TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book. All changes noted in the ERRATA have been applied to the etext. A superscript is denoted by ^x or ^{xx}, for example XIX^e. Basic fractions are displayed as ½ ⅓ ¼ etc; other fractions are shown in the form a-b/c, for example 280-18/94. Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book. SAILING SHIPS [Illustration: (A Seventeenth-century English Warship)] SAILING SHIPS THE STORY OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY BY E. KEBLE CHATTERTON WITH A HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS [Illustration: (colophon)] LONDON SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD. 3 ADAM STREET, ADELPHI, W.C. 1909 _All rights reserved._ IN PIAM MEMORIAM PATRIS DILECTISSIMI QVI ME AD MARIS NAVIVMQVE STVDIVM PRIMVS EXCITAVIT [Illustration] PREFACE. This history of sailing ships has been written primarily for the general reader, in the hope that the sons and daughters of a naval nation, and of an Empire that stretches beyond the seas, may find therein a record of some interest and assistance in enlarging and systematising their ideas on the subject, especially as regards the ships of earlier centuries. It is not necessary to look far—no further than the poster-designs on advertisement-hoardings—to observe the errors into which our artists of to-day are liable to fall owing to lack of historical knowledge in this subject; and to put (for instance) triangular headsails with a rectangular sail on the “bonaventure mizzen-mast” of an early sixteenth-century ship, is an inaccuracy scarcely to be pardoned. Quite recently one of the chief librarians in one of our biggest national treasure-houses informed me that when an artist, who had been commissioned to illustrate a certain work, came to him for guidance as to the ships of a recent period, he was at a loss where to lay his hands on a book which should show him what he wished to know by picture and description. Only after much search was the requisite knowledge obtained.