Chapter IX (1)

THE FORE-AND-AFT RIG AND ITS DEVELOPMENTS; COASTERS, FISHING BOATS, YACHTS, ETC.[116]

So far we have, with the exception of the primitive lateen, dealt exclusively with the square-rigged sailing ship. We have seen that this was the earliest and has continued to be the most universal sail of the ship. The Egyptian and other early races possessed it, and likewise the Greeks, Romans and Vikings. In the most modern full-rigged ship it is to-day seen as conspicuous as ever. For ocean, deep-sea sailing it has no peer, but in course of time with the growth of the coasting and fishing shipping, of pilotage and yachting, a rig that was suitable for deep-sea sailing was found to be not altogether ideal for the new demands. And so, gradually, side by side with the squaresail, has grown up another development which we may divide into two sections: first, the fore-and-aft rig, and secondly, the compromises that have been made between the fore-and-aft and the squaresail.

It would be quite impossible here to trace in such complete detail the history and development of the fore-and-afters as we have done of the larger sailing ships; that, indeed, demands a separate volume to itself. But we can show here, what, as far as I am able to ascertain, has never been attempted by any previous writer, in outline, at least, the story of the rise of the fore-and-after, and link it up to that larger ship that sets her sails at an angle athwart the keel instead of parallel with it. We shall thus complete our study in connecting the present with the past, and in showing how the latest _Shamrock_ is related to the early Egyptian ship, and how on the one hand she has inherited certain family characteristics of her fore-parent, yet on the other hand, through coming under new influences and acquiring new habits, she has altered some of the features by which her ancestors were especially distinguished.

In an earlier chapter we mentioned that it was in Holland during the sixteenth century that the fore-and-aft rig originated. At first it was only used for quite small sailing boats, but it was not long before craft of fifty tons and more adopted it. We must remember that about this time the Dutch were more advanced in maritime matters than any other nation. With them shipbuilding and naval architecture were much nearer to being an art and a science than elsewhere. The vast number of miles open to inland navigation, the shallowness of their channels and coasts naturally encouraged and stimulated them to study the problem of smaller ships. What the Tigris and Euphrates and Nile had been to the ancients the inland waterways were to the Dutch. The squaresail rig was out of the question. It was far too clumsy for tacking in and out of the small harbours of the Zuyder Zee and German Ocean. It would not sail close enough to the wind to allow the little craft just to lay her course in a straight narrow channel, while at the same time the Mediterranean lateen rig with its enormous yard was not suitable for the boisterous, squally North Sea. So the Dutchman, appreciating the virtues which the lateen shape possessed, just preserved this same triangular form, but cut it in two for convenience and handiness, though at the sacrifice of speed. Let the reader take his pencil and draw a vertical line to represent a mast. Across this let him draw a triangle with the apex well over to one side of the mast and the rest of the triangle and base to the other. This is roughly the shape of the Mediterranean and Eastern lateen as one can see by comparing Figs. 102 and 103. Now rub out from the drawing that part which is forward of the mast, and there remains a rectangular figure which is the germ of the first mainsail the cutter, or, more properly, the sloop-rigged boat had. In actual practice the sail was made much squarer at the top. A sprit was then stretched diagonally across the sail, with the peak on nearly the same level as where the throat now is. This sprit was supported just as in the Thames barge to-day, by a yard-tackle coming down from the throat to the sprit. It was thus, as we see from the engravings of the contemporary record of the first Dutch voyage to the North Pole in 1599, that the little craft that brought the ill-fated members home was rigged. Similarly the staysail, working on the forestay, as to-day, was in shape and size roughly equivalent to that part which in the triangular sketch just now would project forward of the mast. Vangs came down from the peak, and a bonnet being in use on the contemporary full-rigged ships, was naturally enough used for the smaller ships, too. Thus the sprit is really the old lateen yard modified, and the fore-and-aft rig is in its earliest days but the dhow rig cut in two. I have made a close study of the earliest Dutch engravings and paintings, and have little doubt in my mind as to the stages of development here indicated.

The next change came when the last relic of the lateen yard disappeared, for in place of the sprit a tiny gaff was added at the top and a boom at the bottom of the sail. The sail was, of course, loose-footed and very baggy, and was kept to the mast by lacing, wooden hoops being still unknown. Then a long clumsy bowsprit was given, so that forward of the staysail a jib might be introduced. Thus it is not the foresail that was added to the jib, but _vice versâ_. Originally the foresail was the _fore_ sail in fact as well as in name, until the jib was introduced. Then topsails were added. These were copied from those on the contemporary full-rigged ships, were square in shape, were set athwart the ship and not parallel like the modern topsails. Before long, we find that not content with one square topsail, some of the bigger craft set a square topgallant sail also. The topsail was goared out considerably and the foot was cut in a deep curve upwards, but a “barren” yard like that of the old cro’jack was retained. In light winds, the triangular spinnaker not being yet invented, the Dutchman set a large squaresail for running. This was similar to the lower course of the full-rigged ship and was set below the topsail when the ship was large enough to carry the former. This lower course extended from the hounds, was hoisted _outside_ the forestay and, if she was a large sized ship and possessed a bowsprit, the sail extended right down to the furthest end of the latter. If she had no bowsprit then it came down to the stem. This latter instance will be seen in Fig. 82, which has been sketched from the picture by Van der Cappelle in the National Gallery (No. 964; Van der Cappelle painted from 1650 to 1680). We find in the paintings and engravings of this time that the Dutch were immensely fond of booming out these sails with a light spar. One is seen in this illustration, but sometimes, besides such a one as this, they would set another boom one-third of the way up the sail, so that it might catch every breath of wind. In the present illustration the staysail is seen set, but one often finds it rolled round and round the forestay. So, too, with the mainsail, if it should happen to be a spritsail, then the foot was boomed out, in running, with a light spar also. It was thus, I believe, that the introduction of a boom and gaff mainsail came—the boom first and the necessary spar at the top to correspond thereto. Then, not infrequently, one finds in the Dutchmen of about 1700 that they dispense with the boom but retain the gaff. The brails, in the case of the spritsails, were plentifully used, sometimes with the addition also of reef-points. As to the hulls, they were tubby, bluff-bowed, but excellent sea-boats, if slow. Being of light draught, they had leeboards. Until about 1840-1850, we in this country continued to model our fishing and small sailing craft generally upon the lines of these Dutchmen (notice the cutter shown in Turner’s painting reproduced in Fig. 71). But whilst we have gone ahead from improvement to approximate perfection, from ignorance to knowledge, the ships of the Low Countries remain but little altered since the days of Tromp, when the Dutch were at the height of their maritime progress. The Dutch schuyt, such as may be seen any day lying at her buoy off Billingsgate, is shown in Fig. 83. The Viking influence is written largely over the ships of Holland, but breadth has taken the place of the length beloved of the Northerner.

_After the painting by W. Van der Velde, No. 150 in the National Gallery._]

If we compare the last-mentioned sketch of a modern Dutchman with that in Fig. 84, which has been copied from the exquisite little Van der Velde in the National Gallery, we shall see how little the hulls of their ships have altered. Van der Velde (the younger) lived from 1633 to 1707, so that he saw the Dutch ships at their very best. As Macaulay says, the Van der Veldes, father and son, produced, when they came over to Greenwich as painters to Charles II., some of the finest sea-pieces in the world. The title given to the present picture is _A Fresh Gale at Sea_ (No. 150). It is extremely interesting to us for its indication of the rig. The ship in the foreground on the port tack will collide with the other if both stand on. But to avoid this she has resolved to bear up. The reader will notice the helm has been put hard over as the other ship is seen staggering out of the squall and mist. Easing off her sheet she has also lowered her peak by slacking off the tackle at the foot of the sprit. In another of Van der Velde’s paintings in the same gallery (No. 149, _A Calm at Sea_) the same peculiar method of lowering sail is seen. We see a ship at anchor in a calm. She has slacked off the tack in the same way, so that the spar comes right across the mast. English ships of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries possessing this characteristic will be found in the paintings of Turner and other contemporary artists.

_After the painting by W. Van der Velde. No. 978 in the National Gallery._]

For many years, though the Dutch had changed their rig for small craft, yet they still felt the influence of the bigger squaresail ships, notably in the design of the sterns. Thus the familiar decoration and the sheer to a high poop will be noticed in the vessel that occupies the centre of Fig. 85, which is rigged with a spritsail. This has been copied from another Van der Velde in the same gallery (No. 978). I have selected this picture expressly for the purpose of indicating, as Van der Velde has done, as many of the prevailing types of Dutch seventeenth-century craft as possible in a small space. The short gaff, the spritsail furled by means of its brails, the large squaresail for spinnaker work seen on the ship to the left of the picture, the high stempost (relic of the Vikings) on the ship to the right—these will all be found deserving of notice. It was no doubt a ship very similar to the high-pooped yacht in the centre of this picture that was sent to Charles II. in 1660 by the Dutch. The vessel was called the _Mary_, and was the first yacht ever owned in this country.

In England the revenue and other sailing cutters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were rigged with the square topgallant sail and “goared” topsail below, with a hollow foot. Old prints of the beginning of the eighteenth century (1717) show British cutters sailing with the jack flying from the staff at the end of the bowsprit just clear of the jib. The bowsprit is steeved remarkably high and is very long. In a like manner were rigged also the yachts of this period. So the cutters continued until the ’forties and ’fifties, when the bluff bows and rough rig gave way to a larger, cleaner lined, and more scientific production than the slavish copying of a seventeenth century Dutch type could produce. Now the old-fashioned square topsail has utterly disappeared in fore-and-afters, and one of more or less triangular shape has taken its place. But since it is in the building and rigging of yachts that the most complete changes have occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries we shall postpone the further progress of the cutter until later in the chapter.

No modification of the cutter rig in England is so thoroughly Dutch as the bawley (Fig. 86). Not even the least observant of passengers on the Margate steamer can have failed to notice these little ships off the Nore or cruising somewhere up and down the Thames estuary. Off Southend and Whitstable they are as common as flies in summer, and bigger children of the same family are to be seen brought up in the Stour abreast of Harwich. The bawley inherits the Dutch ancient mainsail, with brails that can speedily shorten canvas, and without a boom to be kicking about from side to side as the ship rolls in the trough of the nasty seas that can get up off the entrance to our great waterway. With their transom stern and easily brailed and triced mainsail these bawleys are excellent bad-weather boats.

Some of the finest cutters in the country are the Brixham Mumble Bees, trawlers of about 27 tons. They have their mast stepped well aft, so that they are able to set an enormous foresail. Here especially the long bowsprit has survived, and without a bobstay to support it. The Plymouth hooker, with her mast stepped well amidships, with her square stern, no boom to her mainsail, and pole-mast, cannot be said altogether to have escaped Dutch influence, although it is said that the Devonshire men in Elizabeth’s time possessed cutters of their own.

The illustration in Plan 1 shows the sail and rigging plan of the _Gjöa_. The vessel is shown here because in combining much that is old and new she is one of the most interesting cutters afloat. Her tonnage is 70, length over all 69 feet, beam 20·66 feet, depth 8·75 feet, draught 7·5 feet. In June 1903 she set out from Christiania, and three and a half years later she had navigated the North-West Passage and reached San Francisco. Obviously built for the hard service of the Arctic regions, her hull is bluff and strong. The bowsprit is more that of an old-fashioned full-rigged ship than of a modern cutter, and the squaresail, whose yard and braces will be noticed, has come back from the times of the old Dutchmen, being, as already mentioned, of inestimable value for running across vast expanses of ocean. But in spite of her old-fashioned bow and stern and rigging she is fitted with a heavy-oil motor, as will be seen from Plan 2. This was found very useful, giving the ship a speed of 4 knots per hour; and it was the first time a motor-propelled ship had been so far north. Plan 3 gives an adequate idea of _Gjöa’s_ deck arrangement.

Pass we now to trace the progress of the schooner. It is a common error to suppose that this rig was derived direct from the cutter by merely adding another mast and sail of the same shape as the mainsail. Such a statement is pure guess-work, and entirely contrary to fact. The schooner originated quite independently of the cutter and much later, though the shape of her mainsail and foresail was obtained from the former. About the beginning of the seventeenth century a craft far from uncommon among the Dutch was the sloop. Now in order to clear the ground, let us carefully separate the three distinct kinds of craft to which this name belonged at that time. The word sloop, or more properly _sloepe_, was applied less to the rig than to the size of the craft, denoting a somewhat small tonnage. Thus it was primarily applied to a ship’s big boat, such as was used to run out the kedge anchor and for fetching provisions and water from the shore. The same name was also given to the Dutch vessels of about 55 feet long and 12½ feet beam which sailed to the Cape Verde Islands. More familiar to us was the custom of applying it to the early cutter-like craft which carried a triangular foresail yet no jib. But not one of these is the sloop we are looking for. This is found in that kind of sailing craft which was about 42 feet overall and with 9 feet beam. She was rigged with two pole masts, the mainmast being 24 feet long. On each she had just such a sail as we see in Fig. 83 of a modern schuyt, with loose foot and with both gaff and boom, but the most important fact is that she had neither bowsprit nor headsails of any kind, while her foremast was stepped right as far forward as it could get. There are plenty of contemporary prints and paintings in existence to show such a vessel, which usually had an enormous sheer coming up from bow to stern. This, then, was not a schooner but a sloop, and you may search high and low in all the seventeenth century dictionaries, marine and otherwise, but you will not find such a word as “schooner” in existence. We come, then, to the early part of the eighteenth century, and we cross to North America. When in 1664 the British, during the war with Holland, seized the Dutch colony of the New Netherlands and changed the name of New Amsterdam to New York in honour of Charles II.’s brother, most of the Dutch settlers who had come out from Europe remained. So, like those early people who trekked westwards across the Syrian desert to Egypt, the Dutch had also brought with them their ideas and practical knowledge of shipbuilding, included in which was that of making sloops. It was at Gloucester, Massachusetts, still to-day famous for the finest schooners and the very finest schooner-sailors that ever tasted brine on their lips, that in 1713 the first genuine schooner with a triangular headsail was built. To add the latter to the two-masted sloop was but the easiest transition. Not till the first vessel of this now enormous class was actually making its first contact with water was the name schooner bestowed on it. As she was leaving the stocks some one remarked “Oh, how she scoons.” “Very well, then,” answered her proud builder, “a scooner let her be.” And so she has remained ever since.

For the next century and a half Gloucester went ahead building these beautiful creatures, more stately than a cutter, less ponderous than a full-rigged ship, until 1852, when the famous _America_ still perpetuated in the America Cup came across to the English waters and so wiped the slate that every rich owner of yachts desired to turn them into the same rig as this Yankee. We will say no more about her at present as we shall presently make her acquaintance anew when we come to deal entirely with yachts.

But to return to the more commercial schooner; for whatever else Gloucester, Massachusetts, may yet become famous, it will always be associated with that wonderful fleet of fishing schooners which those who have read Kipling’s “Captains Courageous,” and Mr. J. B. Connolly’s “The Seiners,” already know. The origin of this wonderful Gloucester breed may be traced to the Dutch fly-boat, or _flibot_, of the eighteenth century. The next step in the evolution of the Gloucester schooner is seen in Fig. 87, the _Pinkie_, engaged in the fishery industry between 1800 and 1850. Although the sail plan belongs to a smaller boat than the one just indicated, yet we see the first step in the introduction of the single headsail to the old two-masted “sloepe,” with the foremast even now stepped very far forward. Impelled by the demands for a ship that would be able to carry its fish to market with the utmost despatch, but which would be able to endure being caught in the terrible seas off the Newfoundland Banks; and subsequently encouraged to progress through the popularity which such craft were obtaining among the American pilots who used to come out enormous distances into the Atlantic in those days to meet the incoming liners, the builders and designers went on improving the design and rig, giving them fine hollow lines, adding jibs and standing bowsprits, greater draught and speed, larger spars with a vast square measurement of canvas. The _Fredonia_, seen in Fig. 88, was one of the famous schooners of the ’nineties and is so still. She was designed by W. Burgess in 1891, and with her cut-away fore-foot and finer lines is a great improvement on the old Dutch models. This vessel measures 114 feet 2 inches long, with 25 feet beam, drawing 12 feet 8 inches. Her displacement is 188 tons, and her sail area is the enormous extent of 7542 square feet. Fig. 89 represents one of the earliest of the twentieth-century productions, and is designed by the famous Crowinshield. Her fore-foot is cut away more like that of a Solent racing schooner-yacht. Indeed, many of these Gloucester schooners are far more entitled to be called yachts than any other name. I have watched them turning up the Hudson in the winter, threading their way through the ice-blocks and the crowd of fussy tugs and mammoth liners in New York harbour with the handiness of a small rater. The most modern example of this ideal ship is that seen in Fig. 90. She is only a 53-tonner with an overall length of under 70 feet, and is fitted with a 25-horse-power motor. But in many cases the internal combustion engine has been adopted by the American sailing ships only to be rejected as not worth while.

The coasting trade of the United States of America is not done in the ketches and topsail schooners and barquentines that we use. It is done exclusively, where sailing ships are used, in fore-and-aft schooners which have arisen directly or indirectly from Gloucester. Two masts have become three, three have become five, and even as many as seven have been used. Perhaps the most notable of these was the seven-masted _Thomas W. Lawson_, which foundered off the Scillies on December 14, 1907. Remarkable for the ease with which it can be handled, a three-masted schooner of about 400 tons requires only a dozen hands aboard. In tacking, a couple of hands work the head-sheets, and these with a man at the wheel can work her in and out of narrow channels, for which the rig is more suited than any modification of the squaresail. For labour-saving “gadgets” the American schooner has reached the furthest limit. Thus the anchor and sails are raised by steam force; there is steam steering gear as well as steam capstan, and the biggest ships of all have been fitted even with electric light. The illustration in Fig. 91 of a four-master will give one some idea of the extent to which the American schooner has developed.

Coming back to European waters, besides the pure fore-and-aft schooner we have also the topsail schooner and the two-topsail schooner. No better instance of the former could be found than in the illustration in Fig. 116 of Lord Brassey’s famous auxiliary yacht the _Sunbeam_, of which we shall give further details on a later page, among the yachts. But we may now call attention to the square fore-topsail and smaller t’gallant sail on this ship. Sometimes, too, one finds a royal added also to the foremast. The braces, clew-garnet, lifts, and other rigging are so well shown in this photograph as to require no further comment. A two-topsail schooner carries a square topsail and t’gallant sail at the main _as well as_ the fore. The topsail schooner is perhaps the best known of our coasting types. Most of our trading schooners are “butter-rigged,” that is to say, that whereas the topsail schooner has a standing t’gallant yard set up with lifts, the butter-rigged sets her t’gallants’l flying by hoisting the yard every time.

The illustrations in Figs. 92 and 93 represent barquentines, although one of them is seen with the now obsolete stun’s’ls. A barquentine is square-rigged on the foremasts, but fore-and-aft rigged on the main and mizzen. The difference between the barquentine and the three-masted schooner is that the former has a regular brigantine’s foremast. The three-masted schooner does not carry a fore-course, but in place of it a large squaresail, only used when running free in moderate weather, only differing from the fore-course in that it is not bent to the yard.

The illustration shown in Fig. 94 represents the 18-ton brig _Fantôme_. She was designed by Sir W. Symonds and launched about 1838. Her armament consisted of eighteen 32-pounders, and her complement was 148 officers and men. Her tonnage was 726, her breadth 37·7 feet, length 120 feet, and depth of hold 18 feet. This is from a photograph of the model in the South Kensington Museum. Fig. 95 is a photograph of the training brig _Martin_, actually afloat. The brig was the last sailing ship to disappear from the British Navy, and her final abolition is so recent that her picturesqueness still lingers in the imagination of Solent yachtsmen and others. The _Martin_ was launched in 1836. As will be seen from the photograph, which obtains even greater interest when compared with the model just mentioned, she carried single topsails, t’gallants and royals. Stun’sails will be noticed on the foresail, fore-topsail, fore-topgallant sail as well as on her main topgallant sail. As we shall never see these sailing brigs again, the photograph is of more than ordinary interest.

In olden days the brig was a favourite rig for small coasters. In the marine paintings of Turner and the early part of the nineteenth century one sees them frequently. In the eighteenth century, and even as late as the nineteenth, the brig was used for the coal-carrying trade. The nineteenth-century brigs often carried, besides the sails seen in the two illustrations, an enormous fore-topgallant staysail. But both the handiness of schooners and ketches began to oust her, and the coming of the steam collier finally did for her in the mercantile marine as, at a later date, she was abolished from the Royal Navy.

I have intentionally introduced the brig at this point, notwithstanding that she is essentially a square-rigged ship, in order that we may compare her the more easily with that compromise between the square rig and fore-and-aft vessel, the brigantine. Strictly speaking, the brigantine is square-rigged at her foremast, but differs from the Hermaphrodite brig in carrying small squaresails aloft at the main. She differs also from the full-rigged brig in having no top at the mainmast and in carrying a fore-and-aft mainsail and sometimes a main-staysail instead of a square mainsail and try-sail. (The fore-and-aft sail at a brig’s mainmast is called a try-sail.) The illustration in Fig. 96 represents a Hermaphrodite brig, commonly and erroneously called a brigantine. The Hermaphrodite brig, or brig-schooner, is square-rigged at her foremast like a brig, but without a top forward, and carrying only a fore-and-aft mainsail and gaff topsail on the mainmast. And here it may not be out of place to mention another subtlety: while a barque has three masts, being square-rigged at her fore and main like a ship, and differing from a ship-rigged vessel in having no top at her mizzen, but carrying a fore-and-aft spanker and gaff topsail, yet what is known among sailormen as the “Jackass” barque resembles a barque proper, but has no crosstrees, does not spread lower courses and has no tops. (Tops are the platforms placed over the heads of the lower masts, while the crosstrees are at the topmast heads, being used for giving a wider spread to the standing rigging).

The illustration seen in Fig. 97 shows one of the smallest schooner-rigged craft that ever sailed the ocean. This is the famous _Tillikum_, adapted from a “dug-out,” in which Captain J. C. Voss, F.R.G.S., sailed round the world to England. The sketch which we give here of this odd ship was made in November 1906, while she lay off the Houses of Parliament. She has since changed ownership and been fitted with a motor, and in her green paint is a familiar sight to those who bring up in the Orwell off Pin Mill.

The origin of the ketch is also Dutch, although the word is in old French _quaiche_ and in Spanish _queche_. We frequently find the influence of the bomb-ketch in old pictures and engravings, in which the mizzen is close up against the mainmast, and the latter is stepped well abaft of amidships, so as to allow the shot fired to clear the rigging, leaving a large fore-triangle. (See Fig. 62, the _galiote à bombe_.) This influence is felt even as late as the second half of the eighteenth century. The ketch is descended from the Dutch galliot, which, besides having a gaff mizzen, had a sprit mainsail like the barge, and with no boom, but three brails and one row of reef-points. The usual vangs led down aft from the peak, and she also had lee-runners. But, besides her triangular headsails, consisting of a fore(stay)sail and a couple of jibs, she carried also a small t’gallant sail, with big topsail below, and often a large lower course below that—all these last three being square, as on a full-rigged ship, and to this day many Baltic ketches continue to be rigged in like manner. At the close of Charles II.’s reign we find that among the 173 ships in the British Royal Navy there were three ketches, but before this date, in his “Seamen’s Dictionary” of 1644, Sir Henry Manwayring defines them simply as “a small boate such as uses to come to Belinsgate with mackrell, oisters, &c.” From the time of Charles I. the Dutch have had the privilege of mooring three of their fish-carrying craft off Billingsgate in recognition of “their straightforward dealings with us,” and any day the reader likes to go down in the vicinity of London Bridge he will see two or three Dutch schuyts swinging to their moorings. In an eighteenth century work on naval architecture it is curious to see the galliot also called a galleasse. In this case the mainsail has discarded the sprit and taken on a small gaff with boom and loose foot. Two rows of reef-points are also added, and the squaresails are still there. An old English engraving also shows a close similarity to the former bomb-ketch. But in the course of time all the squaresails were abolished, the mainmast brought further forward, and the mizzen sail enlarged so as to be not much smaller than the mainsail. Nowadays nowhere is the modern ketch rig so prominent as on the east coast of England, from as far north as Whitby to as far south as Ramsgate, and even Brixham. The billy-boy, with her long raking bowsprit, setting almost as many jibs as a full-rigged ship, and whose general design bears the most remarkable likeness to the ship in the seal of Dam in Fig. 40, is the Yorkshire adaptation of the old Dutch galliot, and, with her leeboards and ketch rig, is well known in the North Sea. In the ’seventies our East Coast fishermen were almost all rigged with the lug-sail, but now some of the finest ketches will be found in the fishing fleets of Yarmouth, Lowestoft, and Ramsgate. For powerful, seaworthy craft, able to heave-to comfortably, and with the capacity of riding out gales that few modern yachts with their cut-away bows could survive, there is nothing on the sea, size for size, to beat these ketches. In Fig. 98 we give an illustration of a Lowestoft “drifter.” With her boomless mainsail and raking mizzen, setting a jackyard topsail over both main and mizzen, she sets also in light winds a large reaching jib.

We come next to the yawl. Correctly speaking this word has reference not to rig but to shape. The Scandinavian _yol_ was a light vessel, clinker-built and double-ended, like the Viking shape. The Yarmouth yawls that we shall consider presently, were correctly called yawls with their bow and stern alike. But the word has now come to refer to a later adaptation of the ketch, in which the mainsail has grown bigger and the mizzen smaller. In a ketch the mizzen mast is stepped forward of the rudder-head; in the yawl the mizzen mast is abaft the rudder-head. The _Jullanar_, for instance, in Fig. 117, is a yawl. But to the Londoner no more familiar example could be found of a yawl than the Thames barge, of which the illustration in Fig. 99 is a fair specimen. Still inheriting her Dutch-like spritsail and brailing arrangement, she has also the vangs that were first attached to the peak in the sixteenth century. The old-fashioned topsail is a cross between a modern jackyarder and the old Dutch square topsail. Aft she carries another small spritsail on the diminutive mizzen. Smaller types of barge, called “stumpies,” have only pole-masts and neither bowsprit nor jib nor topsail. But the larger type of barge, carrying topmast and setting a big jib-headed topsail, known as topsail barges, with their red-ochred canvas and the untanned jib, always known by bargemen as the “spinnaker,” have grown to such sizes that they go right down to the west end of the English Channel. Yet these are rather ketches than yawls. But even in the Thames barges developments have not ceased. Obviously Dutch, as they strike one in a moment, the old Dutch bluff bows have been replaced by the straight bow as seen in the sketch. A whole book could be written about the barge and her ways, her history, her leeboards, her lengthy topmast, and the wooden horse on which the staysail works; but we must pass on.

Curiously Dutch-like, too, is the Norfolk wherry seen in Fig. 100, with her one enormous sail, her mast fitted in a tabernacle for ease in lowering, unsupported by shrouds or rigging of any sort other than the forestay by which the mast is eased down. Only one halyard is required for both peak and throat, which are raised by means of a winch forward of the mast. She has no leeboards, nevertheless she draws under three feet of water: although I have heard her sweepingly condemned as defying all existing rules, yet the way she can sail right close into the wind is incredible to those who have not seen her. In running with her bonnet off and her sail close reefed she gripes badly and is a veritable handful as she comes sailing into Great Yarmouth from across Breydon Water or tearing through the rushes of Barton Broad and down the tortuous and narrow Ant. Within recent years, now that the Norfolk and Suffolk waterways have become a tourist resort, the wherry has changed her face a little and become smarter, and the tanned sail is often allowed to remain white, while the hatches have been taken away and a cabin roof, allowing plenty of head-room with ladies’ saloons, pianos and other luxuries, have come in. But all the time the wherry remains as a useful cargo boat for bringing coals and timber from the ports of Lowestoft and Yarmouth inland to Norwich and the East Anglian villages, returning with eels, or marsh hay for thatching. Sometimes one notices them, in settled weather, with a fair wind steal quietly out from Lowestoft harbour and make a sea passage round to Yarmouth, but as Mr. Warington Smyth well says in his “Mast and Sail,” “in the smallest wind and sea the wherry loses her head entirely and develops a suicidal tendency to bury herself and crew.”

_From the model in the South Kensington Museum._]

After the squaresail had for so many centuries held sway among the earliest dwellers of the earth, the lateen began stealthily to assert itself as we saw in the first chapters. Although Holland set the example in the sixteenth century of cutting up the lateen shape into the cutter rig, yet in the Mediterranean, along the East Coast of Africa and in the Indian Ocean generally, the lateen has refused to be made obsolete. The illustration in Fig. 101 represents a Bombay yacht of the second half of the nineteenth century rigged with a couple of lateens, and masts that rake forward at a considerable angle. Every tourist to Egypt is familiar with the picturesque lateens and lofty yards of which Fig. 102, showing a fleet of these with a small Sibbick rater in between, affords a study in contrast between the conservative East and the progressive West. The sketch was made at Suez. The felucca in Fig. 103 is a well-known lateen type in the Mediterranean, with her white and green, her square stern and single deck. The sketch here shown has been made from a charming little model in the South Kensington Museum, and represents one of the familiar two-masters seen off the Spanish coast. The tack and sheets and rigging are shown so clearly that we need not stop to indicate them. In old paintings and prints we see that the felucca type in the Mediterranean developed into vessels of considerable tonnage with three masts. The Venetians and Greeks and Genoese, as well as the piratical Moors and the other Mediterranean inhabitants, used them both as cargo carriers and ships of war. They are in fact the lineal descendants of the ancient galleys. Further modifications include the addition of a jib, though the Southerner has not followed the universal Northern practice of transforming his lateen into a mainsail. Sometimes we find old prints showing a felucca with the addition also of a mizzen spritsail similar to that on the modern barge. The French signified by the word _brigantin_ a two-masted lateen-rigged galley with oars as auxiliary. But there came into use that compromise between lateen and squaresail that in Northern Europe we have seen to exist between the pure fore-and-after and the square-rigger. Thus, for instance, one finds ships rigged with a large lateen on the foremast, the mainmast being square-rigged with mainsail, topsail and t’gallant, while the mizzen has a lateen with square topsail. The reader who wishes to see the different varieties of lateen and lateen-plus-square rig is referred to Mr. Warington Smyth’s interesting volume “Mast and Sail,” while for details as to design and rigging he will find some valuable information in Admiral Paris’ “Souvenirs de Marine.”

_From the model in the South Kensington Museum._]

The Chinese in their own independent way went on developing from the early Egyptian models and have been not inaptly called the Dutchmen of the East in their nautical tendencies. They developed quickly but then remained at a standstill, whilst the European has gone on by slow steps of progression. Adopting rather the sail of the lugger than the old Egyptian squaresail, the Chinese made it into a balance-lug and stiffened it with bamboo-battens. The illustration in Fig. 104 was sketched by Mr. Warington Smyth (through whose courtesy it is here reproduced) near Kaw Sichang, and represents a Hailam junk. The sail of the Chinaman is hoisted up a pole-mast, the halyard passing through a large double block attached to the yard and a treble block at the masthead, a hauling parrel keeping yard to mast and helping to peak the sail when reefed. Reefing with the Chinese consists simply in letting go the halyard, when the weight of sail and battens brings the sail into the topping lifts: two or more battens are bunched together along the boom. The illustration in Fig. 105 will show in further detail the rigging of a Chinese junk. This has been specially sketched from a fine model in the South Kensington Museum. Built of soft wood, she has a full bottom and water-tight compartments. The mizzen mast will be noticed to be in duplicate, one on each quarter, only the leeward one being used under way, the sails being of matting. The rudder is remarkable, unwieldy, and projecting deep into the water, but capable of being raised by means of a windlass when in shallows. The windlass in the bows raises the three anchors, which are made of hard wood, the flukes being tipped with iron, whilst the stock is in the crown instead of in the top of the shank as in European anchors. Very similar to this model was the famous Chinese junk _Keying_, which caused some sensation by sailing from Canton to the Thames in 1847-8. These craft, owing to their light draught and bulky tophamper, are not much good going to windward, so that one is not surprised that the _Keying_ took 477 days on the voyage to England. In crossing China seas they usually take advantage of the favourable monsoons. Their enormous crescent-shaped sheer makes them excellent bad weather ships. Their tonnage varies between 300 and 800. The _Keying_ came round the Horn, and her rudder, when let down, drew 22 feet of water. It hung loose, as seen in the model, and was perforated, weighing nearly eight tons. Under way it necessitated fifteen men, as well as a luff-tackle purchase, to work the helm. She had no keelson, and the mast, instead of being stepped, was supported by a toggle. The seams of the vessel were paid with a kind of putty-cement made out of burnt pounded oyster shells and oil from the chinam-tree. The mainsail weighed no less than nearly nine tons, and took the crew two hours to hoist. Towards the end of last year (1908) the Australian Customs officials saw with amazement the arrival in their waters of another Chinese junk, the _Whang-Ho_. This craft, which was over a hundred years old, and was previously a pirate ship, set out from China for a voyage to San Francisco. Afterwards she sailed for the eastern side of America, but in making an attempt to round the Horn was less fortunate than the _Keying_, a wave carrying away her huge rudder; but she eventually reached Australia. She had previously touched at Tahiti, and nothing was heard of her until she reached Thursday Island, 100 days out.

Returning now to Northern Europe, we find the lug-sail surviving especially in fishing craft for which it possesses certain peculiar advantages. In Fig. 106 we have the sail plan of a Blankenberg boat. Those who are acquainted with the coast-line around Ostend cannot have failed to notice these craft with their leeboards raised, hauled up the sandy beach. Here the standing lug is set after the French style, the old mediæval bowline being still preserved from the squaresail to set the lug straight when on a wind. Notice that the foresail is right in the eyes of the ship, so that the rig looks as if it was no distant relative of the vessel with the artemon that carried St. Paul on his voyage.

Every one who has cruised down Channel is familiar with the French _Chasse-Marée_, a curious figure on the sea-line, with her lug-sails and three crazy-looking masts. Over the mainmast she sets a square topsail, while forward she carries a long bowsprit with a small jib, the latter being in shape more of an equal-sided triangle than the modern English jib, while the French lug-sail is sheeted very high, as will be seen from the sketch (see Fig. 107).

At one time Norfolk was famous for its beach yawls. Those who have visited Great Yarmouth will have noticed these very large open boats painted white with (if I remember correctly) a riband of green running along the gunwale. Double-ended, they are now usually rigged cutter fashion and used as pleasure boats. Clinker-built, they have a very fine entrance and a clean run, and sometimes measure 50 feet in length and 10 feet beam. They used to carry three lug-sails and jib owing to French influence. In the days when sailing ships were more frequent than to-day, Yarmouth Roads were usually a crowded anchorage, and these yawls would be launched almost every day during the winter to assist a vessel that had been picked up by the shoals. Nowadays one still sees them used for bringing pilots ashore, but it is at the Yarmouth and Lowestoft regattas that one is able to realise alike their enormous speed on a reach and the dexterity of each crew, numbering about twenty. The three-masted lug rig of olden days has now given way to a two-master with a dipping lug for the main and standing mizzen, besides a small jib forward.

Until about 1860 the Scotch fishing boat was entirely influenced by Norway, and even to-day no one could deny that this influence is altogether wanting. But at last the fisherman began to seek the herring further out to sea, and so a bolder, decked ship was evolved, and clinker-build gave way to carvel, and the design was given finer lines and greater draught. I have watched a fleet of such vessels as in Fig. 108 running into Scarborough Bay with an onshore breeze in the soft light of a September afternoon, with their yacht-like lines and their fine massive hulls suggesting an ideal combination of strength and beauty. Most of these large “Zulus,” as they are called, carry steam capstans for getting in the heavy nets, hoisting sail and warping into harbour. Within the last few years they have been fitted with steering wheels instead of helms. They are good boats to windward, and are able to carry their enormous lugs longer than most vessels could keep aloft a similar area of sail.

The Cornish lugger is able to carry a larger mizzen but a smaller lug forward than his Scotch cousin. Fig. 109 is an example of a Penzance lugger. She draws also more water aft than the “Zulu.” The Penzance luggers are famous all over England for their seaworthiness and easy lines. They are usually about fifteen or twenty tons, have in proportion to their size very high bulwarks to encounter the Atlantic seas, and an exaggerated outrigger over the stern unsupported by stays and cocked up at an angle to clear the sea when the ship is pitching. Her mizzen is longer than her mainmast, and rakes forward at a great angle. Sometimes they set a topsail, as seen in the sketch over the mizzen: and at times they also run out a bowsprit and jib.

We could not close our list of characteristic luggers without including that brave little ship the Deal galley-punt (see Fig. 110). Chapman in his “Architectura Navalis Mercatoria,” published in 1768,[117] shows a Deal lugger (or as she is called then a Deal cutter) with three spritsails, the mizzen having a bumpkin, whilst a jib is set on a bowsprit forward: but this type has become obsolete. In those days they were engaged in taking out from the shore heavy anchors and cables to vessels in the Downs which stood in need of them. With the advent of steam and improved holding gear their days of usefulness departed. But a smaller type, the Deal lugger, of which we now speak, is still a feature of the sailing craft at the eastern end of the Channel as she goes about her business “hovelling” or hovering on the look-out for such odd jobs as taking pilots ashore or attending on shipping between Dungeness and the North Foreland. Never a ship gets picked up by the treacherous Goodwins but the Deal lugger comes running out in any weather, ready for a salvage job and a third of its value as a reward. Even whilst these lines are passing through the press, they have been busy standing by the _Mahratta_ liner stranded on the Goodwins, and hurrying ashore with the passengers and cargo of tea salved from the hold of the big steamer. These little craft sail very close to the wind and are out in the worst of weathers, and require considerable skill in handling. The one lug-sail has to be lowered and hoisted at each tack, but they are wonderfully quick both under sail and when rowed. Any sailing man will tell you how excellent a sail for lifting a boat the lug-sail is, and well the little Deal galley needs it. The yard of the sail hooks on to a traveller and is hoisted by halyards up the mast, a purchase being used to “sweat” it down taught. The rudder is made easily detachable, supported on pintles with a rope-strop attached. It is her length in proportion to her beam that gives her such speed. Clinker-built, the Deal lugger is about thirty feet long. Her mast is placed some distance from the bows, and is very stumpy, but in spite of this the Deal galley punt is a wonderful little ship on a reach.

Having shown the directions in which the development of smaller ships has taken place, and especially in the trading and fishing craft, let us now turn our attention to that very modern development, the yacht. As we set out not to write a history of yachting but of sailing ships, we shall consider not the marvellous growth of the queen of sports, but the influence which that has had in developing a particular species of ship used entirely for the purpose of pleasure and racing. We alluded in an earlier chapter to King Edgar, whose “sommer progresses and yerely chiefe pastimes were the sailing round about this whole Isle of Albion.” He at least showed the real spirit of a yachtsman, and had he lived in later times he might have established the sport on a sound footing many years before it began to prosper.

But let us make no mistake about this word yacht. Of Dutch derivation, and related to the Norwegian _jaegt_, the word in the seventeenth century signified a transport for royalty or some individual of distinguished rank. In that way we could include those esneccas mentioned earlier in this volume which were prepared for carrying British royalty across from these shores to France. But it was not until the early part of the seventeenth century that the yacht as a special type of vessel, distinct from one temporarily adjusted for a short voyage, was produced. As other fore-and-afters first saw light in Holland at this time, so it was but natural that the yacht should originate there. From old paintings and prints we see them rigged after the manner of those Dutch fore-and-afters which we mentioned as to be seen there in previous pages of this chapter. Especially popular for yachts was the sloepe rig with the two masts and sails but no headsails, although the boomless but gaff mainsail, fitted with brails not unlike the rig of the bawley, was also found. The high sterns, square and much decorated with carving and gilt, the comparatively low bluff bows and the pair of leeboards were the most conspicuous features. The rig was usually cutter or sloop (in the sense of having one mast mainsail and foresail, but without jib). Later on we find ketches being favoured.

In 1660 the Dutch presented Charles II. with a yacht called the _Mary_, “from whence,” writes Sir Anthony Deane to Pepys, “came the improvement of our present yachts; for until that time we had not heard of such a name in England.” This _Mary_ was of a hundred tons and was the first yacht to appear on our Navy list. She was lost in 1675 near Holyhead. From this model Christopher Pett in 1661 built the _Anne_ at Woolwich, her tonnage, beam, and length of keel being the same as those of the _Mary_, but she drew three feet less water. In the same year Charles was presented with another but smaller yacht of only 35 tons, called the _Bezan_, which also came from the Dutch. From the arrival of the _Mary_ various sized yachts began to be built in England, of which the tonnage gradually increased. The _Katherine_, built in 1661, was captured by the Dutch in 1673. So far had this new departure progressed in our country that in 1674 a design was made for two yachts to be built at Portsmouth for the King of France in imitation of Charles II.’s. But the largest built about this time was the new _Mary_, to replace the first one lost. Of 166 tons, she was launched in 1677. The smallest yachts were the _Minion_ of 22 tons, and the _Jemmy_ of 25 tons, and the _Isle of Wight_ of a like tonnage. Incidentally we find in the Naval MSS. of the time that the dimensions of the biggest yacht’s mast of the year 1683 were: length 20 yards, “bigness” (_i.e._, thickness) 20 inches.