Barque

Sails of a three-masted barque

A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel.

History of the term

Standing rigging of a three-masted barque - click image for more details

The word barc appears to have come from Celtic languages. The form adopted by English, perhaps from Irish, was bark, while that adopted by French, perhaps from Gaulish, was barge and barque. French influence in England after the Norman Conquest led to the use in English of both words, although their meanings now are not the same. Well before the ninteenth century a barge had become interpreted as a small vessel of coastal or inland waters. Somewhat later, a bark became a sailing vessel of a distinctive rig as detailed below. In Britain, by the mid-nineteenth century, the spelling had taken on the French form of barque. Francis Bacon used this form of the word as early as 1605. Throughout the period of sail, the word was used also as a shortening of the barca-longa of the Mediterranean Sea.

Bark (Ship)

In the eighteenth 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.

William Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine defined, Bark, as "a general name given to small ships: it is however peculiarly appropriated by seamen to those which carry three masts without a mizen top-sail. Our northern mariners, who are trained in the coal-trade, apply this distinction to a broad-sterned ship, which carries no ornamental figure on the stem or prow."

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.

Elissa enters Port Galveston

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. Also 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 to rise toward wind than a full-rigged ship. While a full-rigged ship is the best runner available, and while fore-and-aft riggers are the best to rise toward wind, the barque is often the best compromise between these two, and combines the best 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 fore 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 most sailing school ships are barques.

A well-preserved example of a commercial barque is Falls of Clyde; built in 1878, it is now preserved as a museum ship in Honolulu. Another well preserved barque is the Pommern, the only windjammer in original condition. Its home is in Mariehamn outside the Åland maritime museum. The only remaining wooden barque that has sailed the oceans is Sigyn, built in Göteborg 1887, now a museum ship in Turku. 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 is used as a training vessel at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. The oldest active sailing vessel in the world, the Star of India, was built in 1863 as a fully square-rigged ship, then converted into a barque in 1901.

Barques and barque shrines in Ancient Egypt

File:Hatshepsut barque - 83d40m - Punt expedition - Karnak.JPG

Barque used by Hatshepsut during expedition to Punt during her reign as pharaoh in the eighteenth dynasty of Ancient Egypt - note the fish, which may be identified by species

In Ancient Egypt, barques were a type of boat used from its earliest recorded times and depicted in the drawings, paintings, and reliefs that document the culture. Transportation to the afterlife was believed to be accomplished by way of barques as well, and the image is used in many of the religious murals and carvings in temples and tombs.

The most important Egyptian barque was the one in which the dead pharaoh was transported to become a deity. Great care was taken to provide a beautiful barque to the pharaoh for this journey and models of the boats were placed in their tombs. Models built of these boats have been found that range from tiny to huge. Wealthy and royal members of the culture also provided barques for their final journey from their tombs.

French archaeologists determined the terminology of many as of Ancient Egyptian culture, hence the term was used in translation to describe these vessels that date back to the earliest of written human records, and has survived as the accepted terminology for their vessels. The type of vessel depicted in Egyptian images remains quite similar throughout the thousands of years during which the culture persisted.

Barques were important religious artifacts and since the deities were thought to travel in this fashion in the sky—where the milky way was seen as a great waterway that was as important as the Nile on Earth—statues of the deities travelled not by boats on water, but by smaller symbolic boats which were carried about by religious leaders and their staff members for ceremonies. Temples included barque shrines in which the sacred barques rested when a procession was not in progress. There the boats would be watched over and cared for by the staff of that temple or a larger religious complex.

See also

• Barquentine
• Brigantine (2 masts)
• Jackass-barque
• List of large sailing vessels

References

• Oxford English Dictionary (1971) ISBN 0-19-861212-5

External links

• "Sailing Ship Rigs" Infosheet Guide to Classic Sailing Rigs Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
• Description of the four-masted barque Kaiwo Maru