Until the eighties 1500 tons was considered a good size for a sailing ship, but the time arrived when it became necessary to have ships which possessed both large carrying capacity and speed, and every designer strove to produce a successful compromise between the two. It was soon found that full-rigged ships of 2000 tons and over were not economical ships to work, and thus it was that the four-mast barque came into being. At first many owners went in for four-mast ships, but it was soon proved that besides being more economical the four-mast barque was just as speedy. Following the trend of the times Messrs. Aitken & Lilburn commissioned Barclay, Curle & Co. in 1881 to build them two four-mast barques of 2000 tons burden. These were the sister ships _Loch Moidart_ and _Loch Torridon_; _Loch Moidart_ was launched in September and _Loch Torridon_ in November. The _Loch Moidart_ was only afloat nine years and was a general trader. On the 26th January, 1890, at 4 in the morning, when bound to Hamburg with nitrate from Pisagua, her look-out suddenly reported a bright light on the port bow. Five minutes later she struck on a sand bank, close to the village of Callantsoog in Northern Holland. A violent gale from the westward was blowing at the time, and only two men, one of whom was the cook, succeeded in gaining the shore alive. Her sister ship, _Loch Torridon_, was one of the best known four-mast barques in the British Mercantile Marine, and one of the fastest. “_Loch Torridon_ is perhaps one of the most graceful and elegant models ever launched from the Glasgow yards,” wrote Sir G. M. White, the Naval Architect to the Admiralty, in 1892. In 1904 John Arthur Barry, the Australian writer, wrote of her:—“She is exceptionally lofty as to her masts, exceptionally square as to her yards. She carries nothing above a royal, but her royal yards are as long as the topgallant yards of most vessels. Her lower yards are enormous. The vessel is uncommonly well-manned with 20 hands in the foc’s’le, with the usual complement of petty officers, together with three mates and four apprentices aft. Looking forward from the break of the poop, one is struck by the immense amount of clear room on her decks, giving a visitor a sense of spaciousness and freedom in marked contrast to the often lumbered up decks of the average sailer.”