Age of Sail

The era, roughly from the 16th through the mid-19th centuries, when sailing ships dominated global trade, exploration, and naval warfare.

Square-rigged ship: A sailing vessel whose principal sails are set across the ship on horizontal yards. Its large sail area powered many ocean-going merchant and naval ships.
East India Company: An English trading company founded in 1600 that became a major commercial and political power in Asia. Its ships carried goods and expanded English influence across Indian Ocean routes.
Caravel: A small, maneuverable sailing ship developed by the Portuguese in the 15th century. Its handling and sail plan supported early Portuguese voyages along unfamiliar coasts.
Columbian exchange: The large-scale transfer of organisms, people, diseases, and goods between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492. Ocean crossings enabled exchanges that transformed populations and environments on both sides of the Atlantic.
Lateen: A triangular sail set on a long yard, angled obliquely to the mast. It helped ships sail closer to the wind than square sails allowed.
Manila galleon: A Spanish trading ship that linked Manila and Acapulco across the Pacific from 1565 to 1815. Its voyages created a durable maritime connection between Asia and the Americas.
Carrack: A large ocean-going sailing ship used by Europeans from the 15th through the 17th centuries. Its cargo capacity and seaworthiness helped make long-distance ocean voyages commercially viable.
Spanish Empire: A global empire built by Spain from the late 15th century across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. Sailing routes connected its far-flung colonies and carried wealth to Spain.
Trade wind: A persistent tropical wind blowing generally east to west toward the equator. Predictable trade winds shaped major ocean routes and sailing schedules.
Atlantic slave trade: The forced transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, principally from the 16th through the 19th centuries. Sailing ships made the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved people possible at immense scale.

Linked from 20 pages