speronara

plural speronaras

1. historicalnauticalA small, usually single-masted, sailing boat, used especially for transport between Sicily and Malta, remaining in use along the coast of Sicily until the mid-20th century.

   We had the ponente, or west-wind, all night, but the speronara moved sluggishly, and in the morning it changed to the greco-levante, or north-east.

   1854 (date written), Bayard Taylor, “The Festival of St. Agatha”, in The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam & Co., […], published 1855, →OCLC, page 365

   1 more example

   'Whilst my boat was preparing (a Maltese speronara, with a crew of twelve men, selected for their knowledge of the coast,) I wrote two letters, one to Malta, and the other to Lisbon, stating the loss of the ship.

   1850, William O. S. Gilly, Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849