Hello r/AskHistorians! A member of r/worldbuilding here. I understand it was probably due to being cheaper and easier to manufacture, but how come there were never any ships with decorated sails, similar to standard bearers? How come I never see ships with sails that displayed past glories found in battles or large, menacing Jolly Rodgers found on stereotypical pirate ships? Did sails this artistic and morale inspiring actually ever exist I real life?
In the world that I am building there are pirates and royal navies that use very similar vessels to what was seen on the age of sail. I just want to know how feasible it is to have sails that display a mural or something similar to either strike fear in the pit of their adversaries' stomach or raise morale in other members of the fleet.
Thanks again guys!
edit: thank you all for your responses and discussion! it has been a world of help! now that i know that it wasnt too practical to just embroider or literallyt paint the sails as it would make them act in an unusual way. this is exactly what i was hoping i wasnt going to hear, but i guess i just have to whip up some cool excuse to why and how my worlds most viscious pirates and most fearsome commandants have murals on their sails, givin this is a high fantasy world. you guys have really helped me out, upvotes all around!
Saltwater and sunshine will both bleach canvas, which was the usual material for making sails, and embroidery or appliqué on sails will weaken them and change their aerodynamic qualities. The sail decorations that immediately spring to mind for me are those made by dyeing different panels different colors, although it's hard to tell if that actually happened or was just artistic license.
It's impossible to prove a negative, so I wouldn't say that "no ship ever had decorated sails," but it's more likely that few ships ever decorated their sails, and those that did would likely use paint or something similar, rather than anything that would weaken the sail.
They might have used dyed cloth for the sails, but as /r/jschooltiger mentioned, exposure will over time tend to bleach the sails white, since most of the sails used by Europeans in the 15-19th centuries were made of linen or cotton canvas. Most of the dyes avaioible at the time were not any where nearly as light-fast or color-fast as modern dyes. So a colored sail would get bleached and leached to paleness within a few months to years of use. Additionally, the dyeing process might increase the weight of the sail, or change it's structural properties. These were both undesirable things. This made colored sails high uneconomical.
That said, there is some evidence that you might see sails a variety of pale yellows, browns, and dark reds, as a result of the "tanning" treatment sometimes used to make sailcloth more resistant to rot and decay. This is discussed by Edgar March in Inshore Craft of Great Britain in the Days of Sail and Oar, I think. Tanned sails seem mostly to have been used on small near-shore boats where the value of making the sails last longer was outweighed by the cost of buying treated sails. On larger ships, this seems to have been uncommon, probably because of the sheer acreage of canvas needed.
Spain and Portugal did decorate their state ships with the crusader cross as late as the Age of Discovery. It's most usually seen in images of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, but can also be found in images from the Spanish Armada.
With the end of the Reconquista and the subsidence of Turkish naval power, the crusader cross seems to have fallen into disuse.
