Euphroes and crowsfeet

[druxey]

While rigging some crowsfeet - a tedious task allowing plenty of time for thinking! - I began to wonder how on earth this was done in real life. A model maker can do this in the air. In reality this is some 40' 0" or more above the deck and a long way out from the front of the top. Does anyone know how this work was carried out by the old-time riggers?

 

All I can think of was that the tackle was slacked off enough to enable the euphroe to be threaded while the rigger was on the top, but there would be many fathoms of line snaking all over the place and liable to tangle while this was being done. Even so, the tackle fall need to be heaved tight after the crowfoot was installed. The fall line was rigged in such a way as to point away from the top along the stay. How could this be done?

[mtaylor]

I'd have to make an assumption that there wasn't any kind of affair like a mountain climber's or rappelling gear, so maybe a bosun's seat run up to the euphroe?  Or one who had climbed the stay though how he would have hung on is the question. Then two men, one on the top and the other at the euphroe?  Slackening the stay for them to work from the top, to me would have been problematical as the stay would have to have been loosened to allow this.  Though that might be possible.

 

Yes, there would have been much rope hanging off the top to be fed back and forth but when you consider the amount of line, shrouds, etc. being hung and run through everything, it was obviously doable for them. 

 

After running the line, I could see men down on the deck pulling the line to tighten everything up. 

[Jim Lad]

I don't really know, but I think Mark probably has the right of it.  A bosun's chair seems the most obvious solution.

 

John

[druxey]

The bosun's chair would solve the tensioning and hitching off issue all right, Mark. But threading all those fathoms of line without tangling or snarling must have been a nightmare.

[mtaylor]

Druxey,

 

I would assume they had it figured out somehow.. maybe men below keeping the rope hanging down from tangling?  I seriously doubt that cable reels (like power and telcos use) were available.  I have a hard time just comprehending that they floated the masts to the ship and using manpower and sheers got the masts installed.  Moving all that cordage out to the ship for rigging would have been an operation unto itself.

 

I wish there was more historical info, it would be fascinating to know how the heck they did things like this.

Edited January 22, 2015 by mtaylor

[jud]

Was a messenger line used? That way the riggers could run a lighter line, while working from whatever was holding them. When the messinger was rigged, the end of the crowsfoot line would be attached to the messinger using a splice to prevent a knot to hang up. Then laving the coil on deck. use the messinger to guide and control  it as it follows the messinger.  When in place adjust.as needed.  Messinger lines and jin poles allow things to be done with simple rigging and I bet they were used frequently in the days of sale.

jud

[popeye2sea]

Would it be difficult to reeve the crowsfeet through the euphroe and the top with the euphroe up close to the top and then haul out to the stay using the tackle, adjusting tension on individual legs as you go?

[druxey]

Possible, Henry, but still difficult, I would think, given the length of line required.

 

Jud; the crowfoot line was already a very light one (¾" circumference). One would still have the problem of reeving it which may have been done as Henry suggests and hauled taut as Mark described.

 

Thank you everyone, for your responses!

Edited January 22, 2015 by druxey

[popeye2sea]

Druxey,

 

I would assume they had it figured out somehow.. maybe men below keeping the rope hanging down from tangling?  I seriously doubt that cable reels (like power and telcos use) were available.  I have a hard time just comprehending that they floated the masts to the ship and using manpower and sheers got the masts installed.  Moving all that cordage out to the ship for rigging would have been an operation unto itself.

 

I wish there was more historical info, it would be fascinating to know how the heck they did things like this.

 

If you thought that stepping the masts was tough, you should read the description of  swaying the tops up and setting them into place.  There is a good description of the same and a diagram of setting up a mast in Steels' Art of Rigging, 1925

 

Most of the heavy lifting of the cross trees, tops, shrouds, stays to be got over the mast heads were lifted by means of girtline blocks lashed to the mast heads.  Even the riggers who went aloft to accomplish all this were hoisted aloft by the girtlines.

[jbshan]

Darcy Lever describes a lot of these processes, though he is too late for euphroe blocks, I believe.

 

Joel Sanborn