Pass we now to trace the progress of the schooner. It is a common error to suppose that this rig was derived direct from the cutter by merely adding another mast and sail of the same shape as the mainsail. Such a statement is pure guess-work, and entirely contrary to fact. The schooner originated quite independently of the cutter and much later, though the shape of her mainsail and foresail was obtained from the former. About the beginning of the seventeenth century a craft far from uncommon among the Dutch was the sloop. Now in order to clear the ground, let us carefully separate the three distinct kinds of craft to which this name belonged at that time. The word sloop, or more properly _sloepe_, was applied less to the rig than to the size of the craft, denoting a somewhat small tonnage. Thus it was primarily applied to a ship’s big boat, such as was used to run out the kedge anchor and for fetching provisions and water from the shore. The same name was also given to the Dutch vessels of about 55 feet long and 12½ feet beam which sailed to the Cape Verde Islands. More familiar to us was the custom of applying it to the early cutter-like craft which carried a triangular foresail yet no jib. But not one of these is the sloop we are looking for. This is found in that kind of sailing craft which was about 42 feet overall and with 9 feet beam. She was rigged with two pole masts, the mainmast being 24 feet long. On each she had just such a sail as we see in Fig. 83 of a modern schuyt, with loose foot and with both gaff and boom, but the most important fact is that she had neither bowsprit nor headsails of any kind, while her foremast was stepped right as far forward as it could get. There are plenty of contemporary prints and paintings in existence to show such a vessel, which usually had an enormous sheer coming up from bow to stern. This, then, was not a schooner but a sloop, and you may search high and low in all the seventeenth century dictionaries, marine and otherwise, but you will not find such a word as “schooner” in existence. We come, then, to the early part of the eighteenth century, and we cross to North America. When in 1664 the British, during the war with Holland, seized the Dutch colony of the New Netherlands and changed the name of New Amsterdam to New York in honour of Charles II.’s brother, most of the Dutch settlers who had come out from Europe remained. So, like those early people who trekked westwards across the Syrian desert to Egypt, the Dutch had also brought with them their ideas and practical knowledge of shipbuilding, included in which was that of making sloops. It was at Gloucester, Massachusetts, still to-day famous for the finest schooners and the very finest schooner-sailors that ever tasted brine on their lips, that in 1713 the first genuine schooner with a triangular headsail was built. To add the latter to the two-masted sloop was but the easiest transition. Not till the first vessel of