Text: Edgar Allan Poe (rejected), “A Chapter on Field Sports and Manly Pastimes [Part 13],” Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine (Philadelphia, PA), vol. VI, no. 2, February 1840, 6:98-99

[page 98:]

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A TOP-SAIL SCHOONER, WITH STAY-SAIL AND FLYING JIB.

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A LUGGER.

THE excellence of the American schooners, or clippers, has long been acknowledged by seamy nautical tuition in the globe. The Baltimore ship-builders are famous for the superiority of the mould and the fast sailing quantities of the schooners constructed in their yards. During the late war, several of these vessels were fitted out as privateers, and annoyed the British frigates by their extraordinary speed; many valuable prizes were frequently secured within sight of the enemy’s fleet. [page 99:]

The ease with which schooners are managed in all weathers, and repaired after damage from gale or gnu, rendered them a favorite craft with the piratical navigators of the Gulf. The vessels employed in the slave trade were and are chiefly of the schooner rig, and very generally of Baltimore build. Several of the latter class have been known to exceed three hundred tons burden.

The schooner may be considered the national rig of the minor vessels of America. The revenue cutters, pilot boats, coasters, bay craft, and packet boats, are entirely of the schooner class; in fact, the schooner, both on the American and the English coast, has almost superseded the smaller sized et heavily rigged brigs and clumsy stoops that used to glide so lazily with the tide tie their appointed harbors and stations.

Many handsome pleasure boats of this rig are to be met with in our waters; and in the Royal Yacht Club in England, there are a good number of vessels of this class; but from the reasons stated in the article on “Cutters,” the sloop rig appears to be the favorite with the British amateurs

THE LUGGER.

This inconvenient craft is now a stranger in the bays and along the coast of the United States, but mention is made of it in the early days of the colonists. Loggers were formerly supposed to be the fastest sailing vessels in the list of European craft, and the French and English smugglers and fishermen continue their use to this day. A lugger has three masts, with a running bowsprit; the lug sails are quadrilaterally shaped, and bent upon a yard, which hangs obliquely to the mast at one third of its length. This kind of sail is exclusively used in the barca longas, navigated by the Spaniards on the Mediterranean. The smugglers that run across the English Channel, have two sets of lugs — large ones, which require dipping every time you tack, to which top sails are sometimes, though but rarely, added — and small working lugs and stay-sails which do not require dipping, the tack coming to the foot of the meet. The latter are generally used (as depicted above), except in making long reaches, as across the Channel, etc.

Luggers formerly appeared among the vessels of the Yacht Club; but with one solitary exception in the catalogue of the hundred and nine vessels belonging to the Royal Yacht Club, there are now-a-days no fancy specimens of the craft.

A Yawl is an open bloat, of large size, with two or more moveable masts, and small tug sails. They are in frequent use upon the coast of England, and serve either as row or sail boats, according to the weather.