Beakhead

A Galion is provided with a rail platform that juts out over the bow of a sailing ship. Around 1500, the first ships with Galion be built in Europe.

Perhaps the Galion from the ram of the galleys was created, but perhaps also a part of the front body of a carrack was cut down in order to have space for the operation of the blind, a Rahsegels that was driven under the bowsprit. Was widely disseminated with the development of the Galion galleon.

Was that Galion initially designed functional and unadorned and grew straight out of the bow of the ship, so it was running more and more complex, especially when the representative warships of the 17th and 18th centuries - with elegantly curved Galionsrelingen, gilded carvings and especially a figurehead, often a personification or allegory of the ship's name showed.

Smaller vessels were already in the 18th century often no more Galion, and in the 19th century it was also reduced to the large vessels gradually to decorative rudiments. A walkable platform no longer existed, as well as the blind sail was uncommon. However, there are to the 21st century, occasionally vessels which have no Galion, but a figurehead. Examples are the German passenger ship Imperator of 1912, whose bow was decorated with a huge bronze eagle umkrallt a globe, or the new Gorch Fock with an albatross as a figurehead.

• Sailing ship