2020年8月25日家庭版托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Venetian Shipping

2020年8月25日家庭版托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Venetian Shipping

The economic strength of Venice in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries rested first on its glass and silk industries, which benefited from the city's contacts with the East and from a community of soiled artisans in which technical innovation was important.?This would have meant little, however, without Venice's advancements in hipping technology.?which enabled it to control Mediterranean trade Before the fourteenth century, the typical Mediterranean ship was a small “round ship." being no more than about three times as long as it was broad.?These ships were steered by a side oar-essentially a long oar stuck out from one side of the rear of the ship.?▋While its triangular sails allowed the ship to sail to some degree into the wind, this capacity was quite limited. ▋Sailing vessels were supplemented, particularly for naval action, by galleys-much longer ships propelled largely by oarsmen.?▋Galleys could be relatively fast (at least for short periods of time) and maneuverable, but they had little cargo capacity and were obviously very expensive to operate.?▋They could provide the crucial element in naval engagements, however, and so were indispensable in the picture of naval power.
1.The word “indispensable” in the passage is closest in meaning to

A.well-known

B.appropriate

C.essential

D.desirable

2.In paragraph 1, the author provides information about the triangular sails of round ships in order to

A.provide an example of how technically advanced the Venetians were in ship construction

B.demonstrate the superiority of triangular sails over side oars

C.explain the importance of these sails for effective naval action

D.illustrate a limitation of Mediterranean ships prior to the fourteenth century

3.According to paragraph 1, what was an advantage of galleys over round ships?

A.Galleys could be propelled and maneuvered by oarsmen more effectively for naval engagments.

B.Galleys required smaller crews.

C.Galleys could transport goods more economically.

D.Galleys could travel with greater speed for very long periods of time.

At the end of the thirteenth century. the Venetians devised a new kind of ship, the great galley, which extended their shipping capabilities. When this ship was combined with new policies that directed almost all shipments to be sent out in protected convoys (groups of ships traveling together), the security and power of Venetian commerce exceeded that of any other Mediterranean state At the same time, the Venetians experimented with modified round ships, based on northern styles that used square sails. The resulting ship, the "cog," gave merchants an effective cargo-carrying vessel that required far less human-power than the galleys. The fleets of Venice were the basis for the greatest commercial power the European world had yet seen. Due to the larger size and weight of the great galleys, they came less and less to rely on oarsmen, and instead used the sails that had originally just supplemented rowing in favorable winds. It was not the size, but the complexity, stability, and versatility of the great galleys that made them formidable weapons of both trade and naval power. With a crew of about two hundred men who could man the oars, wield weapons, or handle the sails and lines, a galley was a complex and versatile machine. Building and equipping both galleys and cogs became a task of the Venetian state, and in creating the capacity for this, Venice pioneered an entirely novel concept of making things-one that borrowed from the complex and multistage task of erecting a building but extended it to fabricating machinery and systems. In addition, the ships of the Venetian Republic foreshadowed the further development of vessels that resulted, at the end of the Renaissance (approximately 1600), in modern ship forms that gave Europeans the capacity to embark safely on voyages over the oceans of the world.

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