This ship is quite close to the original caravel (original name is caravel latina - or close to that
) - the name comes from the latin sails.
The civ3 caravel is actually caravel redonda, rigged with square sails.
Interesting details:
The ships of columbus:
- Santa Maria was most likely a carrack (the portuguese UU
). Nobody really knows what kind of ship it was. And thats quite funny: it's the most famous ship in the world (after, perhaps, the noah's ark) and nobody even knows what it looked like. There are many drawings and models of Santa Maria, but there's one common thing in each and everyone of them - they all are incorrect.
- Niña and Pinta were both originally caravela latinas. But before going to atlantic, Pinta was re-rigged with square sails (to caravela redonda). When Columbus reached the canary isles, Niña was re-rigged to redonda too. The reason for this is, that latin sails are very effective when going against the wind, but Columbus didn't need those qualities. And besides, Square sail rigging made the ships faster.
(info gathered from the book "Ship; Illustrated history" by Björn Landström)
In the light of this, I would suggest to use this as a caravel flavor for some mediterranean/arabian countries.
