Barquentine

This article is about the ship. For information on the fictional character in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels see Barquentine (Gormenghast).

Description

Barquentine Mercator is now a museum ship at anchor in Ostend, Belgium

barquentine

A barquentine is a sailing vessel with three or more masts, and with a square rigged foremast and only fore-and-aft rigged sails on the main, mizzen and any other masts. See also sail-plan. For an example of a barquentine see: Gazela. Related rigs are brigantine (2 masts), barque (square-rigged on all but the mizzen mast), and the sole instance of a vessel with 2 fore-and-aft rigged masts and 2 square-rigged (the Olympia). Earlier and very controversial examples of this class of vessel were the Transits of 1800 and her successors. Their inventor, Richard Hall Gower, claimed that they could be worked entirely from the deck.