 Navy sailing vessels, pirates, merchants that needed to escape pirates, and merchant vessels that just needed speed, such as tea clippers, all had towering stacks of smallish square sails.Given a huge crew to control all the sails, they could often outrace the fore-and-aft rigged vessels of the day, even upwind.They needed more tacks, so they had to go further, but they had nearly twice the sail area, so they went more quickly and still got there sooner.