Build Height, Divide Sail

The schooner divided its work along the boat. Square sails offer another division: place one above another, each with its own transverse yard and controls. More cloth can occupy the height, while the crew retains some choice over which pieces remain working.

That height must first be built and supported. A very tall wooden mast need not be one uninterrupted tree from keel to highest sail. It can be assembled in overlapping stages, with each upper member passing its loads into the one below. The connections create a structure as important as the spars themselves.

Give the upper mast a seat

Start with the lower mast, the bottom stage connected to the hull. In the conventional timber arrangement described by Nares in 1877, its heel stands in a step on the keelson and the deck partners restrain it above. The next stage, the topmast, rises beside the lower mast’s head and extends beyond it. Its bottom end, the topmast heel, needs a seat high above the hull.

The lower mast’s head provides that seat through a frame. Cheeks are the substantial side pieces forming supporting shoulders near its upper end. Their horizontal bearing surfaces are the hounds in Nares’s terminology. Bibbs are additional projecting timbers bolted at this region to support the framing above. They give that framing bearing beneath its forward portion, where the topmast stands. The supporting timber and its bolts pass the reaction into the cheeks and lower mast.

Two trestletrees lie fore and aft, one on either side of the lower mast’s head, resting on these supports. Across them lie the crosstrees, extending athwartships. The trestletrees receive the upper mast’s bearing load; the crosstrees spread the framing across the vessel. Together they support the top, a platform projecting around the lower mast’s head. Its outboard rim also provides space for the upper rigging’s lower attachments. The platform has both a structural location and a use as a working place; those jobs do not make every part beneath it interchangeable. Nares, pages 5–8; Smyth, entries BIBBS, CHEEKS OF THE MAST and TOP.

Above that framing, a mast cap connects the lower masthead to the overlapping topmast. One opening fits the lower mast’s head; the adjacent opening locates the topmast as it rises through it. The cap restrains the stages from separating sideways. The topmast continues down through the framing beneath the cap, so the stages overlap for a substantial length. That overlap is the doubling: a length along the mast assembly, not a claim that its height has doubled.

The topmast’s downward load needs a different contact. A fid, in this mast-support sense, is a strong transverse bar inserted through a hole near its heel. The projecting ends bear on the trestletrees. Follow the weight down: topmast to fid, fid to trestletrees, then through the supporting cheeks and bibbs into the lower mast. The cap keeps the stages associated laterally while the fid establishes the bearing support below. The pointed tool used to open a rope for splicing has a separate job despite sharing the name.

This construction also permits movement during assembly. Hoisting gear raises the topmast through the framing and cap until the fid can be inserted. Once the mast is supported in its working position, its rigging can be set up. To lower it again, the hoisting gear must take the bearing load before the fid is withdrawn. A removable bar creates a possible change of state; the gear and controlled load transfer make that movement possible. Dana’s 1847 account describes these distinct stages of the operation. The Seaman’s Friend, chapter IV, page 31.

Continue the pull below the platform

An upper mast standing on a seat still needs restraint against sideways movement. Topmast shrouds descend outwards from its upper attachment region to the rim of the top. The rim gives them a useful angle to the mast. Their downward pull on the topmast adds compression, while the opposite pull at the rim tends to lift the outer platform.

At that rim, the lower deadeyes are carried by futtock plates, iron connections passing through the top’s edge. The topmast shroud’s upper deadeye is set up to the lower one by its lanyard. Beneath the platform, the plate connects to a futtock shroud, a short oblique member leading down and inward. In Nares’s arrangement these members reach a band around the lower mast.

The tensile route therefore continues from upper shroud through deadeyes and lanyard, into the plate, through the futtock shroud and into the lower mast. The metal plate crosses the platform edge; the shroud spans the space below it. The platform alone is not being asked to resist the whole upward pull as an unsupported shelf. Nares, figures 120–121 and pages 12–13; Smyth, FUTTOCK-PLATES and FUTTOCK-SHROUDS.

The lower mast has its own shrouds descending to the hull. At their feet the familiar channel, or chainwale, projects the deadeyes outboard. Beneath them, the chains are the traditional anchorage assembly; actual linked chain, where used, transmits tension through successive metal contacts. A strap or chainplate carries the pull farther into the hull. Its chainplate bolts bear against the connected structure, and a chainplate knee can spread the local reaction into adjoining members. Those hull connections answer the lower mast’s rigging loads as well as the loads arriving from the upper stage.

A lanyard at the top’s rim thus does the same adjusting job as one near the hull, but transfers its load into a different receiving assembly. The deadeye’s multiple holes admit repeated passes. A bullseye’s single smooth passage could guide a selected line, but would not reproduce that multiple-hole adjustment merely by occupying the same position. The arrangement must preserve the intended contacts and reeving at each level.

Side support also competes with yard movement. Catharpins are short connections drawing opposing parts of the lower rigging towards one another beneath the top. Their tension brings the rigging inward to give the yards more clearance when braced round. The top spreads the topmast shrouds outward; the catharpins draw particular lower members inward. They act at different places for different geometrical purposes.

Fore-and-aft restraint continues separately. Topmast backstays descend from the upper stage towards after attachments at the hull, supplying an aft pull. Forward stays answer movement in the opposite direction. The forestay or principal headstay we already followed towards the bowsprit belongs to this wider system: its endpoint identifies which stage receives its forward restraint. A topmast backstay reaches past the top to the hull rather than ending at the platform’s rim. That longer route must remain clear of moving yards and cloth.

People also need to reach the upper structure. Ratlines are short ropes fastened across the shrouds to form steps. A person’s weight applied to one passes into the shrouds at its ends. Near the lower deadeyes a sheer pole, or sheerpole, is a stiff transverse bar secured across the shrouds. It keeps their deadeyes aligned and resists their turning. A ratline supplies a flexible step; the pole maintains the alignment of the lower connections. They may occupy the same climbing route, but their principal jobs differ. Nares, page 65.

Compare the stages with a continuous mast

The mast-support chapter gave us another way to obtain height: one continuous spar restrained at selected levels. Its lower, intermediate and cap shrouds can support different lengths without any of those lengths standing on a separate heel seat. An upper shroud therefore identifies an attachment region; a topmast also identifies a supported stage. Follow the spar as well as the wire.

At a spreader, the shroud’s changed direction pushes through the tip, root and socket into the mast. At the topmast shroud’s lower attachment, the pull instead enters the top’s rim and continues down the deadeye–futtock route. These are two ways to obtain useful supporting angles, with different loaded contacts. Swept spreaders, jumper and diamond bracing, and the forward or after pulls of lowers, babystays and checkstays can refine restraint within a continuous spar. They do not supply the staged mast’s heel bearing.

The long routes need clearance in either arrangement. A permanent, split or twin backstay retains its chosen endpoints, while a runner can be worked to clear a sail. On the staged rig, follow a topmast backstay past the yards to its hull attachment: a new sail or a newly braced yard must have room beside it. A supplementary preventer stay adds restraint only between its own endpoints. The placement matters as much as the member’s name.

Adjustment and end fittings apply the earlier connection lesson to these upper loads. Opposed-thread rigging screws can replace lanyard adjustment in a suitable system, but the resulting tension still depends on the connected structure. A wire’s swaged or mechanical terminal, a formed rod end or a fibre eye must deliver its pull through a compatible receiving fitting. At a clevis and toggle, the pins must permit the changing angle; at a T-terminal or ball terminal, the receiving seat must do so. A mast tang transfers that pull into the spar wall.

These joints carry rigging tension, whereas the fid carries the upper mast’s downward bearing load. They cannot exchange jobs merely because both are high on the same mast.

Long metal and fibre spars can remove the overlapping timber joints while retaining compression, bending and rigging reactions. The construction has changed where those loads pass, and which contacts need to move. The sails above still need that complete route to the hull.

Extend and name the upper stages

The longitudinal names now combine with the vertical ones. A fore topmast extends the lower foremast; a main topmast extends the lower mainmast; a mizzen topmast extends the lower mizzenmast. The first word locates the assembly along the vessel. The second identifies a stage within it. The smaller aftermast can have a topmast without becoming the vessel’s mainmast.

Above a topmast, a topgallant mast supplies the next height. In the divided arrangement, its heel overlaps the topmast’s head, passes through its cap and is supported at the upper trestletrees by another fid. Its stays and shrouds restrain the new exposed length. The royal mast is the stage above that, supporting still higher sail gear.

These names do not guarantee a separate timber at every boundary. Dana describes a long topgallant mast in which the topgallant, royal and skysail portions form one stick. He also describes a shorter topgallant carrying a separate royal mast, with its own support. The extension could therefore be obtained through more than one physical construction. In the long version, loads from the royal region pass through the continuous upper timber to the topgallant heel and its lower support. Dana, chapter IV, page 34.

At the upper end, a truck is a small terminal fitting, traditionally a circular wooden piece. Holes or sheaves in it can lead flag halyards. It is a fitting at the topmost end, distinct from the much larger platform called the top farther below. A flag’s halyard lead does not make the truck the support for all the sail gear beneath it.

The upper transverse spars need their own supports. A topgallant yard carries the head of the corresponding sail and turns across the topgallant mast region. Dana describes a hoisting rope passing through a sheave in that mast and attaching at the yard’s central suspension. A parrel retains the yard near the mast while allowing its intended movement. Lifts support its ends and braces govern its horizontal angle.

A royal yard performs the same supporting job one level higher. In Dana’s selected merchant arrangement its single halyard supplies the hoist; its parrel, lifts and braces retain and control it. These yards can be lowered and taken down. Their suspension transfers the yard-and-sail load into the upper mast, then through that mast’s support and rigging into the lower assembly. Topgallant and royal therefore identify particular yards here, not the vertical mast members beside them or the cloth that will hang below them. Dana, chapter III, pages 27–28, and chapter IV, page 35.

Put the sails between their supports

Begin the cloth at the bottom. The course is the lowest principal square sail on the chosen mast, hung from its lower yard. A fore course, also called the foresail in this square-rig context, is that sail on the foremast. It occupies a different place and support from a jib called a foresail, and a different form from the schooner’s gaff foresail. All three uses need the surrounding rig description. The navigational course still means the vessel’s intended direction; here the object being set or reefed is cloth.

Immediately above the course is a square topsail, or simply topsail when the square arrangement is understood. Its head is attached along its own topsail yard. Its clews reach down and out towards the ends of the lower yard. Raising the topsail yard while controlling those lower corners opens a separate surface above the course. The lower yard now supports its own sail head and helps locate the lower corners of another sail above it.

The topmast supports the topsail yard’s hoisting and restraining gear. The upper pull reaches that stage, while its downward reaction continues towards the heel, fid and trestletrees. Its side-support load reaches the topmast shrouds, deadeyes, futtock plates and futtock shrouds. The top’s framing, crosstrees, cheeks, hounds and bibbs are therefore carrying parts of a working sail system, not merely a platform’s weight. The doubling gives room for the separated cap restraint and heel bearing while these loads act.

Next comes the topgallant sail, above the topsail and attached to the topgallant yard. Its lower corners are controlled towards the topsail yard beneath. The topgallant mast is the upright stage carrying that upper spar’s gear; the topgallant yard is the transverse support; the topgallant sail is the flexible working surface. The adjective can identify any of the three, so a report that a topgallant was lowered needs its object understood.

A royal sail occupies the next position above the topgallant sail, hanging from the royal yard, with its lower corners controlled towards the topgallant yard. Removing this sail leaves the yard and mast stage as separate objects until they too are lowered or removed. Dana’s illustrated inventory shows these levels on fore, main and mizzen, giving a fore topsail, main topsail and mizzen topsail their respective topmast supports rather than treating the three masts as one undifferentiated stack.

The highest additions were optional. A skysail could occupy the space above a royal. Dana’s standing-skysail arrangement uses a further light yard, with its own lifts, braces, sheets and clewlines. The small extra surface therefore needs supporting and handling gear as well as cloth. Its load enters the high mast region; it does not hang from the flag truck merely because both are near the summit. Dana also describes a different flying-skysail arrangement, so the name alone cannot supply every connection.

An even higher name needs a particular example. Smyth’s 1867 dictionary calls sails above skysails moonrakers, also moonsails. A contemporary report reproduced by Arthur H. Clark describes James Baines with a moonsail set when seen on 17 August 1857. Maritime historian Basil Lubbock records the supporting alteration: her main skysail mast was lengthened to carry a moonsail yard, as on Lightning. In that documented arrangement the added sail stood above the main skysail on its own transverse support. It was an exceptional addition, not a compulsory final floor in every square rig. Clark, page 283; Lubbock, second edition, page 62.

Each extra level adds load, gear and work farther aloft. Topmast backstays continue carrying the aft restraint while yard movement brings their clearances into play; catharpins make room for the lower yards’ bracing. Ratlines provide access towards the top, while the sheer pole keeps the lower deadeyes aligned beneath that route. Carrying another sail therefore uses both the structural assembly and the means of reaching it. The highest visible scrap of canvas cannot be understood independently of those lower connections.

Compare this stack with the gaff topsail. That sail occupies space above a gaff, with its clew drawn towards the gaff’s peak. A jackyard can extend its lower support beyond that peak, making a jackyard topsail; club topsail is an overlapping name in the usage already encountered. Its upper yard and foot-extending jackyard distribute one sail’s support differently from a square topsail spread between two transverse yards.

A high-peaked gaff raises its outer end steeply while remaining the support for the mainsail’s head. A gunter rig raises its gunter yard nearly upright alongside the lower mast. In the sliding gunter, that spar travels up and down with the supported sail. These arrangements gain height or alter one sail’s outline. A stack instead divides cloth into separately supported sails. Similar height in a silhouette does not establish the same joints, sail boundaries or handling choices.

Divide the largest upper sail

A single large topsail still gives the crew a substantial body of cloth to control. Its clews can be hauled up, and its reinforced reef bands can establish less exposed area, but the people securing it work on a large sail above the course. Subdividing that area changes the size of the individual operation.

Split topsails, also described as double topsails, divide the conventional topsail area into a lower topsail and an upper topsail. Each has its own yard. The lower sail lies between the lower topsail yard and the course yard. The upper sail lies above it, between its own hoistable yard and the lower topsail yard. The crew can take the upper unit out of use while retaining the lower one.

Dividing the cloth created a further mechanical problem: the new lower yard had to stay supported while the upper yard descended towards it. Frederic Howes’s 1854 patent addressed that meeting of support and clearance. He supported an extra lower topsail yard from the lower mast’s cap with a truss and from beneath with a curved iron support. A swivelling connection and a lower pivot let this supporting assembly accommodate yard movement. Because the support approached from below, it left space for the upper topsail yard to descend close to the new lower yard.

That clearance mattered. A suspension chain running up from the lower yard to an attachment above could obstruct the upper yard’s descent. Howes’s arrangement allowed the upper cloth to drop behind the lower sail as its yard came down. Once that upper sail was secured, the lower one could be clewed up by its own gear. The articulated iron support made the proposed handling sequence possible: carry the lower yard, lower the upper one close beside it, and gather each smaller sail through its own controls. US Patent 11,125, 20 June 1854.

By 1891, Luce’s American seamanship textbook described double topsails as usual merchant practice in its account, with the lower yard fixed at working height and the upper yard hoisted. That is evidence of established later use, not a claim that every ship immediately adopted Howes’s precise patented fitting. The gain was smaller separately controlled units; the cost included an additional yard, sail edges, attachments and controls. Division reduced one kind of handling burden by changing the machinery and the sequence of work. Luce, page 10.

Bring the cloth to the people

Return to Dana’s ordinary single topsail to follow its corner controls. The square topsail sheet acts at a clew, but its lead differs from the course sheet running towards the hull. In his arrangement it passes from the topsail clew through a sheave at the lower yardarm, inward along that yard to an inner block, and then down. He specifies a chain sheet with a purchase at the foot of the mast. Hauling draws the clew down and outward towards the yardarm; the turning reactions enter the lower yard. Hoisting the topsail’s own yard supplies the opposing upward movement. Luce’s divided arrangement instead shackles the upper sail’s clews directly to the lower topsail yardarms; its attachment must be read with that particular split sail.

This is the clew-control job that the gaff topsail’s sheet or topsail outhaul performed through the gaff’s peak. There it drew one clew towards an oblique spar’s outer end. Here each sheet draws a square topsail clew towards the appropriate end of a transverse yard below. The gaff topsail’s tack and tack line establish its lower forward corner near the mast; the square sail has two lower clews with their own sheet routes.

To take in the square topsail, its sheets must be allowed to travel as the clewlines draw its corners upwards towards its own yard. In Dana’s purchase, a clewline passes through a block under that yard, through a block at the clew and back to a fixed attachment. Hauling raises the moving clew block. The yard halyard governs the yard’s descent while its retaining connection keeps it associated with the mast. The lower yard’s fixed truss continues supporting and locating that separate spar; taking in the upper sail need not lower the course yard.

Buntlines lift the middle portions of the foot towards the sail’s upper support, collecting the bunt. On the course below, leechlines draw the two side edges, the leeches, towards its yard. A clewline’s corner pull and a leechline’s edge pull collect different regions. The crew coordinating lines alow, below in traditional usage, brings the cloth within reach of people working aloft. Securing the gathered bundle completes the work of handing the sail. Merely clewing up can leave a great deal of loose cloth exposed.

The people need a support beneath the yard. A footrope, in this crew-support sense, hangs below it. A person’s feet press down on the rope while the upper body reaches towards the yard and sail. Short suspended supports called stirrups carry the footrope at intervals; Dana describes thimbles at their lower ends through which it passes. Standing load goes from person to footrope, through stirrups and end attachments into the yard, then into its supports. The reinforcing foot rope sewn along a sail’s lower edge carries cloth loads and has a different place in the system.

The yard’s attitude matters to that working position. Braces turn its yardarms; lifts support them vertically. To square the yards brings them approximately across the vessel for a following wind. To brace up turns them farther from that position for a more oblique wind. Aloft, those changes move the spar beneath the crew as well as the sail above the deck. The footrope and stirrups provide particular standing supports within a moving assembly; they do not turn it into a stable deck or make this description a climbing procedure.

At the head, earings secure the reinforced outer corners to the yardarms. When a conventional topsail is reefed, the selected reef earings draw the ends of a lower reinforced band to those yardarms. The unused strip above is gathered and secured while the remaining cloth can work below the new upper boundary. Repeating the single-yard reef at height adds access and coordination demands; it does not change which corner connections carry the working load.

The higher yards have their own gathering routes. Dana’s royal has single sheets leading towards the topgallant yard below and single clewlines recovering its clews towards the royal yard. After that yard is lowered and steadied by lifts and braces, the crew brings in both leeches, gathers the sail on the yard and secures it with gaskets, the binding lines around the bundle. His topgallant is handled similarly, with its own clewline purchase and, where fitted, buntline assistance. Royal yard and topgallant yard remain the physical supports receiving their respective cloth; a command concerning one level does not identify the other.

A yard tackle can add another load to the same supported spar. The earlier example suspended a handling purchase from a yardarm to lift a ship’s boat. Its pendant and upper block load the yard, while the moving block and hook carry the separate object. On a high rig, the yard’s truss, lifts and other supporting gear must answer that added load as well as maintain its position. The yard halyard’s lifting job for the spar and the yard tackle’s lifting job for another object remain distinct.

Add area beside and beneath the main supports

Extra cloth need not go higher. A studding sail, often shortened to stunsail, extends outboard of a square sail’s leech. Its head is carried on a light yard of its own. A studding-sail boom projects from a supporting yard beneath to carry its outer lower corner farther out.

Take Dana’s topgallant studding sail. Its small upper yard is hoisted by a halyard led through masthead and topgallant-yardarm blocks. Its outer lower corner is drawn out by a tack passing through a block at the end of the projecting studding-sail boom on the topsail yard. Its inner lower corner has a sheet led down. The added cloth is therefore spread between a light head-supporting yard, a boom beneath its outer corner and a separately controlled inner corner. The boom’s supported heel and retaining attachment pass its load into the principal yard. Bringing the sail in requires its outward restraint to ease as halyard, sheet and gathering line recover the cloth. Dana, pages 63–64.

At the aftermost mast a different sail supplies fore-and-aft area. The spanker is the aft gaff-and-boom sail in the conventional example. Nares places its luff on a small trysail mast immediately abaft and connected to the lower mizzenmast. That small support gives the sail’s forward attachment a place beside the main mast assembly. Its gaff supports the head and its boom controls the lower region.

Dana describes separate throat and peak halyards lifting the spanker’s gaff, an outhaul drawing the sail out, sheets controlling the boom and vangs controlling the gaff’s lateral movement. Brails gather the cloth towards its forward support when it is taken in. These are the known gaff mechanisms in a particular after-sail job. They remain distinct from the transverse yard above and forward of them.

That lower transverse mizzen yard is the crossjack. In Nares’s example it has no square sail hanging below it: it receives the lower-corner control of the mizzen topsail above. Its own suspension, truss, lifts and braces still have work to do while it supports those leads. Other historical inventories can carry a sail at that level, so an uncovered crossjack in this example does not define every possible mizzen arrangement.

A ringtail can extend cloth beyond the after edge of a gaff sail such as the spanker. The extension needs additional support beyond the existing gaff and boom. Steel’s 1794 cutter example makes the shared geometry explicit: the ringtail’s head is attached to a small yard hoisted by the peak downhaul used as a halyard, while a small boom lashed at the main boom’s outer end spreads the lower portion farther aft. These added spars reach into the new space; the existing boom, gaff and their gear receive their reactions. This is a particular gaff-sail extension, not another transverse square sail inserted into the mast’s vertical stack.

Below a boom, a watersail uses another otherwise empty region. In Steel’s selected arrangement its upper edge is attached to a small yard. A halyard from the yard’s centre passes through a block beneath the main-boom end and returns to a cleat at the stern. Sheets from the two lower clews lead aboard over the quarters, the after sides of the hull. Hoisting supports the head, while the two sheets restrain and spread the bottom corners. The result is extra cloth beneath the main boom, close to the water and suitable only when the conditions allow that exposed position. Other watersails were set beneath lower studding sails; the word requires its supporting sail or spar to be identified. Steel, page 227.

The bowsprit’s square spritsail, encountered when we moved sail beyond the bow, returns the gathering problem to a forward yard. Steel gives it clewlines led through yard blocks to the lower corners, and buntlines led from a thimble at the yard’s central suspension to attachments in the foot. Their hauling parts reach the foredeck. The sheets lead aboard from the clews and must travel as those corners are hauled up. The familiar corner-and-bunt distinction therefore applies beneath the bowsprit, with the loads and access belonging to that forward assembly. It is the square sail on a spritsail yard, distinct from the sail spread by a diagonal sprit. Steel, page 219.

These additions show several ways to fill available space: above a royal, outside a square sail, beyond a gaff sail’s after edge or below a boom. Each useful area arrives with its own support and a way to recover it. The nineteenth-century inventories describe particular combinations, while the divided topsail shows a documented effort to change the handling burden within that machinery.

We can now read a mast’s stages, its sail stack and the routes by which crew and cloth are supported. The next question concerns the whole vessel: which masts carry these transverse stacks, which carry fore-and-aft sails, and which combinations the familiar rig names describe.