A sail catches the power of the wind and uses it to propel a boat or ship across the water. The earliest boats were simple rafts made of logs or reeds lashed together, and it was to these that the first sails were added by the ancient Egyptians around 3,500 B.C. In its most essential form, a sailboat consists of the sail itself (made of papyrus or linen by the Egyptians), the mast (one or two poles attached vertically to the front half of the boat), and a long spar called a yard attached horizontally across the top of the mast (to which the sail is attached, and raised and lowered, by lines called halyards). These first Egyptian sails were square and harnessed the wind's power to travel upstream on the Nile River, since that was the way the winds usually blew. The boats were paddled rather than sailed on the return trip downstream into the wind. By about 2,000 B.C., a single pole mast was used and the bottom of the sail was attached to a second horizontal spar. Boats were also made of wood and were large enough to be called ships. Although the Egyptians still did not venture far out into the ocean, their sail technology spread to Crete, Phoenicia, and even Greece. A typical large Phoenician trading ship of about 1,000 B.C. derived nearly all of its propulsion from its single, square sail.
Some believe however, that the sail was invented in Indonesia rather than in Egypt, and there is some evidence for this argument. These Pacific Island societies used an upside-down triangular sail attached to a single vertical pole. It is known that they influenced the Polynesians whose ocean-going "tainui" -- which look like modern catamarans -- used the inverted Indonesian sail as one of its two sails.
In the West however, square and then rectangular sails prevailed for some time, despite the fact that they were of little use if the wind was not blowing in the direction that the ship had to go. It was not until after 200 B.C. that triangular "lateen" sails were adopted in the Mediterranean region. Pioneered by the Arabs possibly as early as 200 B.C., these triangle-shaped sails were slung across the mast to a long, sloping crossbar, and were the earliest example of fore-and-aft sails. Angling from high above the mast down nearly to the deck, their maneuverability permitted a ship to sail almost into the wind. This ability to "tack" into the wind greatly increased the potential and range of a sailing ship, and proved to be a major breakthrough when combined with the square sail. Together, they produced a vessel capable of conquering the oceans.
In the East, China became a major sea power around 1,000 A.D. because of its development of the junk. Their use of the lugsail, which was shaped like a trapezoid and strengthened by bamboo strips, combined with their invention of the rudder, made these ships one of the most efficient vessels ever to move under sail power. Junks were often five-masted, and the stiffness of their lugsails allowed them to make use of even the slightest gusts of wind.
Around the 1450s, Western Europeans combined the stern-hung rudder with the use of square and lateen sails to produce the deep-hulled carrack -- the first ship capable of making long sea voyages without interruption and thus capable of making voyages of discovery. Sail technology continued to improve and reached its apex with the clipper ships of the 1840s. These long, low ships were sleekly designed for speed and had masts nearly as tall as the keel was long, with every inch covered by sails. By this time, the end was in sight for these as well as the massive, two-masted "brig" which had more than 20 separate square or triangular sails, since steam and iron were soon taking over. Steam and other types of engines signalled the permanent decline of the sail as a primary means of moving a ship, and increasingly sails were used only for pleasure and competition. It was not until 1980 that a ship of any size employed any version of sail. That year, Japan introduced its tanker Shin Aitoku Maru whose computer-controlled sails lowered its fuel consumption by 10 percent (since the main diesel engines could reduce power when the sails were in use).
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