A large sailing vessel or ship used in Indian waters during the medieval and early modern periods, particularly in the Arabian Sea trade.
From Portuguese gômera or similar nautical term, possibly influenced by Arabic jamal; the word entered English maritime vocabulary through Portuguese and Dutch colonial trading records in the Indian Ocean.
The gomavel represents a lost chapter of Indian Ocean sailing technology—these hybrid Arabic-Portuguese vessels carried more cargo than European ships but almost no records survive because they were eventually replaced by European-designed ships.
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