The vitality of the schooner is such that it bids fair to survive both of the crushing blows dealt to old-fashioned marine architecture--the substitution of metal for wood, and of steam for sails.

To both the schooner adapted itself.

Extending its long, slender hull to carry four, five, and even seven masts, its builders abandoned the stout oak and pine for molded iron and later steel plates, and when it appeared that the huge booms, extending the mighty sails, were difficult for an ordinary crew to handle, one mast, made like the rest of steel, was transformed into a smokestack--still bearing sails--a donkey engine was installed in the hold, and the booms went aloft, or the anchor rose to the peak to the tune of smoky puffing instead of the rhythmical chanty songs of the sailors.

So the modern schooner, a very leviathan of sailing craft, plows the seas, electric-lighted, steering by steam, a telephone system connecting all parts of her hull--everything modern about her except her name.

Not as dignified, graceful, and picturesque as the ship perhaps--but she lasts, while the ship disappears.
But to return to the colonial shipping.