290 : The Atlantic 



By various stages the fore-and-aft rig began to supplant the square 

 rig. There were more barkantines and fewer barks, more brigantines 

 and fewer brigs. The very large massive cargo-carrying schooner 

 underwent a period of development. Traditionally the schooner had 

 been a two-masted vessel but these heavy cargo carriers soon de- 

 parted from that model and began adding supplementary masts as 

 fast as the trade could absorb them so there came to be three-four-five- 

 six- and even seven-masted schooners. The rig of these giant centi- 

 pedes was not particularly attractive and had nothing in common 

 with the beauty and symmetry of the two-masted Banks fishery 

 schooner. In fact the hull of the giant cargo schooner was not derived 

 from the traditional small schooner. It seems to have begun where the 

 late modified packets left off and went on from there to the point 

 where a cross section of the hull began to look very much like the 

 hull of a freight steamer. 



These sailing freighters were developed for use on long coastwise 

 hauls but they also crossed the oceans in international trade. They 

 carried cargoes of corn, wheat and other grains and also raw materi- 

 als like wood and coal and bulky manufactured articles like steel 

 shapes and steel rails. 



The cargo schooner seems to have reached the apex of its develop- 

 ment in about 1902 with the launching on the Fore River in Massa- 

 chusetts of the Thomas W. Lawson. This was a steel-hulled seven- 

 masted schooner, 403 feet in length. The same general conditions that 

 finally eliminated from the sea the ships and the barks have also 

 brought about the disappearance of the transatlantic schooner. The 

 coastwise schooner had a longer life. Until recent years we used to 

 see along our coast lumber schooners from Maine and coal schooners 

 from the Delaware, but these also have disappeared. The beautiful 

 "Banks Fisherman" is still occasionally seen in use but is now rapidly 

 being displaced by uglier auxihary vessels and so-called "power 

 schooners." 



The schooner survives as a fast and fine pleasure boat or yacht. 

 Notable examples of this class that still linger in memory are the 

 schooner Dauntless that in 1887 made the crossing of the Atlantic 

 from Bay Ridge to Queenstown in sixteen days. In 1890, at the begin- 

 ning of a trip around the world, the same vessel sailed from Newport 

 to the Old Head of Kinsale in twenty-three days. In 1905 the schooner 

 Atlantic crossed the ocean and won the cup ofFered by the German 

 kaiser. She was a vessel of 207 tons; her length on the water line was 

 135 feet; her beam 29 feet; her draft 16 feet 6 inches. She crossed the 



