Portuguese Man O’ War, or Portuguese Caravel

The Portuguese Man O’ War, also known as The Bluebottle in Australia, and named ‘Caravela Portuguesa (Portuguese Caravel) in Portuguese, is named for its air bladder, which looks similar to the sails of the Portuguese fighting ship (Man of war) ‘Caravela redonda’ (an armed 4 sail caravel), of the 14th and 15th centuries. “The name “man o’ war” comes from the man-of-war, an 18th-century sailing warship,[i] and the cnidarian‘s resemblance to the Portuguese version at full sail.” (from Wikipedia, as accessed on the 3^rd of September 2019)

[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war#cite_note-10

The new caravels had three masts, triangular sails, rudders, compass adapted from the Chinese and the finest maps Italy could produce.”[i]

[i] Moore, Karl & David Lewis “Foundations of Corporate Empire. Is History Repeating Itself?”, Prentice Hall, London, 2000, p.187

Probably an early version, when the caravel was a rowing boat equipped with a few lateen sails.

First mentioned 1226[i] and 1255 in a Portuguese document, by then only as a small fisher boat, the ‘caravela pescareza’ with 5 sailors and one or two masts with lateen sails.[ii] Armed with two masts and lateen triangular sails, this type of vessel would have been developed by the Portuguese in the 1440s,[iii] as the lateen caravel, also known as the discoveries or discovering caravel. Showing the double area of sails relative to usual ships of similar size, these caravels excelled in sailing against the wind (headwinds), or as the Portuguese say à bolina.

The very name of the caravel would derive from the Arabic carab,[iv] which by the way is not corroborated by Adalberto Alves’ “Dicionário de arabismos da língua portuguesa”, INCM, Lisboa, 2013.

Vitorino M. Godinho[v] (2007, p.224-5) proposes that the final version of the caravel would have been established by 1439-40.

Please see below some more renditions of this chapter’s subject.

[i] Francisco Contente Domingues “Navios e marinheiros” in “Lisboa e os Descobrimentos. 1415-1580: a invençãoo do mundo pelos navegadores portugueses” (Michel Chandeigne & Carlos Araújo dir.), Terramar, 1992 (1990), p.51-65, p.52

[ii] “A caravela e as condições de navegação na época dos descobrimentos”, Grupo de Trabalho do Ministério da Educação para a Comemoração dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1993, p.17

[iii] A. J. R. Russell-Wood “Portugal e o Mar: um Mundo Entrelaçado”, Assírio & Alvim, Lisboa, 1997, p.29-30. Vitorino M. Godinho (2007, p.) corroborates that the final version of the caravel would have been established by 1439-40.

[iv] Orlando Ribeiro, “Originalidade da Expansão Portuguesa”, Edições João Sá da Costa, Lisboa, 1994, p.102 – written between 1954 and 1960)

[v] Vitorino Magalhães Godinho “A expansão quatrocentista portuguesa”, D. Quixote, Lisboa 2007 (1962), p.224-225