round ship

round ship (plural round ships)

1. (nautical, historical) A superclass of wooden sailing ship type with a length-to-beam ratio of roughly two to one and normally having one mast with a single square-rigged sail, used as a generic term encompassing most European ancient and mediaeval ships up to the Age of Sail except galleys and longships, variously including or excluding cogs and coccas (the length-to-beam ratio of which could rise to over three to one); a ship (type) of this class.
   • 1981, Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100-1600, page 48:

     The development in the late thirteenth century of the round ship or cog and the great mercantile galley represented an attempt to provide greater cargo space at lower cost for long - distance trade .

   • 2018, Inventions: A Children's Encyclopedia, page 19:

     One of the most common sea vessels in medieval Europe was the “round ship”. A common round ship was the cog.

   • 2021, Renard Gluzman, Venetian Shipping from the Days of Glory to Decline, 1453–1571, page 53:

     By the mid-fifteenth century, the Mediterranean round ships called cocca was already replaced by the carrack, the largest bulk carrier known to contemporaries.

2. (nautical, historical) A Mediterranean type of wooden sailing ship of the Late Middle Ages with a length-to-beam ratio of roughly two or three to one and normally having one or two masts with a single lateen or square-rigged sail (each); a ship of this type.
   • 2017, Brian Lavery, Ship: 5,000 Years of Maritime Adventure, page 49:

     The cocca was the Mediterranean equivalent of the German and north European cog, with a longer hull than the classical Mediterranean round ship (see below, right).

   • 2017, Helen J. Nicholson, Medieval Warfare: Theory and Practice of War in Europe, 300-1500, page 147:

     It is similar to the Mediterranean ‘round ship’, which had a rounded profile, and normally had two masts with lateen sails and steering oars.