Caravel Ship important facts PLEASE ANSWER

The Caravel is the first and most famous ship of the European age of exploration. It gets its name from the shipbuilding term, carvel, which is a method of butting the planking on the hull so that the planks form a tight smooth surface. The early Caravels had all lateen or triangular sails and were very maneuverable, but later models such as those Columbus sailed in 1492 had both square and lateen rigging. The Nina and the Pinta were such ships sometimes called caravel redundas. With the square sail added these ships were both very fast and very maneuverable. Columbus’s flagship the Santa Maria was actually an older and larger ship, a carrack. She was slower and less maneuverable than her sister ships, and this is said to have caused much grumbling among the sailors aboard in 1492.

The caravel comes at the very beginning of the age of sail and of exploration, and is the direct forebear of most European sailing ships.