Tall ship

Popular modern tall ship rigs include topsail schooners, brigantines, brigs and barques.

It is generally more complex than modern rigging, which utilizes newer materials such as aluminum and steel to construct taller, lightweight masts with fewer, more versatile sails.

[2] Henry David Thoreau also references the term "tall ship" in his first work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, quoting "Down out at its mouth, the dark inky main blending with the blue above.

Plum Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and the distant outline broken by many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky."

[3] While Sail Training International (STI) has extended the definition of tall ship for the purpose of its races to embrace any sailing vessel with more than 30 ft (9.14 m) waterline length and on which at least half the people on board are aged 15 to 25.

An older definition of class "A" by the STI was "all square-rigged vessels over 120′ (36.6 m) length overall (LOA).

A tall ship from above anchored off of Newlyn in Cornwall
Group of "tall ships" at Hanse Sail 2010
The tall ship Kruzenshtern
More than 36 tall ships participated in the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in Portsmouth, part of the fleet of 167 naval, merchant and tall ships from 36 countries
The masts and yards of a brig
Crew aloft, tending sails
Russian Sedov at the Kantasatama Harbour in Kotka , Finland , during the Tall Ships’ Races 2017