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Two-masted rigs with fore- and mainmasts were used only on small and fast vessels in the seventeenth century, usually naval, privateering, or pirate vessels. Yet, by about 1750, such rigs were widely used on merchant vessels of small and middling tonnage. This article investigates whether, and if so, to what extent, technological innovation made this possible, and concludes that the technology was adequate decades before the start of the rise in merchant-vessel popularity. A path of development is proposed that best fits the evidence provided by previous work, period iconography, the operation of period replicas, and archival research. The article also proposes that, in many trades, the preference for merchant vessels to resemble more formidable naval vessels as much as possible was a significant constraint on experiment and development of rigs. Finally, a call is made for a comparative study of building, fitting-out, and labour costs between similar two-masted and three-masted mid- to late eighteenth-century British Atlantic merchant vessels.

Revisiting the Brigantine Problem: The origins and development of eighteenth-century two-masted square-rigged ship types