuilding requires a lot of advanced mathematics (calculus if I am not mistaken). The only groups I recall that had any experience with advanced mathematics prior to the Renaissance are the Arabs and the Indians.

Maintaining contact with both of those groups may help a bit but I am not sure how well they did with shipbuilding. I know that the Indian Ocean is a whole different animal in comparison to the Atlantic.
 
I am by no means an expert when it comes to shipbuilding despite having family members in the past doing some privateering and, most recently, enlisting in the U.S. Navy. However, shipbuilding requires a lot of advanced mathematics (calculus if I am not mistaken). The only groups I recall that had any experience with advanced mathematics prior to the Renaissance are the Arabs and the Indians.

Given that calculus wasn't invented until the late 17th/early 18th century, I'm pretty sure that it was not required to build caravels. Calculus and other advanced math is necessary for modern engineering and hence modern ship design, but I believe that medieval/renaissance ship design was done mostly on a trial and error basis. Each new successful design was based upon a modification of a previously successful design.

The caravel, if I remember correctly, was a product of cross-pollination between fast Mediterranean ships and seaworthy North Sea ships which resulted in a design that was both fast and seaworthy (I did a bit of research on this for my non-defunct Fiontir TL). I think it came at the time it did because the completion of the reconquista allowed contact in Iberia between shipwrights from the North Sea and those from the Mediterranean. Although, for all I know I could be remembering this totally wrong.
 
telynk, that seems reasonable--the bit about the contact between Atlantic and Mediterranean coastal peoples explaining the timing of the caravel's development. It suggests that if you want it earlier, either speed up Reconquista--or have a single Andalusian Muslim state stabilize earlier.

If contact between sailors who habitually sailed one sea or other were key though, what about Moroccan sailors? Some would have homes east of Gibraltar, others west of it--it raises the question why they didn't anticipate the caravel, any time between the first Muslim invasions of Iberia and the termination of the Reconquista.

Maybe what was needed was a fusion not just of any Atlantic type boats and Med type, but specifically boats from the northern Atlantic?

Even so, a stabilized Andalusia would probably do enough trade with lands to the north they'd get the merger of the types sooner or later--and sooner than OTL's Portuguese.

Now all this talk about a ship type obscures and distracts from the fact that there is more to seafaring than just the shape and structure of the boat, although that is clearly very important. But just as important is the development of the arts of navigation, and the development of means of storing food and water (or something drinkable) for long intervals out of contact with any land that could reliably supply these things. I've seen it suggested that the development of "hardtack" biscuit, which is really a sort of pasta, was a critically important step in enabling European long-range sea trade and eventual sea power. And of course the Portuguese age of discovery and construction of their trade and defensive networts was famously launched by Prince Henry the Navigator, who strove to systematically advance the scientific state of the art of all things related to seamanship. Did the caravel cause Portuguese to realize the importance of getting that science done, and support it in the person of a prince? Did the caravel in fact take its final design from the guidance of Prince Henry's studies? Did both efforts wait patiently until a means was known for storing food and drink more than a month or so, or was hardtack and suitable solutions for storing drink the outcome of a desperate search for storable provisions once there were ships that could outrun older forms of supply?

Even if we can identify which innovation is the root and which the branches, it should be clear that all of these things have to be possible in order to conduct the voyages the Iberians began to accomplish in the 15th century. This suggests to me that there would be a time and place for them, and we cannot freely imagine the package just happens to be stumbled upon any arbitrary century we like. Classic Dynasty Egyptians can't do it, Minoans can't do it; the Romans can't do it and apparently even the Carthagenians (who one gathers used to trade even as far as Cornwall) never came near doing it and I'd say surely could not. It is part of a package of developing technical capability that associates it with a certain level of development and a certain range of centuries in certain times and places.
 
I'm trying to study the subject in my own amateurish ways at the moment and it seems to me that the caravel came when someone put money into a particular objective.

Henry the Navigator wanted to get spices, shortcircuit the trans-saharan trade and meet Prester John. So he set up his laboratory on the South coast of Portugal around 1415, poured money into it which led to maps and the caravelle, at least that's the story I got from a couple sources and it doesn't seem entirely unplausible.

Now, we can also see that there were high sea faring boats at the time, just one the other side of Africa. Oceanic trade was common in the Indian Ocean, even though the boats were much lighter (and actually appeared very fragile to Europeans).

Maybe Ibn Battuta or Marco Polo has a closer look to boats and gives a good description of the technologies involved, leading to earlier development?
 
Lets be fair the Portuguese Reconquista is over by 1249 and the essentials of Caravel construction in place by then. Lateen rigs are Roman era and well known.

The proto caravel was certainly used as fishing boats by the Portuguese in the 13th century and around the same time Maghreb fishermen may be using similar vessels. So at a rough guess the hull form is in place by then and carvel construction – which is essential.

What you then need is to scale it up.

For fishing there is no real point yet (have to land your catch before it goes off). But Portugal has reasons.

What you have from its inception really is a Portugal with strong commercial links to Northern Europe, a monarchy that actively fosters the trade and a bulk trade with England and the Low countries. Which also gives you access to timber, metals and rope if you need it. But bulk means a larger payload makes sense and the carvel construction comes into its own the larger the vessel.

That’s going to give you a good reason to scale up the fishing boats, and beyond a certain point the Med style Lateen becomes counterproductive and a switch to a mixed square/lateen makes sense.

Doing that gives you a body of seamen and captains able to make long hop voyages and it only takes another increase in scale, and repurposing to set off the Portuguese exploration voyages. Whch are early 15th century.

One of the issues for the Maghreb states doing this is why? Commercially its only trade in specific goods that needs long distance shipping and a critical one– wine, needing large barrels - is out for muslims. Without long distance shipping needs the idea is that a medieval state with dubious finances both creates and dispatches very expensive bits of kit for no particular reason.


Could it be done earlier, sure, but you need something similar in terms of conditions and its much more likely to come from the western atlantic regions of Europe because they are the ones who trade in bulk over long distance.

The points about barrel and food storage are important.
 
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