Masts, Sails and Rigging
MASTS AND YARDS
MASTS WERE OF FIR, pine or spruce, and came chiefly from Scandinavia (the so-called ‘Gothenburg’ masts) and New England (New Hampshire and Maine); the pine forests of the latter provided particularly massive specimens, over a hundred feet high and with a diameter at the base of three to four feet. Topmasts and large spars were made from ‘Riga Fir’, shipped from Russia. Although thinner than the New England masts, these could be almost as tall.1 In September 1663 the Navy Board signed a ‘great contract’ with the Wapping timber merchant Sir William Warren for £3,000 worth of Norwegian masts. This had been negotiated by Pepys on his own initiative, much to the annoyance of the surveyor of the navy, Sir William Batten, an advocate of Warren’s great rival William Wood, who was absent from the office when the contract was signed.2 The main sources of supply were desperately vulnerable to being cut off in wartime. In December 1666 Pepys was deeply anxious over the safe arrival of a convoy of mast ships from Gothenburg; in the end, it got through only after a sharp battle on Christmas Day between its escorting squadron of six frigates and a Dutch force, which culminated in the capture of three Dutch ships.3
Proportional rules dictated the height of the masts. According to Edward Battine in 1685, the height of the mainmast was determined by adding the length, depth and breadth of the ship together and dividing by five. The foremast was then nine-tenths of the main, the bowsprit two-thirds of it, and so on, with the foretopgallant mast, for instance, being seven-seventeenths of the foretopmast.4 Using similar principles, a book written by Henry Bond in 1656 laid down that a ship of about 600 tons, ninety-four and a half feet long in the keel, should have a mainmast 107 feet high and thirty-six inches thick, a mizzen mast sixty-six feet by twenty-two inches, a bowsprit eighty-five feet by twenty-eight inches and so on.5 The main topmast was about half the length of the mainmast until about 1650, but by the 1670s and 1680s it was about three-fifths.6 Pepys correctly believed that some of the timber merchants attempted to short-change the king by providing masts that were shorter than the specification, or were of inferior wood.7
A Dutch etching of c.1700 shows the main lower mast of a ship being lifted into position by a derrick; at right, a team of seamen haul on the rope controlling the derrick’s mechanism.
The main mast was often stepped at the middle of the keel, although it could also be stepped at the middle of the gundeck, somewhat further forward; much depended on the preferences of the individual builder. Thanks partly to the straightening of the stem during this period, the foremast moved further back, ending up about half-way between the fore perpendicular and the fore end of the keel, in front of the keel. The bowsprit, which had traditionally been stepped on one side of the stem (invariably starboard), moved definitively to a central position on top of the stem by the mid-1670s. British warships of the seventeenth century were distinguished by spritsail topmasts, which rose from the tip of the bowsprit.8 The foremast was usually vertical, the mainmast raked aft a little, the mizzen rather more.9 The mainmast, foremast and bowsprit were usually‘woolded’, in other words strengthened by evenly spaced rope bindings, with perhaps eight or ten on the mainmast and fewer on the fore.10
The lengths of the yards were also determined by proportion. According to Battine, the main yard would be the same length as the foremast, the fore and mizzen yards twenty-five twenty-eighths of the main; in practice, the yard was about 0.85 to 0.95 of the height of the mainmast, so that on Second Rates of the ‘thirty new ships’ programme, for example, the main yard was meant to be 100ft 6in, the main mast 105ft.11 On Henry Bond’s exemplar ship, the main yard was 93ft long and 30in thick, the mizzen yard 65ft by 20in, and the main topgallant yard 23ft by 8in.12 The thickness of the yards was normally a quarter of an inch for every foot of length.13 Yards were hoisted by ‘jeers’, tackles working between blocks on the yard and others slung from the masthead; these were a comparatively recent innovation, replacing the older method of ties and halliards.14
After the sails, rigging, and of course the men, masts and yards were frequently the most common casualties of battle; the Dutch often fired high to disable the ship. Consequently, large reserves of masts had to be maintained in the dockyards: in March 1664 Chatham held 993, Portsmouth 232, Deptford 204 and Woolwich 75.15 If these supplies proved insufficient, stocks had to be bought in from the large timber contractors, especially William Wood, who tended to keep larger domestic reserves than his rival Sir William Warren.16 Storage conditions for the masts were initially not ideal. Masts had to be preserved in water to keep them supple, but proper mast-ponds were finally provided at the dockyards only during the 1660s and 1670s, along with mast-houses where they could be finished.*
Rigging plan of a British warship, c.1700.
SAILS
A First Rate, like the Britannia of 1682, carried thirty sails, amounting to some 12,000 yards of canvas. Smaller ships carried almost similar numbers of sails (thirty on a Third Rate, twenty-seven on a Fourth), but naturally these were smaller: the Third Rate Berwick of 1679 carried only half the canvas of the Britannia.17 The largest sail, the main course and bonnet, contained about 1,200 yards of canvas on earlier First and Second rates and 1,600 on the Sovereign, and in the 1650s these great sails were made of‘Ipswich double’ canvas. The next largest sail, the fore course and bonnet, consisted of 838 yards of Ipswich double canvas on Second Rates of the 1650s, followed by the main topsail (449), mizzen course and bonnet (316), the fore topsail (310) and the spritsail course and bonnet (210), all of which were made of the Breton Noyals canvas.18 Stunsails or staysails, set on either side of the main sail, were introduced from about the 1650s onwards, and were added on either side of the fore sail from about 1690; conversely, the bonnet was phased out between 1677 and 1690.19
Although relatively little is known about seventeenth-century sailmaking, the sails were sewn together from a number ofdifferent cloths, and their care was a delicate matter; captains and boatswains often failed to dry their sails properly, so that they became mildewed, and rats often feasted on the sails in the stores.20 Pepys, a tailor’s son, developed a particular interest in the qualities and preservation of canvas. He noted how sails made of several different cloths tended to tear along the seams, and how ‘Holland duck’ was generally considered to be superior to English canvas; the latter was not strong or reliable enough for the heaviest sails.21 The best quality of all was provided by Noyals and Vittery canvas from Brittany, and in the 1660s the chief importer of these commodities was the pioneer businesswoman Mrs Constance Pley of Weymouth.22
CORDAGE AND STANDING RIGGING
Naval cordage was produced in three dedicated ropeyards at Chatham, Portsmouth and Woolwich, where raw hemp was transformed into strands ofdifferent lengths and thickness. Hemp was the single most expensive commodity that the navy purchased; it cost up to £57 a ton at times of particular scarcity or demand.23 The main sources of supply were Riga, then under Swedish control, and Russia, especially the area around Archangel. Hemp from the former was ofbetter quality but more expensive, so the two were often combined during the ropemaking process.24 English hemp, produced primarily in Dorset and Norfolk, was not as good as that from Riga, but proved perfectly adequate for most purposes.25 The ropeyards often fraudulently made up ropes and cables with inferior material; in 1662 Pepys found Woolwich using‘old stuff that hath been tarred, [and] covered over with new hemp, which is such a cheat as hath not been heard of’.26 The size of cordage too was laid down by elaborate proportional rules. There was some dispute about these, and in 1656 a ‘pamphlet war’ on the subject took place between Edward Hayward, clerk of the survey at Chatham, and his opposite number at Deptford and Woolwich, George Kendall.27
Standing rigging consisted primarily of the shrouds that held the masts sideways and backwards and the stays that held them forwards. The shrouds of the lower masts were secured to ‘chain-wales’ or ‘channels’, projecting platforms to keep the rigging clear of the ship’s sides. On three-deckers the fore and main channels were just below the middle deck gunports, while on two-deckers they were just beneath the upper deck gunports.28 First Rates usually had two tackle pendants on each side, as well as ten shrouds a side on the mainmast, nine on the fore and six on the mizzen; big Third Rates had eight, seven and four respectively, smaller ships six, five and three or five, four and three.29 The bowsprit was fastened to the beakhead by one or two heavy lashings called ‘gammonings’. These pulled the bowsprit downwards, while other rigging pulled it upwards; this was particularly the case with the forestay, which was secured to it by dead-eyes. The mainstay was secured near the stem.30 The taller topmasts of the period required additional backing, and this was provided by the addition of‘futtock shrouds’, which connected the dead-eyes at the tops to the lower shrouds.31 Topmasts were rigged in much the same way as the lower masts, and by the 1670s all large ships had three backstays at both the fore and main.32
The US Naval Academy’s model of the St George of 1701 is unique among early ship models in retaining the original rigging, faithfully reflecting the rigging scheme of her namesake (which was at least nominally a rebuilding of the Charles of 1668).
(US NAVAL ACADEMY)
RIGGING TO THE YARDS AND SAILS
The yards were controlled by jeers, which hoisted or lowered them; parrels, which held them to the mast; lifts for keeping them horizontal or raising them at either end; and braces for moving an end forward or aft. Sails were set by means of tacks, sheets and bowlines, and hauled up to the yard by clew-lines, buntlines and leechlines. A jeers consisted of a system of blocks at the yard and masthead with a single part of the tackle running down to the deck. A parrel comprised a rope wound three times around the mast, with a system of trucks and ribs attached to it. Lifts were simple mechanisms with a block at or near the mast-top and another fixed at the yardarm. Braces ran from the yard arms to the main stay (for the fore yard) and to the ship’s quarters (for the main). Tacks were single ropes that hauled the clews (the corners of the main and fore courses) downward and forward; sheets were double, and hauled them downward and aft; while clewlines, which hoisted up the lower corners of the sails, ran from the yard, through a block at the clew, back to a block on the yard and then down to the deck. Bowlines controlled the sails on the bowsprit, while leechlines were secured to the up-and-down edges of sails and buntlines to the sail’s foot.33
‘Top ropes’ were used for hoisting or striking the topmasts; three-deckers had two, smaller ships only one, but these were served by increasingly elaborate systems of blocks, sheaves and tackle. Ties and halliards were used for hoisting and working the topsails; these, too, acquired ever more elaborate tackle during the course of the period. The topsails were also served by a number of ropes (such as parrels, braces, bowlines and clewlines) that were identical in function to, but often more simply rigged than, those that served the lower sails.34 Reefing of topsails, which permitted a reduction of the sail area if the wind increased, seems to have begun from about the 1650s onwards, and by the 1660s there are occasional references to the use of two reefs.35 This led to the introduction of reef tackle, consisting initially of short ties and tackles with two single blocks each.36 The spritsail was served by gear similar to that employed on the other square sails.37 The mizzen mast, though, carried a lateen sail, with a fore-and-aft yard; the after end was much higher than the fore end. It had a parrel and jeers, but only one lift, no braces, a single sheet and a single tack. The mizzen mast also carried a square topsail above a cross-jack or ‘crojack’ yard, which carried no sail beneath it.38
* See Part Nine, Chapter 36, pp180-1.