barca

Barque (also spelled bark) comes from Latin barca, itself likely from Greek baris, a word for an Egyptian flat-bottomed boat used on the Nile. The Egyptian connection is uncertain — some linguists trace baris to Coptic bari (small boat) — but the word was ancient by the time Romans adopted it. Latin barca meant any small boat. The word spread through every Romance language: French barque, Spanish barca, Italian barca, Portuguese barco.

By the medieval period, barque had become a general word for any sailing vessel in several European languages. English borrowed it from French in the fifteenth century. But in the age of sail, precision mattered. The word narrowed. By the late 1700s, a barque was a specific rig: three masts (or more), with the foremast and mainmast square-rigged and the mizzenmast fore-and-aft rigged. This combination was efficient, required fewer crew than a full-rigged ship, and handled well in variable winds.

Barques dominated the cargo trades of the nineteenth century. They carried wheat from Australia, nitrates from Chile, coal from Newcastle, and lumber from the Pacific Northwest. The Pamir, one of the last commercial sailing vessels, was a four-masted barque that carried grain from Australia to Europe until 1949. The word barque was as common in shipping offices as 'container ship' is today.

The word's range contracted as powered ships replaced sail. By the mid-twentieth century, barque referred only to the historical rig type or to training vessels. The Statsraad Lehmkuhl, a barque launched in 1914, still sails as a Norwegian training ship. The word that once meant any boat now means one very specific arrangement of masts and sails — a journey from the general to the particular that took three thousand years.