lsewhere, for they have to endure winters of intense
cold and heavy gales and they are always in risk of stranding or being
driven ashore.

The story of these hardy men is interwoven, for the most part, with the
development of the schooner in size and power. This graceful craft, so
peculiar to its own coast and people, was built for utility and possessed a
simple beauty of its own when under full sail. The schooners were at first
very small because it was believed that large fore-and-aft sails could not
be handled with safety. They were difficult to reef or lower in a blow
until it was discovered that three masts instead of two made the task much
easier. For many years the three-masted schooner was the most popular kind
of American merchant vessel. They clustered in every Atlantic port and were
built in the yards of New England, New York, New Jersey, and
Virginia--built by the mile, as the saying was, and sawed off in lengths to
suit the owners' pleasure. They carried the coal, ice, lumber of the whole
sea-board and were so economical of man-power that they earned dividends
where steamers or square-rigged ships would not have paid for themselves.

As soon as a small steam-engine was employed to hoist the sails, it became
possible to launch much larger schooners and to operate them at a
marvelously low cost. Rapidly the four-master gained favor, and then came
the five-and six-masted vessels, gigantic ships of their kind. Instead of
the hundred-ton schooner of a century ago, Hampton Roads and Boston Harbor
saw these great cargo carriers which could stow under hatches four and five
thousand tons of coal, and whose masts soared a hundred and fifty feet
above the deck. Square-rigged ships of the same capacity would have
required crews of a hundred men, but these schooners were comfortably
handled by a company of fifteen all told, only ten of whom were in the
forecastle. There was no need of sweating and hauling at braces and
halliards. The steam-winch undertook all this toil. The tremendous sails,
stretching a hundred feet from boom to gaff could not have been managed
otherwise. Even for trimming sheets or setting topsails, it was necessary
merely to take a turn or two around the drum of the winch engine and turn
the steam valve. The big schooner was the last word in cheap, efficient
transportation by water. In her own sphere of activity she was as notable
an achievement as the Western Ocean packet or the Cape Horn clipper.