this now enormous class was actually making its first contact with water was the name schooner bestowed on it. As she was leaving the stocks some one remarked “Oh, how she scoons.” “Very well, then,” answered her proud builder, “a scooner let her be.” And so she has remained ever since. For the next century and a half Gloucester went ahead building these beautiful creatures, more stately than a cutter, less ponderous than a full-rigged ship, until 1852, when the famous _America_ still perpetuated in the America Cup came across to the English waters and so wiped the slate that every rich owner of yachts desired to turn them into the same rig as this Yankee. We will say no more about her at present as we shall presently make her acquaintance anew when we come to deal entirely with yachts. [Illustration: FIG. 87. THE SCHOONER “PINKIE” (1800-50).] [Illustration: FIG. 88. THE “FREDONIA.” BUILT IN 1891.] But to return to the more commercial schooner; for whatever else Gloucester, Massachusetts, may yet become famous, it will always be associated with that wonderful fleet of fishing schooners which those who have read Kipling’s “Captains Courageous,” and Mr. J. B. Connolly’s “The Seiners,” already know. The origin of this wonderful Gloucester breed may be traced to the Dutch fly-boat, or _flibot_, of the eighteenth century. The next step in the evolution of the Gloucester schooner is seen in Fig. 87, the _Pinkie_, engaged in the fishery industry between 1800 and 1850. Although the sail plan belongs to a smaller boat than the one just indicated, yet we see the first step in the introduction of the single headsail to the old two-masted “sloepe,” with the foremast even now stepped very far forward. Impelled by the demands for a ship that would be able to carry its fish to market with the utmost despatch, but which would be able to endure being caught in the terrible seas off the Newfoundland Banks; and subsequently encouraged to progress through the popularity which such craft were obtaining among the American pilots who used to come out enormous distances into the Atlantic in those days to meet the incoming liners, the builders and designers went on improving the design and rig, giving them fine hollow lines, adding jibs and standing bowsprits, greater draught and speed, larger spars with a vast square measurement of canvas. The _Fredonia_, seen in Fig. 88, was one of the famous schooners of the ’nineties and is so still. She was designed by W. Burgess in 1891, and with her cut-away fore-foot and finer lines is a great improvement on the old Dutch models. This vessel measures 114 feet 2 inches long, with 25 feet beam, drawing 12 feet 8 inches. Her displacement is 188 tons, and her sail area is the enormous extent of 7542 square feet. Fig. 89 represents one of the earliest of the twentieth-century productions, and is designed by the famous Crowinshield. Her fore-foot is cut away more like that of a Solent racing schooner-yacht.