Vanguard of Empire

Book excerpt: In this book, Smith has assembled a portrait of the small vessels invented and refined in the shipyards of Spain and Portugal half a millennium ago. He focuses on the advances in maritime technology that made the European conquest of the New World possible. Shipwrights worked by trial and error to make ships that would travel faster and farther, carrying larger and larger cargoes. Pilots developed new methods of celestial navigation and learned the patterns of wind and sea currents. Long voyages taxed the physical and emotional well-being of the crew, requiring new methods of supply and sustenance. In addition to covering these developments, Smith's book shows how ships were built, outfitted, and manned, illustrating what life at sea was like in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Focusing on the advances in maritime technology that made European expansion possible, this book will shed light on a neglected aspect of the European conquest of the New World.