Seamanship
WORKING THE SAILS
PERHAPS THE MOST VIVID picture of seventeenth-century seamanship was provided by Edward Barlow:
… often we were called up before we had slept half an hour and forced to go up into the maintop or foretop to take in our topsails, half awake and half asleep, with one shoe on and the other off… and in stormy weather, when the ship rolled and tumbled as though some great millstone were rolling up one hill and down another, we had much ado to hold ourselves fast by the small ropes from falling by the board; and being gotten up into the tops, there we must haul and pull to make fast the sail, seeing nothing but air above us and water beneath us, and that so raging as though every wave would make a grave for us: and many times in nights so dark that we could not see one another, and blowing so hard that we could not hear one another speak, being close to one another …1
Barlow was at sea during the ‘little Ice Age’, when frost fairs on the Thames were common, and the climatic extremes presented particular problems for the seamen of his time. In 1666 he experienced over two weeks of freezing weather in the North Sea, when ‘the smallest rope in the ship [was] as big as one’s arm, and they [the ropes] so cold and slippery and sharp that they would cut our hands when hauling upon them’.2 Although such dramatic first-hand accounts are relatively plentiful, there is a frustrating lack of evidence for many aspects of seventeenth-century seamanship; manuals and other sources abound for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it would be dangerous to assume that things must have been done in essentially the same way a century or two earlier.3 Until about the 1650s, for example, there were no footropes for the men on the yard, who thus had to straddle the yard in order to furl sails, and reefing of topsails seems to have been introduced at much the same time.* The lowest and largest sails on each mast, the courses, would often be brought down to the deck to be furled; in later years, it was common practice to keep the lower yards aloft, with the sails furled in situ.4 In Pepys’s time, it was also common to allow topsails to billow out dramatically, as it was believed (wrongly) that they‘held more wind’ if set in that way.5
Nevertheless, many principles, and commands, of seamanship were already long established. Sir Henry Mainwaring, writing in the 1620s, described the helm commands of his day, most of which remain current or appropriate: they included ‘helm amidships’, ‘keep your loof’, ‘fall not off’, ‘keep her to’, ‘ease the helm’ and ‘bear up’.6 Captain Nathaniel Boteler, writing a decade later, described many aspects of contemporary ship-handling, and in many cases both the methods and the commands to be used remained essentially the same throughout the age of sail:7
Sequence of commands in fresh winds:
Haul down the fore-topgallant sail, and the main-topgallant sail
In with the spritsail
Let go the spritsail-topsail sheets
Haul down his clew lines
In with the fore-topgallant sail
In with the main-topgallant sail
In with the mizzen topsail
Let go the topgallant sheets
Cast off the topgallant bowlines
Haul home the topgallant clew lines
Additional commands for a stiff gale:
Settle your foretopsail
Settle the main topsail
Haul down the foretopsail
Haul down the main topsail
Additional commands ‘when the wind blows hard’:
Take in the topsails
Let go your lee braces
Cast off your bowlines
Brace the weather braces
Haul home the topsail clew lines
Furl the sails
Square the topsail yards
Additional commands for a storm:
Clear the main halliards
Haul down the mizzen
Cast off the topsail sheets, the clew garnets, the bunt-lines, the leech-lines, and lifts
Bring down the yards
Haul to the capstan
Get the sails together and furl them
Sequence of commands in light winds:
Veer out some of the weather sheet of the foresail
Let go the weather braces
Top the spritsail
Loose the mainsail
Let go your fore-tack
Cast off the weather sheet
Let go your weather brace
Veer out some of the lee sheet
Let fall the mainsail
Get to the main-tack
Cast off the main brace, and main topsail
Haul aft the main-sheet
In with the spritsail
Square the spritsail yard
Let go the spritsail sheets
Haul up the spritsail’s clew lines
Haul forward the main bowline
Haul the main topsail bowline
Haul taut the fore bowline, and foretopsail bowline
Haul aft the main sheet
Haul aboard the mizzen
Get in the lee braces
Keep her as near the wind as she will lie
Working the sails; detail from a painting of the Royal Sovereign of 1701.
(PRIVATE COLLECTION)
TACKING
On a three-masted square-rigged warship, tacking was accomplished by coming up into the wind as far as possible, at which point the yards of the foremast would back, putting the ship ‘in stays’ and pushing her further to leeward. At that point, according to Sir Henry Mainwaring, the captain and crew should ‘put down the helm, let fly the sheet of the foresail, and let go the fore bowline, and brace the weather brace of the foresail; the same to the topsail and topgallant sail, only they keep fast their sheets’. The yards of the main and mizzen masts would then swing around to catch the wind once it came six points on the new tack, after which the yards of the foremast were also swung onto the new tack. Again according to Mainwaring, the best ships could stay with very few sails, perhaps only two topsails or foretopsail and mizzen, but few could manage the manoeuvre with so little sail.8 This had important implications for manoeuvring an entire fleet, particularly in the early days of line-of-battle tactics. The early sets of fighting instructions placed much emphasis on situations where individual squadrons, or the whole fleet, sailing in close order with only half a cable’s length between each ship, would need to tack together. Given the huge size of the fleets involved, and the inevitably variable sailing qualities of the ships concerned (which ranged in any case from enormous three-deck First Rates to relatively small and nimble Fourth and even Fifth rates), the confusion and apparent incompetence that sometimes prevailed when even such apparently straightforward manoeuvres as tacking were attempted become all too explicable.*
A three decker with her sails loose.
(© TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM)
DAMAGE AND REPAIRS
In 1665 Barlow encountered a fierce winter storm in the Channel. At first his ship tried to keep her mainsail up, but the wind strengthened and blew the sail out of its bolt-rope, splitting it into two or three pieces. They were forced to anchor and strike their yards, but could not get the main topmast down.9 Four years later, Barlow was aboard the Fourth Rate Yarmouth when she sprung (cracked) her foremast. The ship lay under her main course alone while Barlow and half a dozen other men struggled in high winds and heavy seas for most of the night to get down the foretopmast and yard. Next day, the flagship sent across her own maintopgallant mast and sail to serve as a substitute foretopmast for the Yarmouth.10 This ability to carry out impromptu repairs rapidly, often improvising with seemingly inappropriate materials, was a characteristic of the seaman’s trade. When the mainmast of the Antelope gave way in a storm in the Bay of Biscay in 1666, her lieutenant and two seamen went up into the shrouds in ‘horrid dark and stormy weather’ and got down the topmast, allowing the mainmast to be repaired with ‘anchor stocks and other things’.11 The journals of Sir Thomas Allin, a veteran Cavalier officer, contain many similar examples.12
Leaks were a constant problem. Sometimes a ship was not properly caulked, or perhaps a treenail worked loose or had not been fitted in the first place. To discover the location of a leak, Nathaniel Boteler recommended either holding an empty earthen pot to a piece of board within the hold and moving it from place to place, or using the broad end of a trumpet for the same purpose. To stop a leak low down and inboard, he advocated sinking tallow and coal mixed together, ‘and in some cases (when the leak is very great) pieces of raw beef, oatmeal bags, and the like stuff’. Leaks higher up in the hull were stopped by nailing pieces of lead over them, while leaks caused by shot could be stopped by driving in a plug of wood wrapped in canvas. Stopping a leak outside the hull could be done by heeling the ship to the other side and fastening some lead over it; if it was not possible to do this, Boteler advocated making a bag out of a piece of sail or netting, filling it with rope yarn, then sinking the bag under the keel and bringing it up to the leak, where the indraught of water would, it was hoped, suck the yarn into the hole.13
Hoisting a cannon aboard a man-of-war.
LIFTING
Much of the work of the ship involved the lifting or moving of heavy weights. Yards had to be hauled up or down and boats hauled in or out, and large barrels of beer and water had to be stowed in the hold. Winding tackle was used for the heaviest loads, such as guns; this consisted of two blocks, the upper with at least three sheaves and the lower with two, with the upper block secured to the mainstay by a whip. Garnet tackle was used for lighter loads.14 Boats were hoisted in or out by gear secured to the main- and foremasts; most of the load was taken by the main stay and fore stay tackle on the centre line of the ship, assisted by yard tackles which were secured to the main- and foreyards.15
BOAT WORK, TOWING AND WARPING
Moving a ship in calm seas or in harbour could be undertaken in various ways. Boats could be used to tow a ship, securing their tow-lines to the bowsprit. There were also dedicated ‘tugs’ in the Medway, where navigation was particularly problematic: Chatham yard had a towing galley in the early 1660s, and in 1683 a twin-hulled towboat entered service.16 Elsewhere, bringing a ship’s head around, or winding, could be done either by towing her with one of her boats, or (in small ships) putting some oars out of the hawses or stern ports.17 Small kedge anchors deployed from a ship’s long boat were used for manoeuvring in confined spaces. Warping, or hauling the ship up to a particular place, could be done by deploying an anchor and pulling the ship up the hawser towards it, although harbours would often have warping buoys or large posts on the quayside which served the same purpose.18 Boats played important parts during battles. They ferried officers to and from other ships to give and receive orders; the dangers of carrying out such manoeuvres under fire were well illustrated at the battle of the Texel in 1673, when the boat carrying Admiral Sir Edward Spragge was sunk as he attempted to transfer his flag. Boats were often used to assist disabled ships. At the battle of Solebay in 1672, the flagship Prince lost her mainsail and had to be towed out of the action by two of her boats, assisted as much as possible by the headsails.19
* See Part Three, Chapter 11, p81.
* See Part Twelve, Chapter 49.