A windjammer is a commercial

sailing ship A sailing ship is a sea-going vessel that uses sails mounted on Mast (sailing), masts to harness the power of wind and propel the vessel. There is a variety of sail plans that propel sailing ships, employing Square rig, square-rigged or Fore-an ...

with multiple masts, however rigged. The informal term "windjammer" arose during the transition from the

Age of Sail The Age of Sail is a period in European history that lasted at the latest from the mid-16th (or mid-15th) to the mid-19th centuries, in which the dominance of sailing ships in global trade and warfare culminated, particularly marked by the int ...

to the Age of Steam during the 19th century. The

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

records the term "wind jammer" with reference to a ship from 1878 and nautical use of "windjamming" from 1886. The word has evolved to include passenger

cruise ship Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports of call, where passengers may go on Tourism, tours k ...

Etymology

The word " windjammer" has a variety of associations, both nautical and not. In the late 19th century the term was pejorative, as used by sailors aboard steamships. * In 1892, ''Rudder Magazine'' said in a story, "The deck hands on the liners contemptuously refer to ailing vesselsas 'wind-jammers'." * In 1917, the American Dialect Society recorded residents of the U.S. state of Maine referring to fore-and-aft sailing vessels as "windjammers" in a list of regional word usages. *''The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea'' calls ''windjammer'' "a non-nautical name by which square-rigged sailing ships are sometimes known". * ''The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military'' calls ''windjammer'' "a merchant sailing ship". *The following languages have adopted "windjammer" as a

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

from English in reference to sailing ships: ** Czech: ''windjammer'' ** Dutch: ''windjammer'' ** German: ''Windjammer'' ** Japanese: ウィンドジャマー ** Polish: ''windjammer'' ** Russian: винджаммер **

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

: виндјамер or ''vindjamer'' ** Ukrainian: вінджамер *''Green's Dictionary of Slang'' has a variety of non-nautical definitions for the term.

Examples

Any of the following ships may be called a "windjammer": *

Barque A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing ship, sailing vessel with three or more mast (sailing), masts of which the fore mast, mainmast, and any additional masts are Square rig, rigged square, and only the aftmost mast (mizzen in three-maste ...

* Barquentine *

Brig A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square rig, square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the l ...

Brigantine A brigantine is a two-masted sailing vessel with a fully square-rigged foremast and at least two sails on the main mast: a square topsail and a gaff sail mainsail (behind the mast). The main mast is the second and taller of the two masts. Ol ...

* Clipper ship *

Full-rigged ship A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing ship, sailing vessel with a sail plan of three or more mast (sailing), masts, all of them square rig, square-rigged. Such a vessel is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged, with each mas ...

* Iron-hulled sailing ship *Sail-powered

Schooner A schooner ( ) is a type of sailing ship, sailing vessel defined by its Rig (sailing), rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more Mast (sailing), masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than t ...

In literature

Windjammers have figured prominently in both historical and fictional literature. Some examples include: * * * * * * *

References

{{Sailing Vessels and Rigs Merchant sailing ship types Sailboat types Sailing ships Tall ships 19th-century neologisms Windjammers