Identity of a tackle

[cardely]

 

What are these tackles?

My guess is yardarm tackle, since they are rigged regardless of the loosing or furling of sails, and all the scenes depicted are near the shore, but I have not encounted any text mentioning the yard arm tackle's hanging in a long bight, so cannot confirm.

 

Besides, on the last one, all the fore course seem to have two leechlines, but it is not likely to be so, this seems strange.

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Keeping the Yardarm Tackle rigged all the time never made any sense to me. Allowing the fall of the tackles to hang in loops REALLY makes no sense to me. Crew on the yard would always have to negotiate the line, particularly if it was left loose and could blow around their feet as they clung to the yard, or blew in their face as they went over the futtocks.

On the other hand, if it was kept tight it would surely have a negative effect on bracing the yards.

I'm sure when the time came to rig out a boat there would be enough hands available to rig the falls with the block aloft kept in place. But on the other hand, maybe they tried that and found it was dangerous not to have the boats instantly available?

[cardely]

I agree, if these really are yardarm tackles, then this is not quite seaman-like practice. But currently I can find no more other possibilities, normally nothing is left loose in bights, Harland did had mentioned standing lifts, but lower yards are only lowered in exceptional conditions, so this item seems unlikely to be rigged. 

[mtaylor]

If you notice, all those images are of ship in the line of battle.  The first one has them firing.  The second has it's main courses reefed up, and the last has the line moving into position.   This might just be the method for them as part of "clear for action".  They normally might not be in that position, but rigged this way in the interest of speed as the crew had much to do besides re-work the rigging.

[cardely]

Hi moderator:

On this I cannnot fully agree...

In fact, the first drawing is from National Maritime Museum's booklet of ship history, according to the accampanying text, the two are east-Indianmen firing salute to the barge in the foreground, while entering their mooring.

The second clearly depicts an RN 74's using flag signal to identify a frigate to the right. With the lower guns not ran out, the British seem not to expect an all-out confrontation...

The last is Nelson's in-shore squadron blockading Cadiz, in this it may be expected the ships are kept ready for action.

[mtaylor]

Cardely,

 

I can be wrong....  Not knowing anything about the pics, I was just observing the art.   It is strange (maybe that's the right word) that all of them show the same tackle...  Interesting dilemma.

 

By the way, call me Mark.... I'm a modelbuilder first, moderator is just a job. 

[cardely]

Oops, I mistake your rank for name...(the bar with your name incidentlly scrolled out of the screen...)

Maybe the artists don't have a good knowledge of the trade, so merely have illustrated what they have seen in their own understanding.

[Canute]

Cardely, that would be a pretty good assumption. Unless the artist spent a lot of time at sea, observing the action first hand, he'd be working on estimates. Back in the day, I suspect they only drew details of what they saw from the beach. Navies back then weren't too concerned about the small details of their ships involved in action.

 

Some of the current maritime and aviation artists can take months to do "prototypically correct" paintings. My flying squadron wanted a profile painting as a nice piece of memorabilia. We had to take a large number of photographs of the aircraft and shipped the package off to the artist. About 3 months later, we got a draft copy. After correcting that we waited another few months and got a very nice rendering of our Phantom.

[BANYAN]

For consideration - as pointed out many of the prints/paintings are for ships entering harbour.  As a ship came to anchor it is the practice to 'out booms and boats' in a seaman like manner which meant that if it was not synchronised with the anchor being let go, the skipper and his "jimmy" would leave a forceful foot imprint somewhere .  The salute is usually made on entering harbour as the entering ship passes the Governor's or senior Officer's residence/ship and before anchoring.  Therefore, it is quite likely that if these ships are preparing to come to anchor the boat and boom tackles may have been rigged ready for use?

 

cheers

 

Pat

Edited November 23, 2014 by BANYAN

[popeye2sea]

In the second picture the ship looks to be hove to with her fore topsail aback.  She is not going anywhere.

[cardely]

Canute,

 

It looks like my guess may actually hold some ground.

 

It is known the yard arm tackles are rigged, together with burton tackles, to shift out boats

 

I will find out the exact way of rigging yard arm tackles to "out boats" and back to my topic later.

[cardely]

Once again, I come across the lovely bight...

[Stockholm tar]

Unless the artist spent a lot of time at sea, observing the action first hand, he'd be working on estimates. Back in the day, I suspect they only drew details of what they saw from the beach. Navies back then weren't too concerned about the small details of their ships involved in action.

Ken,

 

I'm not sure that's quite true, as the artists who painted these battle and other scenes from the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries, were masters of their art. Don't forget that 'back in the day', the RN and the British population were quite used to such feats by their navy quite frequently and were expecting accuracy in reporting of events, be it in the newspapers or on canvas. They were no less discerning than people are today.

 

So, far from navies not being 'too concerned about the small details of their ships', I would suggest the opposite was the case. Individual naval officers who served on the ships depicted certainly were and could be relied upon to ensure the technicalities were correct, particularly if the painting in question had been commissioned by them from the artist. This was quite common after a decisive action which the officer wanted portrayed on canvas for posterity.

 

I'm not sure many artists worked from the beach, they wouldn't have seen much in any case, but from their studios. They would most likely have been aided by other drawings, paintings and other information, backed up by the input of the naval officers. Some of the artists had also been seamen themselves, so would have instinctively known many aspects of what they were painting.

[cardely]

At last, this painting of Lord Anson's arrival at Spithead with Prizes After May 3 1747 Cape Finisterre Action by John Christian Schetky (1778-1875), 

shows unequivocally the bights as the fall of the yardarm tackle, though this is not quite seaman like...

[cardely]

This practice seems quite common in 19 century. Googling RN ironclads, I can find this feature on virtually every photograph.

Again, this points to the connection with harbor work, since technology back then only permitts static photoshot.