A time traveler?

[Martes]

 

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-103243

 

View of Bridgtown and part of Carlisle bay in the Island of Barbadoes by Captain Edward Pelham Brenton, circa 1820

 

Was this type of rig already used? Because otherwise it looks kind of like a modern yacht

Edited March 19 by Martes

[ccoyle]

13 minutes ago, Martes said:

Was this type of rig already used?

 

That's a Bermuda schooner rig. I can't tell you exactly when it came into use, but it's been around a long time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_rig#History.

[Martes]

3 hours ago, ccoyle said:

That's a Bermuda schooner rig.

 

There are, unfortunately, very little depictions of ships with this kind of rig from 18th or early 19th century.

 

 

This is dated 1843 and it's the earliest I could find, with earlier images being closer to this:

 

 

Continuous triangular sails are extremely rare. I don't say it's impossible, but very curious nevertheless.

 

Also note the height of the masts and the sails on the original image.

Edited March 18 by Martes

[Harvey Golden]

Just a touch early for a sharpie, which it otherwise resembles considerably.

[Dr PR]

Karl Heintz Marquardt's The Global Schooner (Chapter 1, Origin of Schooners) shows numerous examples of this "bermuda rig" dating from a 1526 Spanish account of a Peruvian raft, and a Dutch sketch of one of these rafts from 1615.

 

The Dutch were building similar two mast triangular sail torentuig rigged vessels in the early 1600s, and possibly introduced it into the Bermudas in the 1620s. By the late 1620s the Dutch had developed a refined version called the speljacht. It is suggested that these vessels might be the origin of all schooners in Europe and then the Americas.

Edited March 19 by Dr PR

[Nirvana]

I wonder about that "picture"/painting..... it looks altered to me, the rendering doesn't match the overall picture.
I might be wrong.

[thibaultron]

Considering that you can see the background through the ship and sails, Photoshop!

[Harvey Golden]

14 hours ago, Dr PR said:

Karl Heintz Marquardt's The Global Schooner (Chapter 1, Origin of Schooners) shows numerous examples of this "bermuda rig" dating from a 1526 Spanish account of a Peruvian raft, and a Dutch sketch of one of these rafts from 1615.

Thank you Phil-- I hadn't heard of this book before.  Phillips-Birt's "Fore and Aft Sailing Craft" (1962) and Morris's "The Fore and Aft Rig in America" (1974) also cover origins/history of these types.  

[mnl]

14 hours ago, thibaultron said:

Considering that you can see the background through the ship and sails, Photoshop!

Looks to be a water color. This effect is fairly common in that medium.

[druxey]

mnl is correct; watercolor is a transparent medium. You can also see the background through the ships' masts and the knee of the head.

[Martes]

First of all, it is a watercolor, indeed, hence the transparency.

 

And second I think I was misunderstood a little.

 

It wasn't a question of what this rig is. 

And I didn't even say it's impossible to have at the time, but just extremely rare and therefore worth a bit of exploration.

 

What I was interested in are any additional documentation or depictions of this exact type of Bermudan schooners earlier than 1830, because I can't find any. Especially with this ratio of ship length to height of the masts.

 

And yes, it was a joke about the time traveling, but still, the ship that we see differs from even from the Bermuda schooner in the third post, having considerably longer masts for shorter hull, and implying a very different hull form with an extended keel.

Edited March 19 by Martes

[Martes]

6 hours ago, Harvey Golden said:

Phillips-Birt's "Fore and Aft Sailing Craft" (1962) and Morris's "The Fore and Aft Rig in America" (1974) also cover origins/history of these types.

Thanks, I checked those books. Unfortunately, there is no indication for similar ships, again, before mid-19th century. Every example before features at least a small gaff above, or the sail is actually divided to two.

[Dr PR]

For me Marquardt's The global Schooner is a must have book for working on schooners. It is a "Lees" for fore and aft rigged vessels.It has some history, but much of the book is about howfore and aft craft were built and rigged, and the appendices have a lot of tables of historical data.

[Martes]

8 hours ago, Dr PR said:

Marquardt's The global Schooner

Unfortunately, there is nothing decisive there as well.

The examples given in the book show either small gaff, or divided sail, or sliding gunter (featured on Preble's gunboat), which is still separate from the mast. That's the closest, but still not that.

Edited March 20 by Martes

[Harvey Golden]

It could just be a naive/simplified rendering of a Barbados Schooner, as described by Morris in his "The Fore and Aft Rig in America."  Without any context (date, location, surrounding details), the image could well be interpreted as having any number of rigs, e.g., gunter, lateen, jib-headed sprit, etc.   

[realworkingsailor]

This painting is by Adam Willaerts dating from 1607:

 

 

Almost front and centre is a small schooner with what could be considered a proto-Bermuda rig. Note that these are not lateen sails (lack of a vertical mast). 
 

Andy

[Martes]

3 hours ago, realworkingsailor said:

Almost front and centre is a small schooner

Thanks, I saw those small and early ones.

 

What I am looking for are any depictions of very tall, modern-looking, schooners with gaffless triangular sails that can be with any confidence dated between 1750 and 1840.

Edited March 20 by Martes

[Nirvana]

Again I could be wrong, but looking at the "distance" to the other ships in the foreground she must be a huge one.

[Harvey Golden]

Perhaps of interest: https://www.bermuda.com/the-bermuda-rig/

Features quite an old engraving and some early description.  The photo atop shows a schooner with two jib-headed sprit sails.

[Martes]

On 3/21/2024 at 12:16 AM, Nirvana said:

Again I could be wrong, but looking at the "distance" to the other ships in the foreground she must be a huge one.

It is a point. The way I see it, she's about the size of the ships in the foreground, ~100 feet in length, and with comparable mast height.

 

On 3/21/2024 at 3:18 AM, Harvey Golden said:

Features quite an old engraving and some early description.  The photo atop shows a schooner with two jib-headed sprit sails.

One of the first images google gives, of course I've seen it. But it's not comparable to the size of the depicted ship, nor the rig is close to proportion.

Edited March 24 by Martes

[georgeband]

Martes,

 

Here are a couple of pictures from USN archives. The first is St Thomas in the Virgin Isles in 1823 which shows a lot of ships and other vessels in harbour. At the left of the pack is what looks like a schooner with no yards on her masts; they might have been lowered to deck level but their absence in the drawing is certain. https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/USN-901000/USN-901913.html

 This is a crop of the area of interest. 

Here is another, similar picture of Laguira (Venezuela) which unfortunately is not dated. This time there is a schooner just to the right of the centre of the pack which is described as a 'Dutch merchant schooner'. As with the picture above she has two tall masts and no apparent yards.  https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/USN-901000/USN-901914.html

 

Neither of these pictures has positive confirmation of triangular sails though the absence of yards does suggest that they could be examples of Bermudan rig. 

 

Good hunting for more pictures!

 

George