Lateen

[2] It has been suggested that this Arab use of lateen transferred to Austronesian maritime technology in the Far East, giving rise to the various fore-and-aft rigs used in that region, such as the crab claw sail.

[9] It became the standard rig of the Byzantine dromon war galley and was probably also employed by Belisarius' flagship in the 532 AD invasion of the Vandal Kingdom.

[10][11] The fully triangular lateen and the settee continued to coexist in the middle Byzantine period, as evidenced by Christian iconography,[4] as well as a recent find of a graffito in the Yenikapı excavations.

[12] In the 12th to 13th centuries the rigging underwent a change when the hook-shaped masthead made way for an arrangement more akin to a barrel-like crow's nest.

[13] After the Muslim conquests, the Arabs adopted the lateen sail by way of the Coptic populace, which shared the existing Mediterranean maritime tradition and continued to provide the bulk of galley crews for Muslim-led fleets for centuries to come.

[16][16] A glazed pottery dish from Saracenic Dénia dating to the 11th century is at present the earliest securely identifiable example found in the Mediterranean.

[20] As Mediterranean hull design and construction methods are known to have been subsequently adopted by Eastern Muslim shipbuilders, it is assumed that this process also included the lateen rigging of the novel caravel.

For instance, barge-like vessels in the American maritimes north of Boston, called gundalows, carried lateen rigs throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

On modern lateens, with their typically shallower angles, this tends to disrupt the airflow over a larger area of the sail, affecting speed.

[citation needed] However, there are forms of the lateen rig, as in vela latina canaria, where the spar is changed from one side to the other when tacking.

In the 16th century, when Spain ruled the Netherlands, the lateen rigs were introduced to Dutch boat builders, who soon modified the design by omitting the mast and fastening the lower end of the yard directly to the deck, the yard becoming a raked mast with a full-length, triangular (leg-of-mutton) mainsail aft.

Lateen was already available as an alternative and, having fewer component parts, could compete on cost but maintained the performance of the original Mediterranean Square Rig.

Therefore the change from square rig to lateen in the 5th century is considered to be driven by construction and maintenance costs, not by any significant difference in sailing performance.