Barquentine
Belgian barquentine Mercator
Type	Sailing rig
Place of origin	Northwest Europe and America

A barquentine (alternatively barkentine) is a sailing vessel with three or more masts; with a square rigged foremast and fore-and-aft rigged main, mizzen and any other masts.

Modern barquentine sailing rig[link]

A barquentine sail plan.

While a full-rigged ship is square-rigged on all three masts, and the barque is square-rigged on the foremast and main, the barquentine extends the principle by making only the foremast square-rigged.^[1] The advantages of a smaller crew, good performance before the wind and the ability to sail relatively close to the wind while carrying plenty of cargo made it a popular rig at the end of the 19th century.

Today, barquentines are popular with modern tall ship and sail training operators as their suite of mainly fore-and-aft sails can be operated with ease and efficiency, but the single mast of square sails offers long distance speed and dramatic appearance in port.

Origin of the term[link]

The term "barquentine" is 17th century in origin, formed from "barque" in imitation of "brigantine", a two-masted vessel square-rigged only on the forward mast, and apparently formed from the word brig.^{[Note 1][2]}

Historic and modern examples[link]

Painting of the Mercator

• Gazela Primeiro of 1901.
• Concordia, a sail training ship that capsized and sank on 17 February 2010.
• Transit, an experimental design of 1800 that could be worked entirely from the deck.
• Peacemaker launched 1989.
• Many smaller ships of the late 19th century Royal Navy were rigged as barquentines, including the Redbreast-class gunboats.
• KRI Dewaruci of Indonesian Navy, launched and commissioned in 1953, still in service now; a well-known tall ship used for cadet training and ambassador of the sea, sails around the world and visits many countries.

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up barquentine in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

This naval article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e