Fore-and-aft rig

The fore-and-aft rig is believed to have been developed independently by the Austronesian peoples some time after 1500 BC with the invention of the crab claw sail.

Crab claw sails spread from Maritime Southeast Asia to Micronesia, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar via the Austronesian migrations.

[3] Their use later spread into the Indian Ocean since the first millennium, among vessels from the Middle East, South Asia, and China.

[4][5] The lateen was developed in the Mediterranean as early as the 2nd century AD, during Roman times.

By 1475, its use increased, and within a hundred years the fore-and-aft rig was in common use on rivers and in estuaries in Britain, northern France, and the Low Countries, though the square rig remained standard for the harsher conditions of the open North Sea as well as for trans-Atlantic sailing.

Micronesian wa with crab claw sail
The gaff-rigged schooner Effie M. Morrissey
The earliest European fore-and-aft rigs appeared in the form of spritsails in Greco-Roman navigation, [ 1 ] as this carving of a 3rd century AD Roman merchant ship
One of the ships in Borobudur depicting a double-outrigger vessel with fore-and-aft tanja sails on tripod masts (c. 8th century AD)