Towing Out to Sea

by James Williamson

Original - Sold

Price

$895

Dimensions

15.000 x 11.000 inches

Title

Towing Out to Sea

Artist

James Williamson

Medium

Painting - Watercolor

Description

Sail on, sail on thou fearless barque, where'er blows the welcome wind, set sail, farewell to land, our home we'll find far out to sea.
Towing Out to Sea watercolor painting by artist James Williamson

Artist James Williamson ASMA,
Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists

Sailing Vessel Barque Ellen History of the term: Barque (bark)
The word barque appears to have come from the Greek word baris, a term for an Egyptian boat. This entered Latin as barca, which gave rise to the Italian barca, Spanish and Portuguese barco, and the French barge and barque. In both Latin and Italian, the term barca refers to a small boat, not a full-size ship. French influence in England led to the use in English of both words, although their meanings now are not the same. Well before the nineteenth century a barge had become interpreted as a small vessel of coastal or inland waters. Somewhat later, a bark became a sailing vessel of a distinctive rig as detailed below. In Britian by the mid-nineteenth century, the spelling had taken on the French form of barque. Francis Bacon used this form of the word as early as 1605. Throughout the period of sail, the word was used also as a shortening of the barc-longa of the Mediterranean Sea. The usual convention is that spelling barque refers to a ship and bark to tree hide, to distinguish the homophones.
Bark (ship) In the eighteenth century, the British Royal Navy used the term bark for a nondescript vessel that did not fit any of its usual categories. Thus, when the British Admiralty purchased a collier for use by James Cook in his journey of exploration, she was registered as HM bark Endeavour to distinguish her from another Endeavour, a sloop already in service at the time. She happened to be a ship-rigged sailing vessel with a plain bluff bow and a full stern with windows.
William Falcoconer's Dictionary of the Marine defined bark, as a general name given to small ships: it is however peculiarly appropriated by seamen to those which carry three masts without a mizen top sail. Our northern mariners, who are trained in the coal-trade, apply this distinction to a broad-sterned ship, which carries no ornamental figure on the stem or prow.
Barque rig by the end of the eighteenth century, however, the term barque (sometimes, particularly in the USA, spelled bark) came to refer to any vessel with a particular type of sail-plan. This comprises three (or fore-and-aft sails on the aftermost mast and square sails on all other masts. Barques were the workhorse of the Golden Age of Sail in the mid 19th century as they attained passages that nearly matched full rigged ships but could operate with smaller crews.
The advantage of these rigs was that they needed smaller (therefore cheaper) crews than a comparable full-rigged ship or brig-rigged vessel as there were fewer of the labor-intensive square sails, and the rig itself is cheaper. Conversely, the ship rig tended to be retained for training vessels where the larger the crew, the more seamen were trained.
Another advantage is that a barque can outperform a schooner or barkentine and is both easier to handle and better at going to windward than a full-rigged ship. While a full-rigged ship is the best runner available, and while fore-and-aft rigged vessels are the best at going to windward, the barque is often the best compromise, and combines the best elements of these two.
Most ocean-going windjammers were four-masted barques, since the four-masted barque is considered the most efficient rig available because of its ease of handling, small need of manpower, good running capabilities, and good capabilities of rising toward wind. Usually, the main mast was the tallest; that of Moshulu extends to 58 m off the deck. The four-masted barque can be handled with a surprisingly small crew, at minimum, ten and while the usual crew was around thirty, almost half of them could be apprentices.
Today many sailing school sail training ships are barques.

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July 12th, 2012

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