American built schooner (Carse 1965:23)

A schooner is a vessel rigged with fore-and-aft sails on her two or more masts, and originally carried square topsails on the foremast, though later, with the advance in rig designs, these were changed to jibheaded or jackyard-topsails. Properly speaking, a schooner has two masts only, with the mainmast taller than the fore, but three-masted, four-masted, and five-masted schooners have been built. Schooners were largely used in the coasting trade and for fishing on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, their attraction to owners is that they required a smaller crew than a square-rigged vessel of comparable size (Kemp 1988:759).

As soon as the schooner was introduced into American waters, it began to threaten the sloop's position as the most popular colonial vessel. The schooner had two important advantages over the sloop- sailing ability and economy. The schooner could quickly alter and balance its sail area to meet a variety of weather conditions, while the sloop was severely handicapped by having all sails centered on a single mast. Furthermore, with its sail area divided into smaller units, a schooner was more manageable and could operate with fewer men (Goldenberg 1976:78).