Barque Rig
By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the term barque (sometimes, particularly in the USA, spelled bark) came to refer to any vessel with a particular type of sail-plan. This comprises three (or more) masts, fore-and-aft sails on the aftermost mast and square sails on all other masts. Barques were the workhorse of the Golden Age of Sail in the mid 19th century as they attained passages that nearly matched full rigged ships but could operate with smaller crews.
The advantage of these rigs was that they needed smaller (therefore cheaper) crews than a comparable full-rigged ship or brig-rigged vessel as there were fewer of the labour intensive square sails, and the rig itself is cheaper. Conversely, the ship rig tended to be retained for training vessels where the larger the crew, the more seamen were trained.
Another advantage is that a barque can outperform a schooner or barkentine, and is both easier to handle and better at going to windward than a full-rigged ship. While a full-rigged ship is the best runner available, and while fore-and-aft rigged vessels are the best at going to windward, the barque is often the best compromise, and combines the best elements of these two.
Most ocean-going windjammers were four-masted barques, since the four-masted barque is considered the most efficient rig available because of its ease of handling, small need of manpower, good running capabilities, and good capabilities of rising toward wind. Usually the main mast was the tallest; that of Moshulu extends to 58 m off the deck. The four-masted barque can be handled with a surprisingly small crew—at minimum, ten—and while the usual crew was around thirty, almost half of them could be apprentices.
Today many sailing school ships are barques.
A well-preserved example of a commercial barque is the Pommern, the only windjammer in original condition. Its home is in Mariehamn outside the Åland maritime museum. The wooden barque Sigyn, built in Göteborg 1887, is now a museum ship in Turku. The wooden whaling barque Charles W. Morgan, launched 1841, taken out of service 1921, is now a museum ship at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. The United States Coast Guard still has an operational barque, built in Germany in 1936 and captured as a war prize, the USCGC Eagle, which the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut uses as a training vessel. The Sydney Heritage Fleet restored an iron-hulled three-masted barque, the James Craig, originally constructed as "Clan Macleod" in 1874 and sailing at sea fortnightly. The oldest active sailing vessel in the world, the Star of India, was built in 1863 as a full-rigged ship, then converted into a barque in 1901.
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