A Schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being shorter or the same height as the rear masts.

According to the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, the first ship called a schooner was built by Andrew Robinson and launched in 1713 from Gloucester, Massachusetts. Legend has it that the name 'schooner' was the result of a spectator exclaiming "Oh how she scoons", scoon being a Scots word meaning to skip or skim over the water. Robinson replied, "A schooner let her be." .......the sch spelling comes from the later adoption of the Dutch and German spellings.

Most traditionally rigged schooners are gaff rigged, sometimes carrying a square topsail on the foremast and, occasionally, a square fore-course(together with the gaff foresail). Schooners carrying square sails are called square-topsail schooners. Modern schooners may be Marconi or Bermudan rigged. Some schooner yachts are Bermuda rigged on the mainmast and gaff rigged on the foremast.

A staysail schooner has no foresail, but instead carries a main staysail between the masts in addition to the fore staysail ahead of the foremast. A staysail or gaff topsail schooner may carry a fisherman's staysail(a four-sided fore-and-aft sail) above the main staysail or foresail, or a triangular mule. Multi-masted staysail schooners usually carried a mule above each stay sail except the fore staysail. Gaff-rigged schooners generally carry a triangular fore-and-aft topsail above the gaff sail on the main topmast and sometimes also on the fore topmast, called a gaff topsail schooner. A gaff-rigged schooner that is not set up to carry one or more gaff topsails is sometimes termed a "bare-headed" or "bald-headed" schooner. A schooner with no bowsprit is known as a 'knockabout' schooner.

OPERATION

Schooners were used to carry cargo in many different environments, from ocean voyages to coastal runs and on large inland bodies of water. They were popular in North America, and in their heyday during the late 19th Century over 2000 schooners carried cargo back and forth across the Great Lakes. Three-masted "terns" were a favourite rig of Canada's Maritime Provinces. The scow schooner, which used a schooner rig on a flat-bottomed, blunt-ended scow hull, were popular in North America for coastal and river transport.

Three of the most famous racing yachts, America, Atlantic and Bluenose were schooners.

Above information courtesy of Wikipedia.

As we used to say on Adix, "the schooner the better!"