Traditional ships: The 10 most important types of sailing ships

Sometimes you can't see the wood for the masts: at many maritime festivals, from the Hamburg harbour birthday to the Hanse Sail in Rostock or the Sail Bremerhaven, tall ships and traditional vessels are among the highlights - especially when they have sails on the wind.

The possible combinations for the number of masts and the type of sails seem endless. The former are easy to count, but the sails are a different story. There are basically only two types: Schrat sails, which are set more or less vertically alongside the ship, sometimes on the gaff, sometimes without, and square sails. In contrast to the square sails, they are rectangular and are each supported by a movable yard that can be aligned with the wind. This process is called breasting.

A distinction is made between the following types of sailing ship

The rigs and rigging of most traditional ships and tall ships consist of these three elements - masts, topsails and square sails. Only their number and relationship to each other differ and lead to the different types that have developed over centuries with specific objectives and have been continuously optimised.

Speed, crew size, operability and manoeuvrability were important factors, while economy and efficiency were always in the background. In the following, we present the ten most important types of sailing ships with rigs, according to which they can be differentiated. From the very small to the very large.

1. the cutter

This type of sailing ship was not only used as a working vessel in the past, but also for sport and leisure. It has evolved into the modern yacht: The cutter has only one mast with topsails, two headsails (larger versions may have more) and the mainsail, which in traditional vessels is often divided into a gaff mainsail and a topsail above it.

2. the ketch

If the sail area is distributed over more than one mast, this makes it easier to manoeuvre. This factor used to play a particularly important role when sailing in narrow waters, when many manoeuvres had to be made. This is why the ketch has one and a half masts. A little behind the main mast, but still in front of the rudder, is the much shorter mizzen, which is also riggered.

3. the schooner

The schooner is perhaps the best known of the sailing ship types, which is probably also due to the fact that it was not only widely used as a coastal trading vessel, but could also be trimmed for speed, a quality that in earlier times recommended it for both law enforcement officers and smugglers - and of course for racing.

Like the ketch, the rig consists of two masts with topsails, except that the aft mast is higher or at least as high as the forward one. Three or more masts are also possible. The record holder was the US American Thomas W. Lawson from 1902, with seven (!) masts and a length of 140 metres - and a crew of just under 20 men.

4. the brig

The brig is also a two-master. On this tall ship, however, both masts are "fully" rigged, i.e. rigged with yards. The advantage: on longer passages with reliable winds from aft, square sails are much more efficient than square sails - and the more of them there are, the better. This made the brig particularly suitable for voyages across the Atlantic, as on the outward journey from Europe the stern trade winds could be fully utilised on the southern route, while on the return journey from America, which was further north, the prevailing westerly winds filled the brig's sails.

5. the schooner brig / brigantine

The schooner brig, also known as a brigantine, also has two masts. The clear difference to the schooner and brig, however, is the mixed form of rig and rigging: it has square sails on the foremast, while the main mast behind it is square-rigged. So, as the name suggests, it is a classic compromise among sailing ship types: The square sails allow the schooner brig to sail better downwind than a schooner, but the square sails also allow it to sail higher upwind than a brig.

6. the square-rigged schooner / topsail schooner

The square-rigged or topsail schooner is more than just a single hybrid form, as it comes in many different variants: The basic design corresponds to that of a schooner with two or more masts. However, in order to be able to make better use of aft winds (a square sail can also be helpful for manoeuvres), it has square sails on the foremast, but only in the upper section and then in different numbers or subdivisions. On three-masted ships, the second mast can also carry yards in the topsails.

The 113 metre-long four-masted marlin schooner "Juan Sebastián de Elcano", commissioned in 1928 as a sail training ship for the Spanish Navy, is currently the largest example of this type of sailing ship in service.

7. the barque

Among tall ships, the barque is certainly the most recognisable in this country. This is probably also due to the fact that its two "most prominent" German representatives are so rigged: the "Gorch Fock" and the "Alexander von Humboldt" with its iconic green hull. Barques have three masts, with only square sails being used on the foremast and main mast and only square sails on the mizzen.

The type, initially built of wood, later of steel, became increasingly popular in the second half of the 19th century in global cargo shipping, as it was more cost-effective than the fully rigged full-rigged ship (see 9.) - not least because a smaller crew was sufficient to operate the ship.

8. the schooner barque / barkentine

Like the schooner brig, the schooner barque is a mixture of fully square-rigged and square-rigged masts. Like the barque, it usually has three masts, but only the foremast is equipped with square sails. In the search for the most economical solution for sailing ship types, the schooner barque was experimented with for a long time.

Schooner barques were also built that also carried square sails in the top of the main mast, or four-masters with a combination of two square masts and two topmasts. However, many of these exotic designs were re-rigged into more common variants after a certain time. In the English-speaking world, such crosses were also known as "jackasses".

9. the full ship

More sails are not possible: the full-rigged ship has square sails on all three masts. Under full sail, that makes a maximum of 18 square sails. If you add the topsails, you get just under 30 sails. On the legendary tea clippers, the forefathers of the modern full-rigged ship, there were even more sails when the wind was clear, leeward sails were set on extended yards and every free space was utilised for additional cloth.

They travelled around the world and the fastest ships even raced against each other. The British duel between the "Cutty Sark" and the "Thermopylae" on the return voyage from China to England in 1872 was legendary. After 117 days, the latter crossed the finish line first - but only because the losing ship had already lost her rudder in the Indian Ocean and had to call at a harbour for repairs. Nevertheless, in the end she was only one week behind the winner. The distance measured 12958 nautical miles.

As cargo ships became larger and larger towards the end of the nineteenth century, because freight capacity became increasingly important for commercial operations, four-masted and a single five-masted full-rigged ship also came into service: the "Preussen" of the legendary Hamburg shipping company F. Laeisz. Her end came when she was rammed by a steamer in the English Channel and sank. Its captain had not only deprived the ship of its right of way - he had also underestimated its speed.

10. the four-masted barque

In many respects, it represents the pinnacle of its era among sailing ship types: several hundred four-masted barques were travelling the world's oceans at the turn of the 20th century, bringing saltpetre from Chile and wheat from Australia. Hulls and masts had long since been made of steel. Even though some five-masted barques were launched, the four-masted barque was the perfect cargo ship.

When their time came to an end in the 1920s in the shadow of the global steamship boom, some of them at least became training ships, such as the "Passat", which is now a floating monument in Travemünde. Others are still in service. In the 1980s, Japan even built two of these ships from scratch, also for training purposes. "Nippon Maru" and "Kaiwo Maru" are therefore the youngest sisters in the long history of tall ships.