Note 23 — Chapter V
Reading edition
This term “bark” is used generically by the old writers. Rigs were few, and vessels, it would seem, took their names from their dimensions, as galleon, carrack, galley, and the like. In our own times—and it has been so for a century and a half, at least—a craft is defined by her rig. Thus a vessel rigged as a ship would be called a ship though she were only fifty tons.