long technical treatise would be required to name the many
combinations of cordage and spars which make up the total
rigging. All that is attempted here is to give the main lines
and general principles or divisions.
The vessel dealt with here is the fully rigged ship of three or more masts. But she includes all the others and the principles are the same. The simplest of all forms of rigging is the dipping lug, a quadrangular sail hanging from a yard, and always hoisted on the side of the mast opposite to, that on which the wind is blowing (the lee side). When the boat is to be tacked so as to bring the wind on the other side, the sail is lowered and rehoisted. One rope can serve as halliard to hoist the sail and as a stay when it is made fast on the weather side on which the wind is blowing. The difference between such a craft and the fully rigged ship is that between a simple organism and a very complex one; but it is one of degree, not of kind. The steps in the scale are innumerable. Every sea has its own type. Some in eastern waters are of extreme antiquity, and even in Europe vessels are still to be met with which differ very little if at all from the ships of the Norsemen of the 9th and 10th centuries. For a full account of these varieties of rigging the reader may be referred to Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia (London, 1906), by H. Warington Smyth.
When the finer degrees of variation are neglected the types of rigging may be reduced to comparatively few, which can be classed by the shape of their sail and the number of their masts. At the bottom of the scale is such a craft as the Norse herring boat (fig. 2).
Fig. 2.—Norse Herring Boat.
She has one quadrangular sail suspended from a yard which is hung (or slung) by the middle to a single mast which is placed (or stepped) in the middle of the boat. She is the direct representative of the ships of the Norsemen. Her one sail is a “course” such as is still used on the fore and mainmasts of a fully developed ship; a topsail may be added (as in fig. 3) and then we have the beginning of a fully clothed mast.
Fig. 3.—Nordland Boat.
A very similar craft called a Humber keel is used in the north of England. The lug sail is an advance on the course, since it is better adapted for sailing on the wind, with the wind on the side. When the lug is not meant to be lowered, and rehoisted on the lee side, as in the dipping lug mentioned above, it is slung at a third from the end of the yard, and is called a standing lug. A good example of the lug is the Chinese junk (fig. 4).
Fig. 4.—Four-masted Junk.
The lug is a “lifting sail,” and does not tend to press the vessel down as the fore and aft sail does. Therefore it is much used by fishing vessels in the North Sea. The type of the fore and aft rig is the schooner (fig. 5) The sails on the masts have a gaff above and a boom below. These spars have a prong called “the jaws,” which fit to the mast, and are held in place by a “jaw rope” on which are threaded beads called trucks. Sails of this shape are carried by fully rigged ships on the mizzen-mast, and can be spread on the fore and main.
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| Fig. 5.—Schooner. 1, bowsprit, with martingale to the stem; 2, fore-topmast-stay, jib and stay-foresail; 3, fore-gall-topsail; 4, foresail and mainstays; 5, main-gaff-topsail; 6, mainsail; 7, end of boom. |
They are then called trysails and are used only in bad weather when little sail can be carried, and are hoisted on the trysail mast, a small mast attached to the great one. The Lateen (Latin) sail (fig. 6) is a triangular sail akin to the lug, and is the prevailing type of the Mediterranean.
Fig. 6.—Lateen Rig.
These original types, even when unmodified by mixture with any other, permit of large variations. The number of masts of a lugger may vary from one to five, and of at schooner from two to five or even seven. A small lug may be carried above the large one, and a gaff topsail added to the sails of a schooner. A small-masted fore-and-aft-rigged vessel may be a cutter (fig. 7) or sloop. But the pure types may be combined, in topsail schooner, brigantines, barquentines and barques, when the topsail, a quadrangular sail hanging from and fastened to a yard, slung by the middle, is combined with fore and aft sails. The lateen rig has been combined with the square rig to make such a rigging as the xebec—a three-masted vessel square rigged on the
main, and lateen on the fore and mizzen. Triangular sails of the
