Schooner in the context of Dinghy

A sailing ship is a sea-going vessel that uses sails mounted on masts to harness the power of wind and propel the vessel. There is a variety of sail plans that propel sailing ships, employing square-rigged or fore-and-aft sails. Some ships carry square sails on each mast—the brig and full-rigged ship, said to be "ship-rigged" when there are three or more masts. Others carry only fore-and-aft sails on each mast, for instance some schooners. Still others employ a combination of square and fore-and-aft sails, including the barque, barquentine, and brigantine.

Early sailing ships were used for river and coastal waters in ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Austronesian peoples developed maritime technologies that included the fore-and-aft crab-claw sail and with catamaran and outrigger hull configurations, which enabled the Austronesian expansion into the islands of the Indo-Pacific. This expansion originated in Taiwan c. 3000 BC and propagated through Island Southeast Asia, reaching Near Oceania c. 1500 BC, Hawaii c. 900 AD, and New Zealand c. 1200 AD. The maritime trading network in the Indo-Pacific dates from at least 1500 BC. Later developments in Asia produced the junk and dhow—vessels that incorporated features unknown in Europe at the time.

Bermuda rig, Bermudian rig, or Marconi rig is a type of sailing rig that uses a triangular sail set abaft (behind) the mast. It is the typical configuration for most modern sailboats. Whilst commonly seen in sloop-rigged vessels, Bermuda rig is used in a range of configurations, for instance, a cutter or a schooner (where it may be used in conjunction with gaff rigged sails on other masts), and several other types.

Bermuda rig takes its name from Bermuda, where it was developed in the 17th century. The term Marconi, a reference to the inventor of the radio, Guglielmo Marconi, became associated with this configuration in the early 20th century, because the wires that stabilize the mast of a Bermuda rig reminded observers of the wires on early radio masts.

A fore-and-aft rig is a sailing ship rig with sails set mainly in the median plane of the keel, rather than perpendicular to it, as on a square-rigged vessel.

A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the latter part of the 19th century. In commercial use, they were gradually replaced by fore-and-aft rigged vessels such as schooners, as owners sought to reduce crew costs by having rigs that could be handled by fewer men. In Royal Navy use, brigs were retained for training use when the battle fleets consisted almost entirely of iron-hulled steamships.

Brigs were prominent in the coastal coal trade of British waters. 4,395 voyages to London with coal were recorded in 1795. With an average of eight or nine trips per year for one vessel, that is a fleet of over 500 colliers trading to London alone. Other ports and coastal communities were also served by colliers trading to Britain's coal ports. In the first half of the 19th century, the vast majority were rigged as brigs, and that rig was retained for longer in the northeast of England.

A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. The term was also retrospectively applied to the Baltimore clipper, which originated in the late 18th century.

Clippers were generally narrow for their length, small by later 19th-century standards, could carry limited bulk freight, and had a large total sail area. "Clipper" does not refer to a specific sailplan; clippers may be schooners, brigs, brigantines, etc., as well as full-rigged ships. Clippers were mostly constructed in British and American shipyards, although France, Brazil, the Netherlands, and other nations also produced some. Clippers sailed all over the world, primarily on the trade routes between the United Kingdom and China, in transatlantic trade, and on the New York-to-San Francisco route around Cape Horn during the California gold rush. Dutch clippers were built beginning in the 1850s for the tea trade and passenger service to Java.

Goleta (/ɡəˈliːtə/ gə-LEE-tə; Spanish: [ɡoˈleta]; Spanish for "schooner") is a city in southern Santa Barbara County, California, United States. It was incorporated as a city in 2002, after a long period as the largest unincorporated populated area in the county. As of the 2000 census, the census-designated place (CDP) had a total population of 55,204. A significant portion of the census territory of 2000 was not included in the city. The population of Goleta was 32,690 at the 2020 census. It is known for being close to the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Gaspee affair was a significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. HMS Gaspee was a Royal Navy revenue schooner that enforced the Navigation Acts around Newport, Rhode Island, in 1772. It ran aground in shallow water while chasing the packet boat Hannah on June 9 off Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of men led by Abraham Whipple and John Brown attacked, boarded, and burned the Gaspee to the waterline.

The event sharply increased tensions between American colonists and Crown officials, particularly given that it had followed the Boston Massacre in 1770. Crown officials in Rhode Island aimed to increase their control over the colony's legitimate trade and stamp out smuggling in order to increase their revenue from the colony. Concomitantly, Rhode Islanders increasingly protested the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts and other British policies that had interfered with the colony's traditional businesses, which primarily rested on involvement in the triangular slave trade.

Port Victoria (formerly Wauraltee) is a town on the west coast of Yorke Peninsula in the Australian state of South Australia.

Like many other coastal towns on the peninsula, it has a jetty and used to be a thriving port for the export of grain to England. Its anchorage is sheltered from westerly weather by nearby Wardang Island. The windjammers carrying the bagged grain called at Falmouth, England or Queenstown, Ireland for orders of where the grain was to be taken. Many of the smaller ports were visited only by coastal ketches and schooners. Port Victoria also had an anchorage offshore for the larger windjammers. These were loaded from the ketches which were in turn loaded at the jetty. The peak of the windjammer trade, the Great Grain Race, was in the 1930s; the last working sailing ships visited in 1949. As a result, Port Victoria is known as the last of the windjammer ports. This era is illustrated in the Port Victoria Maritime Museum.

A collier is a bulk cargo ship designed or used to carry coal. Early evidence of coal being transported by sea includes use of coal in London in 1306. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, coal was shipped from the River Tyne to London and other destinations. Other ports also exported coal – for instance the Old Quay in Whitehaven harbour was built in 1634 for the loading of coal. London became highly reliant on the delivery of coal by sea – Samuel Pepys expressed concern in the winter of 1666–67 that war with the Dutch would prevent a fleet of 200 colliers getting through. In 1795, 4,395 cargoes of coal were delivered to London. By 1824, this number had risen to about 7,000; by 1839, it was over 9,000. The trade continued to the end of the twentieth century, with the last cargo of coal leaving the Port of Tyne in February, 2021.

The earliest type of collier on which there is detailed information is the Whitby-built cat. These were bluff-bowed, round-sterned, strongly-built ships that were in common use from the ports of Northeast England in the second half of the eighteenth century. Examples were used as research and exploration ships by the Royal Navy – the best known being HMS Endeavour. In the first half of the nineteenth century, collier brigs were the most common type and remained popular with Northeast coast shipowners. Elsewhere, sailing competition in the latter part of the century was from schooners and other vessels with fore and aft rig.The first steam collier, John Bowes, was launched in 1852 and proved successful, with many others being built as a result. Sailing and steam colliers co-existed for the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, with coal being carried by sailing vessels at the time of the First World War.

Effie M. Morrissey (now Ernestina-Morrissey) is a historic schooner on permanent display in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Originally a "high liner" fishing the Grand Banks of Newfoundland out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, she made many scientific expeditions to the Arctic, sponsored by American museums, the Explorers Club and the National Geographic Society; she also helped survey the Arctic for the United States Government during World War II. She then went on to a final career as a packet ship, before undergoing a complete restoration in 1982.

She is currently designated by the United States Department of the Interior as a National Historic Landmark as part of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. She is the State Ship of Massachusetts.

Lewis R. French is a gaff-rigged topsail schooner sailing out of Camden, Maine as a "Maine windjammer" offering 3 to 6 night cruises to tourists. Built in 1871, she is the oldest known two-masted schooner in the United States, and one of a small number of this once-common form of vessel in active service. The ship was designated a US National Historic Landmark in 1992.

Oosterschelde is a three-masted topsail schooner from the Netherlands, built in 1918. She is the largest restored Dutch freightship and the only remaining Dutch three-masted topsail schooner. Her home port is Rotterdam.

As a freighter with a deadweight of 400 tons, she transported mainly clay, stone and wood, but also herring, bran, potatoes, straw and bananas. In the 1930s, a heavier diesel engine was installed and some sail-rigging was removed (including the aft mast). In 1939, she was sold to a Danish shipping company and, rebaptised Fuglen II, became one of the most modern ships in the Danish fleet. In 1954, she was sold to a Swede, renamed Sylvan and thoroughly rebuilt to a modern motorised coaster.

Orianda (originally named Ragna IV, also previously known as Sabina) is an 85-foot (26 m) Bermudian staysail schooner. It was built in 1937 by C. Andersen, designed by Danish naval architect Oscar W. Dahlstrom. It was used in Denmark during World War II and captured by Germany before being recovered and restored. It is currently used as a charter vessel.