Decorative elements included gilded additions to the stern and a figurehead, for royal galleons always a golden lion wearing a crown. This mass of sails allowed a Spanish galleon to sail at a respectable eight knots in optimum conditions. In addition, there was usually one or two small square sails on the bowsprit. If there was a fourth mast (the bonaventure), it was set at the very stern and also carried a lateen sail, but one smaller than that on the mizzenmast. The foremasts had three square sails each, while the mizzenmast (rear) had two square sails and a lateen sail. Royal Spanish galleons always had a figurehead of a golden lion wearing a crown.Ī Spanish galleon combined the use of square and lateen or triangular sails on their three or four masts. The galleon was used as a warship but evolved into the race-built galleon which had one deck removed and a more tapering hull – features that made the ship much faster and more manoeuvrable than a standard galleon.

There were different types of galleon, and no standard design was followed. Other common features of the galleon were the beaklike prow, the setting back of the forecastle from the prow, a flat stern, and a smooth carvel hull. Galleons evolved in the 1530s (or slightly earlier) from ships like the caravel and carrack and had lower superstructures to make them more manoeuvrable in heavy seas (although later galleons increased these structures again). Galleons did not have any oars, but the generality of the name continued as 'galleon' was often used indiscriminately in the early modern period to mean any large, high-sided ship with three decks and a high sterncastle. Nearly a hundred years before ‘Poetry By Heart’, Masefield organized the Oxford Recitations in the 1920s, an annual contest designed to ‘discover good speakers of verse’ and to ‘encourage the beautiful speaking of verse’.The name 'galleon' is derived from 'galley', the term associated with warships of any kind ever since antiquity but especially those propelled by a combination of sails and banks of oars. Novels followed, and narrative poems, so that by 1912, when he was awarded a major literary prize, Masefield was a successful and well‑known writer. He read insatiably, and his poems began to be published in periodicals, followed by a first collection of poetry when he was twenty‑four. Masefield went to sea at a young age but saw no future as a sailor and on one voyage to America deserted ship in New York. He was a versatile poet, novelist and journalist, and wrote and lectured for the government during the First World War after supporting the war effort as a hospital orderly in France. John Masefield was Poet Laureate from 1930 to 1967. Think about the enormous container ships on the world’s oceans today – can you write an extra verse for this poem which creates a vivid picture of modern cargoes? About John Masefield Now you have tasted the words for yourself, you might like to listen to this video of the actress Joanna Lumley reading the poem. How are the words and pictures in the final verse different? Don’t worry too much about their meanings or whether you say them correctly, just enjoy their sounds and the exotic impression they create.

Some of the words might be unfamiliar when you first read the poem. Each verse gives us a different kind of ship in a different time in history and a different place, with different cargo.

In this poem the speaker imagines a whole history of cargo ships carrying different things across the seas.

Galleon cargo