Windjammer. The word rang like an insult. And that was the intention of hooting steamship crews, who used it to describe the huge square-rigged sailing vessels that were valiantly challenging the coming of steam on world trade routes. These monsters, they said, were far too gross and clumsy to sail neatly into the wind but had to be jammed into it, their yards braced way around on the backstays.
But the jibe became an accolade. For, in truth, in their 50 years of useful life, the windjammers expressed the consummate majesty of sail and the climax of centuries of glorious evolution.
Scudding before a howling Cape Horn gale or running smartly before the trade winds, these white-winged tall ships were unparalleled in size, power and beauty. Many were twice as long as the graceful wooden clipper ships that had preceded them, and almost as swift. With acres of sail on their towering masts, they carried thousands of tons of nitrates, guano, coal, grain and timber around the world in their vast hulls.
