Popular modern tall ship rigs include topsail schooners, brigantines, brigs and barques.It is generally more complex than modern rigging, which utilizes newer materials such as aluminum and steel to construct taller, lightweight masts with fewer, more versatile sails.[2] Henry David Thoreau also references the term "tall ship" in his first work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, quoting "Down out at its mouth, the dark inky main blending with the blue above.Plum Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and the distant outline broken by many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky."[3] While Sail Training International (STI) has extended the definition of tall ship for the purpose of its races to embrace any sailing vessel with more than 30 ft (9.14 m) waterline length and on which at least half the people on board are aged 15 to 25.
More than 36 tall ships participated in the 200th anniversary of the
Battle of Trafalgar
in Portsmouth, part of the fleet of 167 naval, merchant and tall ships from 36 countries