eli5 Why some sailing ships have multiple square sails like Clipper? Why not have one continuous sail from top to bottom like Korean Turtle Ship?
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The biggest factor IMO is that Asian sails use sticks. If the sail has sticks it tends to stay flat in the wind. European sails are just a big piece of canvas, having smaller chunks helps to keep the sail straight.
Other factors are:
you have to man the sail. Lifting a single piece sail requires tremendous amount of force. A turtle ship is very small compared to a ship of the line. Specially if you consider the rigging.
Mast is strong but not invincible: if you do a single very tall sail you have the top of the mast to be subject to all the force. If you split it to 3 vertical sections you can split the force of the sail and the lower sail is gonna load the lower portion of the mast, which is far stronger than the thinner top. And so on going up. The more you go up the mast the smaller is the sail you can fit. The top sail can be smaller and lighter, loading less the top thin part of the mast.
For the same effort, you can fit the ship with a taller mast and more total sail surface.
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