Wooden Sailing Ship- An Established Sailing Icon

The sight of a wooden sailing ship with her tall masts and billowing sails is a truly awe-inspiring sight for many people. It can also provide a humbling experience for one to stand and watch one of the giant wooden sailing ships glide across the ocean.

I often can’t help thinking how the modern wooden sailing ships has been built upon one of the many different wooden sailing ships of old about how different sailing was then to what it is now.

How brave must those souls have been who got on board a wooden sailing ship to sail off into the unknown with none of the modern technology that we take for granted. Yes, we have yachts today that are sail driven, but they also have engines. Yachts also have cutting edge computerized navigation. Not that many of us today would be so eager to have boarded a sailing ship under the prevailing circumstances of centuries ago.

Finding a wooden sailing ship on the ocean today is not an everyday sight by any means. But, there are wooden sailing ships plying the oceans today. The look exactly like those sailing ships of centuries ago, but also have many differences. For instance, you find more than one sailing cruise ship today that try and recreate much of the way things were during the actual golden era of sailing ships. The biggest differences obviously are modern technology and having far better amenities than the original ships had.

These cruise ships voyages are greatly sought after even though people know that they will only experience a small part of what it felt to travel on a wooden sailing ship of centuries ago. People are also not prepared to have any deprivations, so the middle way is quite acceptable. There are wooden sailing ships that are used as training vessels today that give young adults opportunities to train as crew at sea. This type of education is invaluable for anyone that loves the sea.

There is also a wooden sailing ship that is in service for training purposes for marine environmentalists. Those who have partaken in training aboard such a ship say it was a life changing experience for them. They learned lessons that modern day society does not teach. For those who voyage on training sailing ships it is not only a physical experience, but also intellectual and emotional. Thus wooden sailing ships live on today, although not put to their original uses.