Jeers and topmast question

[Senior ole salt]

I noticed in the plans of the Virginia armed sloop There  a detail 7–A on sheet 7. It shows the sling for the jeers behind topmast. Is this correct?? It depends on the top mast to hold the sling in position. If crew wanted to lower or house the top mast there would be a lot of friction on that mast as well as the spreader yard going down a bit.  Or is the spreader yard lowered as well as the top mast. The way it is shown, the lowering of the topmast would hit some portion of the spreader yard and or it’s tackle.

 

I noticed others here have built the model as shown on the sheet plan.

 

S.O.S.

[GuntherMT]

I certainly did mine like the plans show.  

 

No idea if it's the "right" way to do it, but the spreader yard is attached to the horse so that it can be lowered without needing to lower the gaff or main sail, so if they needed to drop the topmast, there is no reason to keep the spreader yard up there (since the top yard is going to have to come down also if the topmast is down).

 

My wild guess is that they would use the jeers tackle to drop the spreader yard, and then drop the top yard prior to dropping the topmast, but that's all pure speculation on my part.