292 : The Atlantic 



small burdens aggregating an incredibly large total tonnage. It was 

 they that in the great ports assembled the cargoes that made the large 

 and more spectacular ocean vessels needed and useful. For centuries 

 they performed similar services for the many islands of the Carib- 

 bean and the Atlantic shores of North and South America. 



The huge cargo schooners of the type of the Thomas W. Lawson 

 and the Roger P. Frye did not seem to be the small schooner grown 

 large but rather the last and ultimate stage of the big square-riggers 

 shedding their square sails in favor of fore-and-aft sails. In any event 

 they won a brief usage in the last days of the large ocean sailing ves- 

 sel. 



The small fore-and-afters survive in many parts of the world as 

 useful carriers of passengers and cargo though their places are more 

 and more usurped by motorships and motorboats. On every Atlantic 

 coast they survive as yachts and pleasure boats, for no motor can 

 provide an equal measure of quiet ease or of sportsmanship or of 

 beauty. They will continue to survive as long as sane men dwell in a 

 reasonable society. Finally it is interesting to observe that when the 

 small fore-and-afters undertake long ocean passages they feel the need 

 for, and tend to add, square sails or elements that act like the square 

 sails which were so essential to the big sailing ships of the past. 



