Windjammer

The windjammer was the large steel-hulled sailing cargo ship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the final development of commercial sail. Square-rigged on three to five masts and fitted with labor-saving gear so a small crew could work a big hull, windjammers carried bulk cargoes such as Chilean nitrate, Australian grain, and coal on routes where steamers were uneconomic, rounding Cape Horn into the 1930s. Survivors such as the four-masted barque Pommern are preserved as museum ships.