The New Murrey and Blue blog

Sometimes it’s hard for us to think of the small size of medieval ships. These brave vessels went to sea in all manner of weather, and crossed considerable distances from England to all parts of Europe. One of the swiftest and most manoeuverable was reckoned to be the caravel, which vessel Columbus used when he found America (he wasn’t the first to get there, it seems, but that’s another story). Caravels were also much loved by pirates for their speed, agility and large holds.

There is now a wonderful full-size replica of a 15th-century Portuguese caravel, called the Notorious. It’s in Australia, but thanks to the wonders of photography we can still see it up here in the Northern Hemisphere. As you can read here and elsewhere, the Notorious was “….[an] exploration vessel from the Age of Discovery [and] was single-handedly researched, designed and constructed by Australian, Graeme Wylie, over an 11 year period, with 9 of those years on the tools full-time….”

Notorious is the only sailing caravel in the Southern Hemisphere and is also Australia’s earliest such ship reconstruction. She has never—to my knowledge!—sailed under the skull and cross bones!