Sailing Blog

What is the Difference Between a Sailing Boat and a Sailing Ship?

In attempting to answer this question it is hard to be precise. According to Google, in casual use, the word boat is often used to refer to any water-going vessel, regardless of its size or how it's powered. However, large ocean-faring watercraft—those that use multiple sails or engines—are more properly called ships. Other definitions refer to sailing ships as having bowsprits and multiple masts, or masts with multiple sections. However, modern racing yachts (boats) employ multiple sails and the use of bowsprits is returning as they are employed to handle large reaching sails.

Another term used to try to distinguish as sailing boat from a sailing ship was ‘ocean-going’, but large racing sailing yachts, also referred to as ‘boats’, regularly make round-the-world voyages, often non-stop. They could hardly not be referred to as ‘ocean-going’. In the age of The Great Windships there would have been no point in such voyages: they were merchant ships that earned their living taking goods and people to and from one port, or another.

Generally, the word ship isn't commonly applied to smaller craft. A general rule might be: you can put a boat on a ship, but you can’t put a ship on a boat. In the great age of sail, as described in The Great Windships, sailing ships might carry several boats, which could be sailed or rowed. They were used to get ashore, to other ships, bring stores aboard, to explore potential anchorages, chart coastlines, or as refuges when the ‘ship’ had to be abandoned. A case in point would be in Joseph Conrad’s novel, Youth, where the ship caught fire and the crew had to retreat to the three boats carried on-board.

Again, in casual usage, the term ‘sailing boat’ is often used to distinguish a small watercraft from power boats (aluminum dinghies powered by outboard motors) and motor yachts with diesel engines, similar to those employed in motor trucks, both of which generally rely entirely on engines for propulsion. Nevertheless, modern yachts (as opposed to the smaller sailing ‘dinghies’) are also most often equipped with (generally smaller) diesel engines. But in maritime terminology there are always exceptions. A large sailing boat that is equipped with both a sizeable engine and with a competent sailing rig, will most often be referred to as a ‘motor sailer’ – a hybrid. It can proceed under either or both methods of propulsion depending on the weather conditions or the skipper’s inclination. A motor yacht, on the other hand, will proceed entirely under its (usually diesel) engine or engines.  

Thanks to the enormous flexibility of the English language, all of these are can be referred to as ‘water craft’, although very large craft are generally referred to as ‘vessels’.

The question then arises as to why submarines are called boats and not ships?

Using the above guidance, submarines are technically ‘ships’. Yet they are traditionally referred to as ‘boats’. The reason appears to be that originally submarines were very small and manned only when in use, so ‘boat’ was appropriate. Another reason offered is that they only had one deck. Modern submarines, however, mostly have two main decks – an upper and a lower. Thus, as they developed into larger vessels—and rightfully should have been called ships—the original term stuck.

 

SAILING BOOKS

Readers, having read my book, sometimes ask me what other books on sailing I found interesting during my research, and that I would recommend.

In my experience, the best sea adventure books tend to be autographical and record actual events. One of the best is The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby. He wrote about a voyage he made to Australia when he was only eighteen years old just before the Second World War. He crewed on the great windjammer, Moshulu, which sailed from London in ballast to a port in Spencers Gulf in South Australia to load wheat, after which it made the return voyage to England following the ‘Clipper Route’ around Cape Horn. The quality of the writing is very good and Newby went on to make a very successful career in travel writing.

Another is Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. Sailing alone around the world is a commonplace event these days with nevertheless highly courageous sailors in state-of-the art craft, assisted by all sorts of electronic technology. Slocum was the first person to achieve the feat. The differences are he made the voyage in a derelict boat that he re-built himself and re-named Spray. He had nothing but an alarm clock he bought in a second-hand shop to keep time. He had no chronometer set on GMT to help him determine his longitude. Slocum was no foolhardy mariner who just happened to be lucky. He was an experienced maritime master and when, on a previous voyage, his ship was wrecked in Argentina with only his wife and son as crew, he built another ship on the beach from the wreckage of the old one and sailed it home to Maine. He later told the story of this adventure in another book entitled The Voyage of the Liberdade. Joshua Slocum was the very model of nineteenth century seamanship and self-reliance.

A fourth autobiographical work and perhaps one of the best sailing books drawn from life and from a literary point of view is Richard Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast. It has survived the passage of time as a work of considerable literary value and a great piece of sea adventure literature. Somewhat incongruously, Dana didn’t spend two years crewing a sailing ship as an ordinary seaman, as the title suggests. Much of the time was spent onshore on the coast of California when it was still a Spanish colony. Dana was a promising student about to further his studies at Harvard when it was decided that his somewhat weak constitution would benefit from a long sea voyage. His ship and its master left a good deal to be desired and the destination involved rounding Cape Horn. Dana survived this arduous journey, writing absorbing about the conditions and his captain and shipmates. He also wrote knowledgeably about the seamanship, and sometimes lack of it, he witnessed along the way. His difficulty was that, once on the West Coast, he was somewhat stranded and, not wanting to return on the same ship, he spent a good deal of time onshore preparing cow hides for shipment back east, before scoring a much better berth for the voyage home. What I found most enjoyable about this book, besides the quality of the writing, is his recounting of his return as a successful retired lawyer, to what was by then part of the USA. There he meets many of the people he had known as a young man and writes endearingly about those he most admired during his earlier sojourn.

By contrast, fictional sea books and books about ships and sailing abound, to the point where it is almost an industry in itself. Most of the genre differ from The Great Windships in that they recount tales of sea adventures on warships and mostly in the British Navy.

Probably chief among these is C S Forester’s series that follow the fortunes of a fictional officer in the British Navy who rises from obscurity and without patronage by dent of strong personal qualities and a wide range of abilities. Forester is credited with creating the naval historical novel despite avoiding any accusations of historical inaccuracy by having his hero off some other mission at times of critical battles during the Napoleonic Wars. His fictional adventures range over some seventeen novels during which he rises from a sea-sick midshipman without connections, to Admiral of the Fleet.

Another series of maritime novels that follow the life and adventures of a similarly fictitious naval officer at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. They are Patrick O’Brian’s 20-novel series based on the imagined lives of fictional English naval officer, Jack Aubrey and Irish-Catalan ship’s surgeon, Stephen Maturin. Unlike Forester’s Hornblower, O’Brian incorporates his protagonists into major historical events of the Napoleonic era in such a way as to avoid affecting the outcome.

Best Books on Sailing (Cont'd)

One of what I consider was one of the best books on sailing was one I read when I was just getting into the sport. It was entitled simply ‘Sailing’ and it was first published in 1949 by Penguin as part of a series of Penguin Handbooks on pursuing a number of active pastimes. As well as advising on how to choose a boat or yacht and buying it, it embraced fitting it out and racing it, all in simple language – an ideal book for the beginner. Although written for the English reader, its lessons on how to actually sail a boat are timeless. The text was charmingly interspersed with poems, sea shanties, delightful sketches, - some instructive and others purely whimsical - and (now outdated) photographs. Many involved classes that have since passed into history. Heaton also covers buoyage, simple navigation and the international ‘rules of the road’ at sea.


 

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Photo of Windships in Hardcover

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