Bonnets for sails

[georgeband]

A bonnet was an extension that was attached to the bottom edge of a sail to increase the area; a reef could only make the area smaller. Steel gives good descriptions of how they were made and how they were attached. 

This is enough information for me to make a stay sail with an attached bonnet, and I know from a sub-Lieutenant's log book that this was done on HMS Whiting. What I do not know is what happens with the sheet and tack at the bottom of the sail. 

 

The stay sail would have its original sheet and tack when it is without a bonnet. When the bonnet is attached it will also need a sheet and a tack otherwise it becomes a curtain that flaps in the breeze. Do both sheets belay to the same point, and similarly do both tacks belay to one point? Or do they belay to different points? Or do the original sheet and tack become redundant and are coiled and hung somewhere out of the way? Steel is silent on this topic unless I have missed it. 

 

Any assistance will be gratefully received. 

 

George

[Kenchington]

When I do that at full size (having modified the foresail of my little boat by adding reef points, etc.), I shift the sheets and tack to the appropriate cringles -- in my case, the reef cringles or the ones at the corners of the sail, for your model the ones at the corners of the sail or those on the bonnet. I suspect (but cannot confirm) that the same was done aboard your model's prototype. The question would be: How were the lines attached to the cringles? They will certainly not have used the carabiner and spring-closed hook that I do! Did they perhaps use moused sister-hooks? Or was that a later technological development?

 

The strops of the sheet and tack blocks may have carried large wooden toggles that could be passed through large eyes worked in the boltropes (external to the canvas of the sail). I think Lees shows something of the kind, though I may be remembering an illustration in Ashley's.

 

Trevor

[popeye2sea]

Sheet Bend.

 

Regards,

 

Henry

[georgeband]

Thank you Trevor and Henry for your suggestions. I do like the idea of moving a sheet and tack from their cringles on the (short) sail to the cringles on the lower corners of the bonnet. Toggles would make it a quicker procedure. 

 

Darcy Lever discusses toggles on page 115 of The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor and there are small illustrations on other pages too. He says that a cringle on the sail is made just large enough to pass the eye on the end of a rope through it. The toggle is then put through the eye. (My childhood experience with duffel coats was that the toggle was tied into the end of the rope. To use it the toggle was passed through the equivalent of a cringle and then turned 90 degrees to lock it. Obviously it did not follow naval practice from 200 years earlier.) 

 

As a further complication on a schooner, and probably a ship, a stay sail or jib had two sheets on it so that the windward one was slack and ready to be used after tacking. The 'eye at the end of the sheet' becomes an eye at the end of two sheets for the toggle to be inserted. I will be delighted if anyone has information on this detail but will make something reasonable if nothing surfaces. At 1/64 scale the fine structures of splicing and seizing soon disappear. 

 

George

[popeye2sea]

For the jib sails, use a pendant with two legs seized to the clew of the sail.  Each leg of the pendant takes a sheet.

Another way to attach the pendant to the clew; middle the pendant and then pass the bight through the clew and then over the legs of the pendant. Cinch the bight up tight to the clew. The legs were often seized to the bight to prevent loosening.

 

Regards,

Henry

Edited Tuesday at 06:04 PM by popeye2sea