What Is a Tall Ship?

Starting in the 1950s, there was an international movement to pay tribute to the magnificent sailing ships of the past. These vessels, known as “tall ships,” serve as training vessels for naval cadets, participate in races and regattas and help commemorate historic events like the 1976 bicentennial and the 2026 semiquincentennial.

Sailors in the past didn’t refer to their vessels as tall ships. Even today, “tall ship” is not a formal nautical term. It’s a popular description for a variety of traditionally rigged sailing vessels from the Age of Sail, including schooners, barques and brigs.

The term “tall ship” was first popularized in 1956, when some of the world’s surviving sail training ships gathered for a race from Torbay, England, to Lisbon, Portugal. The British media dubbed it the “Tall Ships Race,” and the event proved so popular that similar races followed on a regular basis.

The term might have been inspired by the 1902 poem “Sea Fever” by John Masefield, which begins with the stirring lines, “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”

In 1976, the term “Tall Ships” was trademarked by the American Sail Training Association—now known as Tall Ships America.

In general, a tall ship is any type of historical sailing vessel, large or small. The different types of tall ships are distinguished by their particular arrangements of masts and sails.

A full-rigged ship, for example, has three or more masts that are square-rigged, meaning the sails are set perpendicular to the direction of travel. The USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy, is a full-rigged ship with three masts.

A barque has at least three masts, with two square-rigged and one or more fore-and-aft-rigged, meaning the sails are set parallel to the direction of travel. The Eagle, the U.S. Coast Guard’s sail training vessel, is a three-masted barque also known as “America’s Tall Ship.”

A schooner has two or more masts, with none square-rigged. In two-masted schooners, the taller mast, called the mainmast, is at the rear. Schooners were among the most popular ships in colonial America because of their speed and versatility. Other types of tall ships include barquentines, brigantines, brigs and sloops.

The United States was founded in the 18th century, when sailing ships were the engines of exploration, colonization, commerce and military power. Tall ships are living reminders of that past.

During the Revolutionary War, the British Royal Navy was vastly superior to the Continental Navy. The Continental Congress and individual states commissioned more than 2,000 civilian privateers—merchants, whalers and fisherman—to disrupt British shipping. But the United States likely would have lost the war without the help of France, which provided crucial naval power and infantry support starting in 1778.

One of the centerpieces of the 1976 bicentennial was Operation Sail, during which 225 vessels, including 16 tall ships, from around the world sailed into New York Harbor. More than 6 million spectators lined the waterfront to catch a glimpse of the majestic procession. The tall ships returned for the Statue of Liberty centennial in 1986.

When they’re not participating in races or regattas, most tall ships today serve educational functions either as floating museums or training vessels. Tall Ships America and other sail training organizations also operate summer programs for teens looking for their first sailing adventure.