Curiously Dutch-like, too, is the Norfolk wherry seen in Fig. 100, with her one enormous sail, her mast fitted in a tabernacle for ease in lowering, unsupported by shrouds or rigging of any sort other than the forestay by which the mast is eased down. Only one halyard is required for both peak and throat, which are raised by means of a winch forward of the mast. She has no leeboards, nevertheless she draws under three feet of water: although I have heard her sweepingly condemned as defying all existing rules, yet the way she can sail right close into the wind is incredible to those who have not seen her. In running with her bonnet off and her sail close reefed she gripes badly and is a veritable handful as she comes sailing into Great Yarmouth from across Breydon Water or tearing through the rushes of Barton Broad and down the tortuous and narrow Ant. Within recent years, now that the Norfolk and Suffolk waterways have become a tourist resort, the wherry has changed her face a little and become smarter, and the tanned sail is often allowed to remain white, while the hatches have been taken away and a cabin roof, allowing plenty of head-room with ladies’ saloons, pianos and other luxuries, have come in. But all the time the wherry remains as a useful cargo boat for bringing coals and timber from the ports of Lowestoft and Yarmouth inland to Norwich and the East Anglian villages, returning with eels, or marsh hay for thatching. Sometimes one notices them, in settled weather, with a fair wind steal quietly out from Lowestoft harbour and make a sea passage round to Yarmouth, but as Mr. Warington Smyth well says in his “Mast and Sail,” “in the smallest wind and sea the wherry loses her head entirely and develops a suicidal tendency to bury herself and crew.” [Illustration: FIG. 101. DHOW-RIGGED YACHT.] [Illustration: FIG. 102. SUEZ DHOWS, WITH A SIBBICK RATER.] [Illustration: FIG. 103. MEDITERRANEAN FELUCCA. _From the model in the South Kensington Museum._]