David Steel's The Art of Rigging: Juxtapositions, analyses and the yet unknown

[dafi]

For the blocks of my Victory I had to work my way through David Steel's The Art of Rigging. Originally, I had oriented myself on McKay's AOTS, but then realized that there was still a lot omitted and there were also some errors.

Steel is much more detailed, but there are some ambiguities as well as differences to other sources. Here are a few that I am working on and wondering about 🙂

 

 

[dafi]

I was most surprised by the stirrups: 3 feet below the yard.

When I held my scale seaman next to it, my suspicions were confirmed: damn deep ...

... I would have instinctively hung it 4 mm higher so that my little Able Seaman had a chance of getting over it.

 

If you add up the 90 cm, the thickness of the yard is up to 60 cm, as in the case of the main yard. That's 150 cm, just under my chin. Then there is also the depth of the yard  to consider, so that in addition to the 90 cm length under the yard, there is also approx. 0.5 x the diameter of the yard. Another escalating factor is that the horse can sag quite a bit in the middle between two stirrups.

 

To be able to judge this better, I trained two Able Seamen, one for the thickest part of the big yard with a diameter of 60 cm and one for the yardarm with a diameter of 30 cm.

 

First the variant with 3 feet under the yard. The sailor on the thick yard has very bad cards. The tar jacket on the thin end fits better.

If I refer the 3 feet to the center of the yard, it's better.

If you relate the 90 cm to the upper edge of the yard, it fits best. Here the sailor has the opportunity to use the horses at the thick point, the colleague on the outside still hangs at a similar height.

To confirm this interpretation of Steel's specification I had a closer look from the side.

The red part of the stirrups is about 3 Feet and it looks perfect both for the simply standing on it as for the working in a upswung position.

 

If one takes the other descriptions the remarks to the simplyfied "3 feet underneath the yard" it would possibly read like this:

Stirrup long 3 Feet, nailed to the top of the yard, with enough overlength to do 3 turns around the yard. Hangs behind and underneath the yard.

 

Could this interpretation be correct?

XXXDAn

 

 

 

 

 

[Gregory]

Did I miss where you indicated the height of your seaman?

 

Google tells me the average height in 18th century was 65”..

[dafi]

He is quite tall for the times with 1,80 cm being 71".

 

XXXDAn

[allanyed]

Very interesting point and your test group is a great idea.   To add to any confusion that there may be James Lees mentions that the footropes or horses were 2 feet under the yard on page 69 of The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, but then on page 70 goes on to say that the stirrups should allow the footropes to hang 3 feet below the yard.  Looking at the photos below, this makes some sort of sense.  Where as the stirrups were probably pretty much the same on a given ship, not all seamen were the same height so maybe topmen assignments were partially based on their height just as strength was a consideration in assignments.  The below are photos thus obviously more modern times, but may fit the discussion.  Hopefully the sailors between the stirrups were the taller ones.  😀

Allan

Edited April 9 by allanyed

[Jim Lad]

For late 19th/early 20th century, Harold Underhill suggests roughly 3 feet 6 inches for the total finished length of the stirrups.

 

John

[mtaylor]

5 hours ago, allanyed said:

Very interesting point and your test group is a great idea.   To add to any confusion that there may be James Lees mentions that the footropes or horses were 3 feet under the yard on page 69 of The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, but then on page 70 goes on to say that the stirrups should allow the footropes to hang 3 feet below the yard.  Looking at the photos below, this makes some sort of sense.  Where as the stirrups were probably pretty much the same on a given ship, not all seamen were the same height so maybe topmen assignments were partially based on their height just as strength was a consideration in assignments.  The below are photos thus obviously more modern times, but may fit the discussion.  Hopefully the sailors between the stirrups were the taller ones.  😀

Allan

It does appear looking at the lower photo that the taller men were"in the middle".  

[dafi]

8 hours ago, Jim Lad said:

For late 19th/early 20th century, Harold Underhill suggests roughly 3 feet 6 inches for the total finished length of the stirrups.

 

John

At that times the jackstays were in use, this  confirming the length seen on my small scale sailors.

[dafi]

Another difference I noticed are the yard tackle blocks and the braces pendants.

 

 

 

Steel mentions that the pendants of the braces of the main yard*** were 1/10 of the length of the yard. In the navy they were sometimes operated without pendants, i.e. the block was lashed directly to the yardarm.

In this matter, one probably has the freedom, as long as no direct references can be found in the logbooks. Are there any hints for that? @Morgan

 

It is interesting to note that Steel has replaced many long tackle blocks with normal double blocks. In particular, the stay tackle blocks and the yard tackle blocks are equipped with 17" double blocks instead of 24" long tackle blocks. More stable blocks or simplification of the material list? Or signs of the beginning machine milling of blocks? All other sources speak of violin blocks for the entire time frame.

Steel also gives the length of the pendants of the yard tackle blocks as 1/10 of the yardarm length. In many other sources I have the impression that the pendants extend to the fishing in the middle of the yard, i.e. they were about twice as long.

 

The two different versions are shown opposite each other in the picture.

 

And how could it be otherwise, questions upon questions ...

 

XXXDAn

 

*** The brace pendants of the foresail are 1/8 of the yard length according to the Steel

Edited April 11 by dafi