A "three-masted schooner" has only lower masts and topmasts, and each
mast is rigged for fore-and-aft sails, but more often than not these
vessels carry yards at the fore and sometimes at the main.
With the "ketch" begins what has been called the mast-and-a-half
division of sailing vessels. The tall mast is the mainmast, the short
mast is the mizzen; some ketches carry square sails on the main, some
carry a topsail on the mizzen--the distinctive mark of the ketch being
that the mizzen is a pole-mast and stepped in front of the stern-post.
If the mizzen be stepped abaft the stern-post the vessel becomes a
"dandy" or "yawl."
In the cutter the mizzen is dispensed with, and in a sloop of the old
rig the difference between the two is that the cutter has two headsails,
the jib and foresail, while the sloop has but one, the foresail.
Sometimes the sloop has a standing bowsprit, while the cutter has a
running one; but this distinction is not essential. Indeed, the words
cutter and sloop have begun to be used indiscriminately, except,
perhaps, that a cutter is for pleasure and a sloop for trade.
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