Medieval Europe
Oars mounted on the side of ships evolved into quarter rudders, which were used from antiquity until the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. As the size of ships and the height of the freeboards increased, quarter-rudders became unwieldy and were replaced by the more sturdy stern-mounted rudders with pintle and gudgeon attachment. While stern-mounted rudders were found in Europe on a wide range of vessels since Roman times, including light war galleys in Mediterranean, the oldest known depiction of a pintle-and-gudgeon rudder can be found on church carvings of Zedelgem and Winchester dating to around 1180. The invention of the rudder in Medieval Europe is attributed to Somerled in 1156, when it was the decisive factor in his defeat of Godred Olafsson during the formation of the Lordship of the Isles.
Historically, the radical concept of the medieval pintle-and-gudgeon rudder did not come as a single invention into being. It presented rather a combination of ideas which each had been long around before: rudders mounted on the stern, iron hinges and the straight sternpost of northern European ships. While earlier rudders were mounted on the stern by the way of rudderposts or tackles, the iron hinges allowed for the first time to attach the rudder to the entire length of the sternpost in a really permanent fashion. However, its full potential could only to be realized after the introduction of the vertical sternpost and the full-rigged ship in the 14th century. From the age of discovery onwards, European ships with pintle-and-gudgeon rudders sailed successfully on all seven seas.
Contrary to an older hypothesis, all evidence indicates that the European hinged stern-mounted rudder, whose technical specifications considerably differ from the Chinese one, was invented independently:
- The only actual concept which can be claimed to have been transmitted from the Chinese is the idea of a stern-mounted rudder, and not its method of attachment nor the manner in which it was controlled. Since that idea of putting a rudder on the stern can be traced back to the models found in Egyptian tombs, the need to have the concept brought into the Middle East is questionable at best. There is no evidence to support the contention that the sternpost-mounted rudder came from China, and no need to call on exterior sources for its introduction into the Mediterranean.
Read more about this topic: Rudder, History of The Rudder
Famous quotes containing the words medieval and/or europe:
“Nothing in medieval dress distinguished the child from the adult. In the seventeenth century, however, the child, or at least the child of quality, whether noble or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the grown-up. This is the essential point: henceforth he had an outfit reserved for his age group, which set him apart from the adults. These can be seen from the first glance at any of the numerous child portraits painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world.... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)