Foresail

foremost mast (foremast) of a sailing vessel

foremast is depicted in an Etruscan tomb painting from 475 to 450 BC.^[5] An artemon (Greek for foresail) almost the same size as the galley's mainsail can be found on a Corinthian krater as early as the late 6th century BC, but apart from that Greek longships of the 8th–5th century BC are uniformly shown without it.^[6]

mizzen on the largest freighters.^[8] Throughout antiquity, both foresail and mizzen remained secondary in terms of canvas size, but still large enough to require full running rigging.^[8] In late antiquity, the foremast lost most of its tilt, standing nearly upright on some ships.^[8]

Sicilian war galleys of the time.^[11]

Mediterranean by the Late Middle Ages. Large vessels were coming more and more into use and the need for additional sails to control these ships adequately grew with the increase in tonnage. Unlike in antiquity, the foresail was adopted on medieval two-masters after the mizzen, evidence for which dates to the mid-14th century. To balance out the sail plan the next obvious step was to add a mast fore of the main-mast, which first appears on a Catalan vessel from 1409. With the three-masted ship established, propelled by square rig and lateen, and guided by the pintle-and-gudgeon rudder, all advanced ship design technology necessary for the Age of Discovery's great transoceanic voyages was in place by the early 15th century.^[12]