HM Schooner Ballahoo by georgeband - Caldercraft - Haddock drawings

[tkay11]

Very nice and neat, George. I love those Seahorse blocks, and have switched to using them. Excellent for 1:96.

 

Tony

[georgeband]

I have reached a minor milestone and the bowsprit assembly is now attached to the hull. The box in which I keep Whiting has also had an extension to accommodate the new spar. Part of the delay has been from deciding how to simulate a served (or serviced or dressed) rope and there is a separate thread about that. The answer for me is to paint a linen thread, or paint one of the fine ropes from Ropes of Scale for something like a shroud which is only served over part of its length. Painting Gutermann polyester sewing threads gives a rough and bumpy finish because the threads are too hairy. Little alterations to the belaying plan also took up many hours which I have not logged. Making and fitting the bowsprit assembly took 49 hours spread over one year. 

 

The gammoning loops through a metal bracket which was inspired by one I saw in Admiralty drawing ZAZ6112. This drawing could be an early proposal for the Fish class schooners. The bracket is also a convenient place to belay the martingale and the horses. 

ZAZ6112 extract

I replaced the bowsprit shrouds that I had prepared previously and attached the new, painted, linen ropes to their deadeyes with seizings which look much neater. The outhauler tackle in the photo below is a bit slack and has been tightened now. 

The next step for me is to prepare drawings for the fore mast (lower and top). I have the basic dimensions - lengths and maximum diameters -  but I know I will spend hours working out all the details and modifying the belaying plan. 

 

George

 

[Dr PR]

George,

 

Nice work. Research and figuring out how to make and rig things takes much longer than actually doing the work. Also, I find that even after the research I may still be trying to decide which of several possible ways to do the job I will choose.

 

One of my favorite sayings is "Maybe it is a good thing I am slow because I might be going in the wrong direction."

[georgeband]

For the last two weeks my modelling effort has been at a computer screen with a pile of reference books next to me. The purpose? To draw the masts so that I can start building them. As Phil has mentioned on his posts, there are a good number of near-contemporary references which give different answers about sizes and shapes; the number of options appears to be more than the number of authors. I have relied mostly on Lever and Steel for contemporary records and on Marquardt (Global Schooner), Petrejus (Brig Irene), and Peterssen (Rigging) for recent opinions, and then made my own decisions. The drawings for the fore masts (lower mast and topmast) are below and the main masts are similar. 

 

The numbers on the left are distances from the top or from the deck. A number with a description such as '5.9mm round' give the cross section of the mast. Comments in italic show various features. 

• Partner cover. This tarred, canvas cover is to stop water entering the hull around the mast. Making one from wood will be tricky. Has anyone invented a clever way of doing this?
• Pin rail. This has eight belaying pins and I have placed it perpendicular to the mast and not parallel to the water line. One cleat below it is for the spread yard truss. Any objections or suggestions for alternatives?
• Copper sheathing. I expect to use half of a hull copper piece on the mast: 6mm high and 9mm long is about right and the shipwrights would have access to them. 
• Cross trees. My belaying plan has two topmast shrouds on each side, so two cross trees should extend from the trestles. I chose the aft and middle positions because they line up better with the lower shrouds. Does anyone have information to support this, or an alternative?
• Hounds. Phil made a good case for defining the hounds as the line where the trestle trees rest on an extension of the mast. This is self-consistent and admirable but unfortunately several authors use hounds to describe the widening of the mast. This is apparent on the topmast which has hounds to support ropes without any trees. I think the dual meaning will remain and the only solution is to define it for your application. 
• Eyes and bolts. I have not shown these on this iteration of the drawings and will have to check the belaying plan carefully before I do. 

Drawing for the fore topmast comes next. The stick is 4mm square at the heel and 1.5mm round at the top, and to paraphrase Steel it would be very wasteful of wood. He states that the normal practice was to add planking around the heel so that it fills the fore hole in the trees better. I plan to use a 3mm dowel and at the heel I will reduce the size to 2mm square then add planks on all four sides. 

The hounds on the topmast are octagonal and I will repeat a technique I used on Sherbourne many years ago. This is to make the mast without hounds, then wrap layers of glued paper around the mast to build up the diameter, and finally cut back the laminated paper to get the octagonal section. 

Christmas is coming and the physical mast making will have to wait until next year. 

 

Best wishes to all. 

 

George

 

 

[Dr PR]

George,

 

Excellent research! Here are some comments about the questions you ask.

 

1. I made the partner covers from plywood. As you noted carving them out of wood will be tricky because you know they will break in half just as you are adding the final touches. The plywood has better strength than plain wood.

 

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/19611-albatros-by-dr-pr-mantua-scale-148-revenue-cutter-kitbash-about-1815/?do=findComment&comment=911535

 

2. Having the pin rail perpendicular to the mast seems reasonable to me.

 

3. The cross trees look good. I would use the two aft most as as you did.

 

4. "Hounds" is a multiple meaning term, almost arbitrary. The area below the trestletrees is referred to as the hounds. However, I have seen one reference that said the hounds were additional pieces applied to the sides of the mast, and sometimes extending down 1/3 the length of the mast above the partners. Some authors call the cheeks the hounds. So the meaning of "hounds" and the length of the hounds is entirely arbitrary, and varies from vessel to vessel. It is essentially anything below the mast top.

 

This is all and good until an author starts talking about the "hounded length" of a mast - the length from the foot/heel of the mast to the hounds. Many of the calculations for mast properties are based upon hounded length. But what part of the hounds? To the top, the bottom or somewhere else? To the top of the trestletrees or the bottom? Rarely does and author tell. We are supposed to already know the "right" answer, or to read their minds.

 

Harold Underhill (Masting and Rigging the Clipper Ship and Ocean Carrier, Brown Son and Ferguson, Ltd., Glasgow, 1972, page 5, Figure 4) is the only author I have found who gives a definite answer to what hounded length refers to, and he shows the hounds as the bottom of the trestletrees for determining hounded length.

 

Harold Underhill does give a definition of "hounds" in Sailing Ship Rigs and Rigging (Brown Son and Ferguson, Ltd., Glasgow, 1969, page 110):

 

                Hounds - A change in the diameter of the mast to form a rest for the eyes of the rigging, crosstrees, etc.

 

So now we know!

 

In any case I think you have done your homework and can justify the decisions you are making for your model.

Edited December 12, 2024 by Dr PR

[georgeband]

Thank you for your comments, Phil, which provide welcome reassurance that I am not speeding off in the wrong direction. I have now expanded the mast drawings to show the rigging, an activity which again combines research with second-guessing what might have been done 200 years ago. 

 

The drawings for the fore mast, below, are supplemented by tables to name the numbered ropes and to show in which order they are placed over the hounds. The fore topmast is crowded with ropes and blocks (15 altogether that rest on the hounds) but they have to go somewhere. 

 

   

The main mast has simpler rigging but still needs decisions about where to place each rope or block. All these drawings and notes will be my guides when I return to model making next year and I fully expect to change my mind about some of the placements. 

 

George

 

[Dr PR]

Nice plans George!

 

When you look at a full rigged model you see lots of lines going here and yeah, it looks pretty busy. But when you really study the rigging it is amazing how many lines actually converge on the mast tops!

[georgeband]

Foremast under construction

 

I have been whittling away making lots of bits for the fore mast and have mostly completed the lower section now. The topmast 'stick' is ready to be attached and rigged but that will be a job for next month. 

 

This is the lower section. From left to right we have 
Step for the mast cap
Masthead with shrouds looped over
Trestle trees and cross trees
Cheeks (hounds)
Copper plate for gaff jaws
Mini clothes peg to hold the shrouds
Hoops for gaff sail
Pin rail and belaying pins
Single cleat
Waterproofing ring over the partners

The photos below show some of the details. I have not found out how to reduce their size so please forgive the messy look in places from the magnification. 

 

The cheeks (or hounds if you prefer) have simulated bolts on the sides. I finally have found a use for the little brass nails in the Caldercraft kits! The copper plate is half of a plate I used for the hull (Amati) and I imagine that a coppersmith would have used the same thing. John Roach's logbook records visits by a coppersmith. 

I put bolsters on the trestle trees and a rope grommet over the bolsters and here is the first pair of ropes: the pendant and first shroud seized together. The rope is 0.6mm linen thread that I painted brown to simulate serving and the seizing is 0.15mm fly tying thread. I also realised that the cross trees I had drawn were too long so I reduced them for the model. 

Four loops go over the masthead and this has to be done before fitting the mast cap and topmast. The second pairs of shrouds are from Ropes of Scale 0.6mm dark thread. 

The hoops for the sail are from laminated paper. I chose a cream colour which provides some contrast with the mast and suggests new wood. I calculated that I would need 11 for this sail and have fitted 13 just in case. 

The mast ring with belaying pins was inspired by the schooner in Peterson's book on Rigging Fore and Aft Craft. I added one cleat below it because I needed one more belaying point. 

The design of the 'partner ring' comes from my imagination as a way to waterproof the gaps between the mast and the partner planks in the deck. I guessed tarred canvas which is held in place by turns of rope. 

Next jobs on this mast are to drill holes for eyes in the back of the mast head. The ones I had predrilled are too widely separated and the lowest of them is covered by shroud loops. The topmast and mast cap are ready and waiting. 

 

George

 

[tkay11]

Very neat, George. I like the use of the laminated paper.

 

Tony

[Dr PR]

George,

 

If you want to make the pictures smaller just double click on them after they have been placed. You can change the dimensions - be sure to check the box to keep the same X/Y proportions.

 

If you want to place two pictures side by side, make the first one left justified and leave the second one with no justification.

 

If you make a picture left justified you can place text to the right of it.

 

If you use no justification text will start below the picture.

[georgeband]

Tony, Phil,

 

Thank you for your comments and the tutorial on sizing photos. I had spent a long time searching for menu options and right clicks to do this, and now have also found that CTRL with a right click opens up a new world for me. 

 

Here are a couple of pictures of the topmast to show what can be done with laminated paper. The first shows the heel which has a square section, 4mm to a side, which I built up on a 4mm diameter dowel and then carved back. The second shows a hound of a different colour that sits halfway up the mast and is the locator for a lot of ropes. The sheave for the topsail halyard is drilled through its base. The mast truck at the tip of the mast is another paper winding (not shown here).

One piece of advice for this technique is to use plenty of PVA and let it soak into the windings otherwise they can start splitting off. I had a couple of casualties with the heel of the topmast but they were easily fixed. 

Here are the hoops for the gaff sail waiting to be sliced off - just cut along the dotted line. 

 

George

 

[georgeband]

Second thoughts about the shrouds

 

Having fitted the shrouds to the mast head of the fore mast I checked my references again and now doubt my interpretation. I followed the drawings in Peterssen (pp 74, 75) with the pendant at the fore end of the group, then a served shroud, then two more shrouds which were only served over the top quarter as for square rigged vessels. Marquardt (pp 171-3) states that the order was reversed on schooners with the pendant set at the aft end of the group and the aft-most shroud fully served. The justification he gives is that the aft shroud would be in contact with the gaff sail and had to be protected from wear. This sounds quite logical to me, especially since a lower square sail was unlikely to be carried below the spread yard. The rake of the mast also makes it less likely for a square sail to touch a shroud on its mast. 

 

Option 1. I trust the model that Peterssen has drawn and ignore logical arguments, and leave my model as it is. 

Option 2. I assume that Peterssen's model does not necessarily represent all schooners or might be mistaken, and the logical arguments put forward by Marquardt prevail. I strip off the shrouds from my model and reposition them. 

 

The repair is more irritating than difficult if I follow option 2 and at the moment I am leaning towards that choice. Does anyone have evidence that the shrouds and pendants on a schooner mast were positioned in reverse when compared with a square rigged vessel? 

 

George

 

[tkay11]

I am sure that the more knowledgeable in the forum will have lots to say about this, but I thought I'd throw in Boudriot's instructions for the shrouds on the Jacinthe schooner of 1825. It does seem to say that all the shrouds were served as far as the catharpins. The measurements are in mm for the scale of the model at 1:48.

 

"After fitting the softwood bolsters to the trestletrees the shrouds are got overhead in the following order for the foremast. The first eye has two short legs forming the fore winding-tackle pendants . The second has two legs , and forms the aftermost shrouds to port and tarboard. The third forms the remaining two shroud on the port
ide. and the fourth the last two to starboard.

In the case of the mainmast the order is as follows: first pair, pendants of the main winding-tackles; second pair, starboard hroud ; third pair, shrouds on the port side.
The Ø of the deadeye is 270 (10") , Ø of the laniards 22. Winding tackle: fall Ø22 , blocks (upper blocks treble, lower blocks* double) 217 long (8"). The eyes of the shrouds and tackle-pendants are served with spun-yarn down as far as the catharpins. Ratlings Ø 8."

 

Tony

[Dr PR]

Well George,

 

You have come up with a puzzle there!

 

Personally, I would go with putting the tackle pendants on first, and not last. Why? You are modelling a British ship, and the Admiralty was notoriously conservative about how things were done - and any change to the "right" way was resisted. And on their ships the mast tackle went on first.

 

Marquardt was German and most familiar with northern European vessels - and those in Australia after he moved there.

 

Petersson's rigging was based upon a model of the American made schooner Experiment, built in 1808 and sold to Sweden. He says the model was not an exact replica of the Experiment. Many in America followed Royal Navy standards, but each ship yard had their way of building vessels.

 

The only certain thing I have found about rigging for sailing vessels, and especially schooners, it the it is probable that no two were built and rigged the same - not even in the Royal Navy. Ship owners, Captains and bosuns all had their "right" way to rig things.

 

Unless you have the actual rigging plan for the Ballahoo, for the time period you are modelling it, I think you can do whatever you want with your ship!

 

I agree with your reasoning for serving the after shroud to avoid chafing with the gaff sail. The fore course wasn't commonly rigged so it wasn't a concern for chafing the forward shrouds, and the spreader yard was usually fixed in position and not raised or lowered, so it wasn't a chafing hazard.

[georgeband]

Tony, Phil,

Thanks for your comments and information. It is a puzzle with incomplete evidence for either option. 

I'm off on holiday for a while (no grandchildren this time) and will ponder the alternatives over a glass of something fizzy. Perhaps someone else will join in with a definitive answer 

 

George 

[tkay11]

I'd agree with Phil. Do whatever you think best serves the ship you are building. Your logic is good.

 

Have a good holiday!

 

Tony

[georgeband]

I have browsed through a downloaded copy of Steel's Masting and Rigging, 1794 edition, and he does provide corroboration for Marquardt. There is nothing specific for schooners but I looked at the main (aft) mast of a brig and the only mast of a cutter which have similar layouts to a schooner mast: gaff sail and no square sail. 

Pages 220 and 222 in Steel have the relevant entries and one states ‘The after-main-shroud must be served from the mast-head to the dead-eye, to prevent its being chafed by the main-boom and gaff.’ It seems that the model which Petersson used for his excellent book was not aware of this. 

 

I will be making changes to the fore mast when I get back home. In the meantime I have the slowest internet connection which is similar to the pace of life while on holiday. 

 

George

[georgeband]

Shrouds fitted to fore mast

 

The mispositioned shrouds came off the masthead with no problems at all and I re-used them starting from the aft end of the foremast. The first pair is a pendant and one shroud, both fully served by painting the linen thread, set to aft and starboard. Then follows a similar pair to port, then two forward pairs of shrouds to starboard then port. The final pairs use Ropes of Scale 0.6mm thread with the middle section painted to represent serving. The lay of the thread shows through the paint and I might give it a few more coats or learn to live with it. 

 

The pictures show the masthead from aft and starboard

The holes in the back of the masthead were predrilled to take three eyes for blocks; the lowest of these is now covered by shroud ropes and I will probably put a new one between the two existing, exposed holes. So much for planning ahead and preparation. 

 

Sails

Currently I have been drawing sails which is an iterative process with the yards from which they hang. The lengths of the yards are based on drawings for another schooner, but a sail is an integer number of cloths wide, and the distance from the top corners of the sail to the cleats at the end of the yard depends on which sail it is and the notes provided by Steel. So I start with a yard of nominal length and see what width of sail fits it best, then adjust the yard so that the sail sits properly on it. It gets more complicated for a gaff sail where the runs of cloth are not necessarily perpendicular to the yard and you can also adjust the angle of the gaff. Computers do make this step easier and I use Powerpoint simply because I am familiar with it from work. (Work is no longer a distraction for me 😁.) I know that there are better drawing packages available but I would have to climb another learning curve to use them. 

 

One other change I have to make to 'finished' tasks is about the number of hoops on a mast for a gaff sail. I had allowed for two hoops to each cloth in the sail which gives about a dozen for the fore and main gaff sails. Steel in his drawings of gaff sails shows one hoop per cloth so my preloaded mast has far too many hoops on it. They are easily removed with a snip and this is much easier than trying to fit more hoops on at this stage. 

 

The pictures below are the fore gaff sail and the completed lower section of the fore mast

 

George

[Dr PR]

George,

 

I planned the gaffs, yards and sails on my schooner build in a CAD program. But when I started attaching the finished sails to the finished gaffs and yards I found that  the gaffs and yards were not quite long enough. So far they have all come together, but it took a bit of fiddling and the sails don't hang correctly.

 

The main problem is the length of the cringles at the corners of the sails, and additional length of the ropes that attach to the cringles to pull the sails out to the ends of the yards and gaffs. All this adds up to at least half a cloth, or maybe 3/4. I allowed only about half as much when calculating the length of the gaffs and yards.

 

Another problem I had was where the head of the gaff sails fit under the jaws of the gaff. The head of the sail needed a bit of a cutout. The mast hoops are pulling the sail to the mast, and the throat is being pulled to the eye bolt on the bottom of the gaff. The result is a wrinkle in the sail under the gaff jaws.

 

None of this has prevented me from rigging the sails, but they are not perfect.

[georgeband]

It's all so long ago... We had a holiday, then the summer was spent on DIY and grandchildren, then a late holiday, and now finally I have resumed building. The current task is the main mast, including its topmast section, which is very similar in construction to the fore mast. I will post some pictures later. 

 

(If anyone calls in at Chania in Crete it has a maritime museum that is packed full of models. Some are sailing ships and some depict the Greek navy now and in the 20th century. The sailing ships include rigs that I have not seen or heard of before, including the scaphi in this photo.)

 

George

[Dr PR]

George,

 

Good to see you back in the workshop.

 

That is an interesting rig in the photo. I have seen it in books but this is the first model I have seen that has the mainsail with the diagonal spar. Harold Underhill calls it a sprit-sail rig (Sailing Ship Rigs and Rigging, Brown, Son and Ferguson, Ltd., Glasgow, 1969, pages 13 and 72). The diagonal spar is called a sprit. He shows the sail plan of a Thames sailing barge Lady Daphne with this rig. So it wasn't limited to the Mediterranean.

Edited October 19 by Dr PR

[georgeband]

The hull is complete and both masts have now been built and the shrouds and pendants tied on. Not bad for 900 hours spread over ten years. The main mast is very similar in construction to the fore mast and I shall focus on the differences here. 

 

Creating square sections

I improvised a method for aligning the faces of a square section with a slot in the heel of the round mast. The slot will sit on the ply spine inside the model and for now I glued in an offcut of ply with PVA; it holds well enough and the joint can be worked open and the ply removed at the end of the build. The first photo shows how I press a recently sanded square face down onto a window ledge and check by eye that the ply offcut is parallel to the ledge. Repeat the procedure for the opposite face. 

The two remaining faces, fore and aft on the mast, have to be perpendicular to the first two faces and I used a shelf above my desk that has a picture frame on it. Anything with a right angle will do. Just press the new face down. 

 

Partner ring

The deck is very crowded around the main mast and the partner ring is in two parts. One is glued to the deck and the other, just some thick grey thread, is wrapped and glued around the mast. When the mast is slid into position the two parts line up and look like a credible attempt at waterproofing a hole in the deck. 

Cleats and shelf for boom

The belaying plan that I worked out needs five cleats at front and sides of the main mast. I guessed a height that the crew could easily reach but did not clash with all the other belaying points. The cleats are Caldercraft pieces. 

The shelf that supports the boom is a ply ring with eight triangular supports below it. At first I was going to position it parallel to the waterline and boom but realised that this would twist the boom when it was out to one side or the other. Having the shelf perpendicular to the mast prevents this problem but the underside of the boom jaws will have to be chamfered. 

I coppered all the way around the mast above the shelf. One piece of hull copper plate almost reaches round, leaving a gap slightly less than 1mm wide. I filled the gap with an offcut from plating the hull that shows closely spaced nails. I imagine that a coppersmith would have used the same sheets of copper that were readily available. 

 

Main topmast heel

On the fore topmast I built up layers of paper on a 4mm dowel and then carved down to a square section with 4mm faces. On the main topmast I carved a square section with 2mm faces on a 3mm dowel and then glued pieces of 3x1mm walnut to the faces. It is more robust than the paper corners on the foremast. 

Trees and shrouds

The trestle trees are identical on the two masts but the cross trees on the main mast do not extend beyond them because there are no shrouds to support the topmast. 

There are only two shrouds to each side of the main mast. The first pair to go over, starboard, are for the pendant (aft-most) and one shroud forward of it. The second pair is the same to port. I made these from linen that I painted ochre to simulate serving over their whole lengths. The photo shows these two pairs fitted over the grommet and bolsters. The final pair of shrouds, one each to port and starboard and foremost on the mast, are a swifter pair made from Ropes of Scale 0.6mm rope. The centre portion (11cm) was painted to simulate serving. Tying on the seizings was tricky for this pair but making an eye splice at this scale is not an option for me. 

The last two photos show linen and Ropes of Scale ropes that have been painted with about 4 coats of ochre, acrylic paint to simulate serving. I would argue that 'real' serving with fine thread is an example of artisan craftsmanship which is not really visible at this scale and put it alongside treenails in decks, nails in copper plates and stitching on sails. Debate it if you have strong views one way or the other. I have made my choices and respect yours, whichever way they go. 

 

Currently I am looking at the sail plan and preparing drawings for yards. There is a lot of informed judgement here (or guesswork as it is also known) and the woodwork and knot tying will come after that. 

 

George

 

 

Edited November 11 by georgeband
problems with photos not displaying as intended

[georgeband]

Fore mast square sails and yards

 

It has taken me a week to understand Steel Rigging and Seamanship and Lever Young Officers Sheet Anchor well enough to make some progress with the design of the square sails and their yards on the fore mast of Whiting. My other approach, scaling down the sail plan of HMS Adonis, drawing ZAZ6196 from the NMM, was a first step and a check on the results. 

 

Steel provides information about how the yards project beyond the sides of the sails. Section 34 is a general introduction but it is not always obvious what his words mean and I compared them with the drawings in Plate 5 to prompt a fresh interpretation. Later sections (15, 125, 124) describe particular sails and require some creativity to adapt them from a 36-gun ship to a 4-gun schooner. Lever was also useful at this stage. I then had an iterative process of guessing a sail pattern, for example choosing the number of cloths at the head and at the foot, calculating the total length of the yard, and comparing that with the measurements from Adonis. When I was close to a reasonable answer I drew the sails with basic representations of  yards to see if they looked right and finally arrived at the sail plan below. The yards and the cleats at the yard arms are shown by simple rectangles for now.

 

 

Top gallant sail

This sail was set flying so there is little rigging to worry about. I based mine on the mizen royal, number 15 in Steel, which is about the right size and function. 'Canvas 8' denotes the thinnest, lightest material. '5 and 7 cloths' refers to the number of canvas cloths at the head and foot respectively: it was usually a whole number. The topgallant yard comes out at 65mm long which is 5mm longer than a scaled down Adonis. 

 

Topsail

This has a reef band and more strengthening patches. Steel has a relevant description and drawing in section 125 for a sloop's topsail which I adapted. 'Canvas 6 or 7' is not quite the lightest and there are 7 cloths at the head and 11 at the foot. The topsail yard works out at 95mm long which is 11mm longer than what I estimated from Adonis. 

 

Spreadyard and square sail (course)

Steel has a description for a sloop's square sail in section 124. On my model this sail is folded and stored below deck so I have only drawn the top part to check that it looks in proportion. The yard is 144mm long which is only 2mm more than my Adonis estimate so I am happy with that. 

The topsail yard in Steel, plate 5, which is the inspiration for my spreadyard has two sheaves in each arm; the outer one is for reefing tackle and the inner for the topsail sheet and I have included the inner sheaves on my drawing. 

A major difference from a 'conventional' spreadyard is described by Marquardt in Global Schooner where he suggests that an occasionally used square sail (course) could be hoisted up on a crossjack yard. I cannot think of where to stow this yard on Whiting where there is no spare space and guess that it hangs from the permanent spreadyard to keep it out of the way. When the square sail is needed my guess is that the temporary crossjack yard is lowered, the sail is bent to it and then hoisted up. Does anyone have evidence for this, or an alternative? John Roach in his logbook mentions the fore square sail once so this problem had to be dealt with on the real vessel. 

 

Studding sails

The yards for the studding sails hang from the topsail yard and I assume that they are kept below when not needed, though their halyards probably route through blocks at the yard arms and remain in place. The booms for the topsail studding sails will sit on the permanent spreadyard and demand a few extra blocks. Learning about them is for another day.

 

George

[Kenchington]

1 hour ago, georgeband said:

Marquardt in Global Schooner where he suggests that an occasionally used square sail (course) could be hoisted up on a crossjack yard. I cannot think of where to stow this yard

A crossjack is usually understood as a square yard with no sail bent to it. ("Cross"=square, "jack"=useless, hence the yard that spread the foot of a mizzen topsail, above a lateen mizzen, was a "purposeless" yard since it carried no sail.) Thus, what Marquardt meant by "crossjack" was probably what you are calling a "spreadyard". I suspect that he meant that a schooner's squaresail (not really a course) was hoisted to the crossjack by three or four halliards, without its head being bent to any spar (unless there was a short, light one in the middle).

 

I would expect the stuns'ls to be bent to their yards, which would be hoisted with the sail when required. Stuns'l booms would, as you say, usually remain aloft and hence on the yard there.

 

My one experience helping set a stuns'l at sea, there was a whole lot of work, taking blocks aloft for attachment to booms and yards, then reeving halliards, sheets and whatever, all before any canvas could leave the deck. When not playing with those flying kites, the only visible evidence of their existence were the booms, so that simplified appearance would be fully justified in a model. Then again, if the stuns'ls were in frequent use, their gear would likely be left rigged, even when the sails themselves were sent down. So you would be equally justified in showing everything!

 

Trevor

[georgeband]

Trevor,

Thanks for your comments.

Marquardt says a lot about crossjack and spread yards, pages 182-3, and according to his definitions a spread yard is permanently in position while a crossjack can be raised and lowered. He also talks about club yards as variations at the head of the square sail. They can be full width which is what I tried to describe, or just over the middle of the sail, or missing entirely when halyards are tied to the head rope in several places. As with most things schooner, anything appears to be possible and there are few rules or guidelines to follow. 

It might have been better for me to call the permanent yard a spread yard and describe the one to which the sail is bent as a club yard. That name probably has connotations of being temporary. 

 

George

[Kenchington]

You have induced me to pull Marquardt's book off the shelf, maybe for the first time since I read it. (I was not impressed and have not bothered with it since.) So I now see where you got your terminology from, though I'm left to wonder where he got it. I can't say that it was never used by the men who sailed under such rigs, though I wonder whether multiple translations from several European languages did not lead to confusion.

 

I have taken a look at Brady's Kedge Anchor, in case USN usage was different, but he does not have a "spread yard" either. He does tabulate the spars of a naval schooner, including a fore yard 50ft long and a "Yard for Square-sail" at 22ft 8in. I'll take a guess that that had the middle two quarters of the sail bent to it, while the outer corners of the head of the sail were hoisted to the arms of the fore yard.

 

Trevor

[Dr PR]

Trevor,

 

Wefalck told us in another post that Marquardt was German, and familiar with the northern European vessels and terminology. He later moved to Australia and wrote The Global Schooner - that could also account for some of his curious English terminology! I found his book very useful, but there were a lot of typos and other misinformation.

 

You brought up a point in your post about stunsails. I have read that some of the rigging for stunsails was often left aloft. But I could find nothing about where the running ends were belayed. I examined the belaying plans for a couple of ships that used stunsails and found no mention of any of the stunsail rigging. Were the lines just belayed on the same pins as lines from the associated yards and sails? I know it was common to belay two lines on a single pin when the two lines had to be used together.

 

Your comment about the work necessary for rigging stunsails reminded me of a comment I read somewhere that a sailor would look for evidence of stunsails on a ship (boom irons, etc.), and if it had them he wouldn't sign on.

[georgeband]

Cross-jack and Spread-yards

 

I fell down this rabbit hole after Trevor's and Phil's comments and have tried to find the histories of these words. Marquardt appears to draw fine distinctions between them but is not supported by current dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary which defines over 600,000 words does not show spread yard and neither does the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. 

 

I then tried contemporary sources, first looking at Falconer's dictionary and JJ Moore's dictionary. They had identical definitions for cross-jack yard and no entry for spread yard. 

Four books on masting (Steel, Kipping, Cock and Fincham) all mention cross-jack yards and only Steel mentions spread yards. 

• The interesting aspect of Steel is that the two entries for spread yards are in tables along side cross-jack yards, so there is some difference between them. Cross-jack yards are more common in his text and also appear in two drawings - plate 5 and the square sail by section 124. 
• The entries in Fincham (1829 edition) are for three possible candidates: square sail yard, lower yard, cross-jack yard. Square sail yard appears in combination with lower yard or with cross-jack yard. Cross-jack yard appears on its own in some tables.  
• The entries in Fincham (1843 edition) are for three possible candidates: square sail yard, lower yard, cross-jack yard. Square sail yard appears in combination with lower yard. Cross-jack yard appears on its own in sections on brigs and ships. All three are in one table, page 163.
• Kipping and Cock only refer to cross-jack yards, unless I missed something. 

My interpretation? I think that for Fincham cross-jack yard refers to a yard without a sail on the mizzen mast (or on the main mast of a brig). Its role is to carry the sheets from the topsail above it. I think that the lower yard performs the same function on the fore mast of a schooner and the square sail yard has the sail bent to it. The square sail yard with its sail is hoisted up to the lower yard, which in Fincham has a thicker diameter than the square sail yard and the same length. I also think that Steel's spread yards and cross-jack yards refer to the same two yards as Fincham (lower and square sail) but I do not know which is which. Cross-jack yard in Fincham I think applies to mizen or aft-most masts. 

 

The short square sail yards that Trevor and Marquardt describe are variations on this theme with a change of name. There is also absence of evidence in contemporary drawings to support Fincham's definitions. I might be trapped in this rabbit hole for a while longer. 

 

Is this reasonable?

 

George

[Kenchington]

Phil: I thought I remembered that Marquart was of German origin but did not want to say so here as I could not confirm. He may have translated everything into German, at least in his head, then into English for publication. Occasional errors in technical usage should not be unexpected.

 

George: Good of you to catch Steel's use of "spread yard"! That may well be where Marquart found the term and so I have to accept that it was sometimes used as an alternative for "crossjack", at least in relation to fore-and-aft rigs with square topsails. (Naval cutters as much as schooners, perhaps?)

 

My only copy of Steel's Masting and Rigging  is a 1983 printing of a 1932 edition, which did not claim to be complete. It does have, amongst much other tabulated data, the spar dimensions for a schooner of 110t in the merchant service -- which may be the same entry that you found. That has the main tops'l yard at 38ft 6in and the "Spread Yard" at 47ft 7in, while those on the foremast are 30ft 6.5in and 40ft 7in. The "Square Sail Yd." is given as 38ft 7.5in. It is listed with the spars of the mainmast but the squaresail would have to be set on the fore, if it was to do its job without interfering with anything else. I don't see the "Spread Yard" term used with other rigs, nor "crossjack" used for the schooner.

 

My reading of that is that Steel's "spread yard" is what everyone else calls a "crossjack", while his "squaresail yard" is the spar to which the head of the squaresail is bent -- in his case the entire length of the head.

 

As to your other sources:

 

"Lower yard" can be nothing more than an alternative for (rarely seen) "course yard" -- more often called the "fore yard" or "main yard", as appropriate.

 

"Crossjack" was originally the yard-with-no-sail that spread the food of a topsail above a lateen mizzen. Once gaff drivers and spankers replaced the old mizzens, a sail could be set from the crossjack. Rather than re-naming it as a "mizzen course", it took its name from the yard and so became the "crossjack" (normally pronounced "cro'jick"). That got weirder still on the four-masted barques, where the third (mizzen) mast was a duplicate of the fore and main but had a cro'jick rather than a course! So do not assume that crossjack yards never had sails bent to them.

 

But, in topsail and topgallant schooners, there were yards-without-sails on at least the foremast and sometimes the main also, called "spread yards" by Steel but "crossjacks" by other sources, while the squaresails sometimes hoisted to those yards could have their heads bent to "squaresail yards", either full-length or as short clubs in the centre.

 

Make sense?

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Phil,

 

You asked:

10 hours ago, Dr PR said:

I examined the belaying plans for a couple of ships that used stunsails and found no mention of any of the stunsail rigging. Were the lines just belayed on the same pins as lines from the associated yards and sails?

To my regret, I cannot remember how we did it aboard Stad Amsterdam. Looking at the photos from this trip, she didn't have many spare belaying pins, so it wasn't a matter of there being designated, regular belaying points for the stuns'l gear. Maybe the buntlines of other sails (which are slack, when the sails are set) were shifted and tied off loosely somewhere.

 

Two lines on the same pin might be a necessity sometimes but I'd not want to do that if I didn't have to. Maybe if the second line was much lighter (so it could fit on the pin), under much less load (so that it wouldn't dig into the first line, damaging it and jambing at the same time), and if I was certain that I would have to loose the second line before there was any need to adjust the first one. But not ideal even then.

 

Trevor