the.com/barque
a sailing ship that traded glory for cargo and still looked magnificent doing it
means A sailing vessel with three or more masts, square-rigged on all but the rearmost mast, which carries fore-and-aft sails.
from From French 'barque,' borrowed from Late Latin 'barca,' a small boat — likely a cousin of 'barge,' which sailed in from the same Latin source. The word drifted across the Mediterranean languages (Italian and Spanish 'barca') before English picked it up, narrowing it over time from 'any boat' to this specific, sturdy rig. The deeper root may trace to a word for a ship's small ferrying craft, though the trail before Latin grows hazy.
- rig
- Three-plus masts, square sails forward, fore-and-aft on the rear
- crew savings
- Needed fewer sailors than full square-riggers
- poetic afterlife
- Word survives mostly in verse and ship names
- darwin's ride
- HMS Beagle was a converted barque
- workhorse
- Hauled grain and nitrate across oceans cheaply
hms endeavour — captain cook's ship that mapped australia and the pacific, launched 1768
cutty sark — scottish tea clipper barque built 1869, preserved in greenwich london
pamir — four-masted barque that sank in 1957 atlantic storm, last commercial sailing ship lost at sea