The age of sail came back to the Caribbean last week as the U.S., with RFC cash, set out to build a thousand new wooden schooners in the little shipyards of the West Indies, Venezuela, Colombia and Central America. First contract for six 300-to 500-ton schooners has been let to a shipyard in the Dominican Republic. The second will go to Cuba.
Already old two-and three-masters are being rerigged and recaulked; fishing and lumber schooners are bidding for commercial cargoes (and getting them); and importers all along the Caribbean are beginning to specify "Dispatch via sail" when steamers are not available....