How To Tell A Ketch From A Schooner

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How To Tell A Ketch From A Schooner		You are reading an article from Autumn 2008
Sloops and cutters. Lets start off on boats with only one mast – the sloop has one headsail, a cutter has two or more. Sloops and cutters can be either gaff rigged like the drawing or bermudan rigged like most yachts. The average yacht today will be a bermudan sloop. Where’s the mizzen mast? Usually it’s the aftermost mast. A ketch or yawl has a main mast and a mizzen mast but a two masted schooner or square rigger has only a fore mast and main mast. On three masted square riggers and schooners the mizzen is the aftermost mast. More than three masts? Lets not go there just now....
		Ketches and Yawls A ketch has two masts with the mizzen mast stepped before the rudder head. If the mast is stepped aft of the rudder head the boat becomes a yawl not a ketch Yawl rig tends to be used on smaller boats, ketch is often used on larger vessels, notably the Brixham trawlers and trading ketches of the last century. The mizzen sail in a ketch is a driving sail, in a yawl it is often more of a balancing sail. The mizzen sail is always is smaller, often much smaller than the mainsail. If it was the same size or larger the boat would become a schooner.
Sprit rig Sprit rig is usually reserved for dinghies but is also used on the Thames barges. You will only see sprit rigged barges in the Thames estuary but as they are local to us we will give them a mention here. The sprit is the spar that runs diagonally across the largest sail. Its not a rig that can be used in a seaway because the sprit cannot be lowered and the windage and rolling would make it a large unmanageable weight aloft. In coastal waters it is an extremely handy rig, the topsail can catch a high up breeze above river banks and the mainsail can be quickly brailed up to the sprit if bit of a breeze gets up (its like drawing a large curtain) If you want to know more about its use in dinghies there is an article on our web site.
		Schooners Schooners have two or more masts. The after masts must be the same height or greater than the foremast. The American seven masted schooner, the Thomas Lawson had more masts than any other schooner but was the only one of its kind. Two masted schooners are simply called schooners, schooners with more than two masts are called by the number of masts they have unless that is they are a topsail schooner. A topsail schooner has a squaresail on the fore mast. They were once common in the UK Usually no reference is made to the number of masts that a topsail schooner carries. Back to top

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