Barque

From Freepedia

In the 18th century, the British Royal Navy used the term Bark for a nondescript vessel which did not fit any of its usual categories. Thus, when on the advice of Captain James Cook, a collier was bought into the navy and converted for exploration she was called HM Bark Endeavour. She happened to be a ship-rigged sailing vessel with a plain bluff bow and a full stern with windows.

By the end of the 18th century, however, the term barque, sometimes, particularly in America, spelled bark, came to refer to any vessel with a particular type of rig. This comprises three (or more) masts, fore and aft sails on the aftermost mast and square sails on all other masts. A well-preserved example of a commercial barque, built in 1878 is Falls of Clyde, now preserved as a museum ship in Honolulu. The United States Coast Guard still has an operational Barque, built in Germany in 1936 and captured as a war prize, the Eagle.

Related rigs are brigantine (2 masts), barquentine (three or more masts, square-rigged on only the fore mast), and the sole instance of a vessel with 2 fore-and-aft rigged masts and 2 square-rigged (the Olympia).

The advantage of these rigs was that they needed smaller (therefore cheaper) crews than a comparable ship or brig-rigged vessel. The ship rig tended therefore, to be retained for training ships.

Throughout the period of sail, the word was used also as a shortening of the barca-longa of the Mediterranean Sea.