Full-rigged ship

A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is term of art denoting a sailing vessel's sail plan with three or more masts, all of them square-rigged. A full-rigged ship is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged.

Sometimes such a vessel will merely be called a ship in 18th- to early-19th-century and earlier usage, to distinguish it from other large three-masted blue-water working vessels such as barques, barquentines, Fluyts etc. This full or ship-rig sail plan thus is a term of art that differentiates such vessels as well from other working or cargo vessels with widely diverse alternative sail-plans such as Galleons, Cogs, Sloops, Caravels, Schooners, brigs and Carracks; some of which also have three masted variants (Brigs, Schooners, Sloops, and Galleons). The ship-rig sail plan, also differs drastically from the large panoply of one and two masted vessels found as working and recreational sailboats.

Alternatively, a full-rigged ship may be referred to by its function instead, as in collier or frigate, rather than being called a ship. In many languages the word frigate or frigate rig refers to a full-rigged ship.

The masts of a full-rigged ship, from bow to stern, are:

There is no standard name for a fifth mast on a ship-rigged vessel (though this may be called the spanker mast on a barque, schooner or barquentine). Only one five-masted full-rigged ship (the Flying P-Liner Preussen) had ever been built until recent years, when a few modern five-masted cruise sailing ships have been launched. Even a fourth mast is relatively rare for full-rigged ships. Ships with five and more masts are not normally fully rigged and their masts may be numbered rather than named in extreme cases.

...
Wikipedia