"Leeway!" Why did the devices for overcoming that drawback arrive so late in history? They are deep keels--which is a waste of space and a forbidding of harbours, so that antiquity apparently never adopted them--lee boards and centre boards.
Now lee boards I take to be an invention of the Dutch, who also gave us, if I am not mistaken, the origin of that admirable rig, perfected in the Thames, the London barge. But why did people take such a very long time to think of lee boards? I cannot pretend to the required scholarship and I may be wrong, but surely there is no example of a lee board in antiquity, nor even in any picture remaining to us of the Middle Ages? I take it that the lee board was one of those thousand things quietly invented, unspoken of, between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, and that the people of the Low Countries were its authors.
As for the centre board, we know that it is a thing of yesterday. If I am not mistaken, the Americans first sailed on it. I can understand why the centre board should have come so late. It wants great skill in fitting. It seems to invite a leak. It cannot be fitted upon any very large craft easily--and so on. But why did it take humanity such a very long time to think of lee boards, and why, when they came, did they come in this particular corner of Europe?
There is nothing more fascinating than this guess-work upon the origin of little human tricks and the observation of the long and great effect of routine.
To this day the Mediterranean shortens sail along the yard of a lateen--why, I have never got any one to explain to me. It would seem the obvious thing to take in a reef from the deck, to put your craft up into the wind, lower your sail somewhat, and then take your reef along the foot of it. Indeed, it would be much easier to take in a reef in this fashion on a lateen sail than it is to take one along the boom in an ordinary fore-and-aft rig. You need no ear-ring, and the thing could be done in a moment. Instead of which the swarthy men prefer to lower away the whole contraption. I do not understand the reason at all. Perhaps there is no reason--or, again, perhaps I am wrong and therefore there is no problem at all.