Read the Whole Square or Mixed Rig

Repeating the familiar square-rigged mast and its stack of cloth along the vessel produces a new question: which principal masts carry square sails, and what occupies the spaces between and behind them?

The sail plan describes that distribution. It should let us identify both the mast positions and the support of each sail. A whole-rig name can compress some of this information, provided we know the convention being used.

Repeat the square-rigged mast

Put the familiar square-sail arrangement on two principal masts, fore and main. Each carries transverse yards and its own stack of cloth. This is a brig under the convention used here. The lower square sail on the foremast is its fore course, the square foresail; the corresponding sail on the mainmast is its main course. Each unit has its own controls, and both send their loads into the same hull.

The levels already learned apply to each mast. A report of the main topgallant sail locates cloth above that mast’s topsail; its main topgallant mast is the upright support beside the yard. The name brig leaves the single or split topsails and optional upper inventory to the particular vessel. It also leaves their detailed corner connections open: Dana’s topsail sheets and Luce’s directly attached upper-topsail clews are different ways to work within that distribution.

Now extend the square-rigged distribution to three principal masts: fore, main and mizzen. With square rig on each, the vessel is a full-rigged ship, or ship-rigged. The present convention also includes more than three principal masts when each is square-rigged. This specialised use of ship describes the rig; the ordinary word can describe large vessels with many other arrangements. National Historic Ships training introduction, slides 23 and 26.

Headsails can still work ahead of the foremast, staysails between the masts, and a spanker aft. The mizzen’s lower crossjack may support the topsail’s lower-corner leads while carrying no course of its own, as in the earlier Nares example. Square rig on a mast therefore does not require every possible square sail to be present below every yard. Dana’s 1847 ship illustration combines square stacks with the after fore-and-aft sail. Dana, plate IV and its explanations.

The main boom also needs its sail identified. On the gaff schooner it carries the lower part of the principal mainsail. On a brig, an after fore-and-aft sail can work behind a mainmast that also carries square cloth. Finding a boom near that mast does not tell us that the square main course has vanished. We must read the whole inventory and the actual attachments.

Give the after sail a separate track

The previous chapter briefly placed the spanker’s forward attachment on a small support beside the mizzenmast. The same idea can be used behind a brig’s mainmast. The principal mast already carries the square yards and their gear; a separate upright gives the fore-and-aft sail a clear path for its forward edge.

This small upright is a trysail mast. Falconer’s 1769 description places its foot in a wooden block on the quarterdeck immediately abaft the mainmast, and fixes its head to the after part of the main top. Thus its lower end transfers load into the deck, while its upper restraint connects it to the larger mast assembly. It does not carry another complete stack of square sails. Falconer, “Snow”.

In Smyth’s 1867 account, hoops attached along the fore-and-aft sail’s luff travel on this separate mast. The sail can rise or come down along that track, clear of the fittings around the mainmast. Its gaff supports the head; the selected boomed arrangement spreads the lower portion towards the stern. The hoop contact holds the luff to the small mast while permitting vertical travel. The gaff’s throat and peak hoists and the lower sail control retain their familiar jobs.

The historical sail carried here is a trysail. Smyth uses that word for a gaff-and-boom fore-and-aft working sail as well as for a separate storm replacement. The name alone does not specify a modern small storm sail. Here the lesson is the historical support beside a square-rigged mast; the dedicated storm replacement belongs with later sail reduction. Smyth, “Snow”, “Trysail” and “Trysail-mast”.

A two-masted square-rigged vessel with this separate after support is a snow in the selected historical distinction. The small trysail mast changes the sail’s attachment and clearance, while the fore and main square stacks remain. It is useful to count the two principal mast assemblies separately from this smaller auxiliary support.

The Rijksmuseum’s model of a snow, dated about 1780, records another version: the trysail mast carries a gaff but no boom. Its sail would therefore need lower-corner control appropriate to that boomless arrangement. The model has no sails, and it has been partly rerigged; it cannot establish every original rope lead. Smyth’s boomed example and this model demonstrate why the support, sail and lower control must be specified together. Rijksmuseum, NG-MC-654.

These records put the separate support in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century use. They explain a physical solution without requiring the snow to be an inevitable step between all brigs and later yachts. A vessel’s contemporary description may also use brig more broadly, so the extra mast and the sail travelling on it provide firmer identification than the label alone.

Change the allocation on selected masts

Return to the three-masted ship rig. Keep square sails on the fore and main masts, but give the aftermost mast only fore-and-aft sails. The resulting arrangement is a barque, also spelled bark. With more masts, the same convention retains square rig on all except the aftermost principal mast.

Change the mainmast as well, leaving square sails only on the foremast and fore-and-aft sails on the masts behind it. With three or more principal masts this is a barquentine, or barkentine. The difference between these two names lies in what the intermediate masts carry. Counting three masts, or merely finding a gaff sail at the stern, cannot distinguish them. Luce, Text-Book of Seamanship, 1891, page 10; National Historic Ships, slides 24–25.

For a two-masted counterpart, retain the brig’s square foremast and give its mainmast a fore-and-aft working rig. In the modern convention selected here, that is a brigantine. The gaff main can supply substantial after area while the forward square stack retains its bracing, gathering and aloft work. Replacing that after stack changes the operations distributed between the two masts; it does not make the remaining square sails work like gaff sails. National Historic Ships, slide 22.

The mast-by-mast comparison can now be read directly:

These are allocation comparisons, not claims that someone historically converted one vessel through every row. They reuse the same sail-support families in different proportions. Removing a square stack removes its particular yards and handling tasks; adding a large fore-and-aft sail introduces its own supports, controls and clearances.

Read a period description in its own terms

The two-masted mixed arrangement has carried other names. Dana’s 1847 hermaphrodite brig has a square-rigged foremast and a fore-and-aft mainmast. The alternative schooner brig, or brig-schooner in Smyth’s wording, expresses the combination: a brig’s forward unit and a schooner’s after unit.

Dana also describes versions with small square sails aloft on the mainmast, retaining the fore-and-aft mainsail beneath. Those are the vessels he calls brigantines. Luce’s 1891 brigantine is likewise a brig without its square mainsail, rather than a promise that all square cloth has disappeared from the mainmast. These usages differ from the simpler modern allocation above. The date and the stated lower and upper sails resolve the meaning. Dana, plate IV explanations; Smyth, “Brig-schooner”; Luce, page 10.

Compare Dana’s topsail schooner. Its foremast carries a fore-and-aft lower foresail with square canvas aloft. His hermaphrodite brig instead has the square lower fore course and a square-rigged forward assembly. This is why adding a square topsail to a schooner does not automatically turn it into the selected brigantine. The lower sail and its support matter along with the upper outline.

Apply the same reading to the schooners already examined. Gaff, Bermuda, staysail and junk tell us about sail support; three-, four- or multi-masted tells us about distribution. A fisherman or gollywobbler adds cloth between masts, while a triatic supplies a masthead connection. Those additions can change handling without changing which principal mast carries the square lower unit. Likewise, junk ketch and junk schooner retain their different mast allocations beneath the same battened-sail system. Sail shape versus mast arrangement is a distinction that lets the compound names remain useful.

Change the mast construction as well

Some regional vessel names include more than the allocation of cloth. Smyth’s 1867 polacre, also called polacca, is a Mediterranean vessel whose masts commonly run as single spars from heel to truck. They lack the intervening tops and crosstrees of the staged assembly. The name therefore tells us something about the mast and the crew’s access as well as the regional vessel tradition.

In his account the upper yards can be lowered far enough for sailors standing on the yard beneath to work the sail above. For a topsail, they stand on the lower yard; for a topgallant sail, on the topsail yard. The upper yard descends towards the people, rather than requiring them to stand on a separate footrope beneath that upper yard. The continuous mast removes an intervening platform from this path, while the hoisting and retaining gear must still control the moving spar. Smyth, “Polacre”.

This is a documented construction and access arrangement. The word alone does not supply every polacre’s number of masts or every square and fore-and-aft sail. A particular vessel’s plan is needed for that. We have changed the supports and the way the crew reaches the cloth without changing what a transverse yard does for a square sail.

Separate the boat’s work from its rig

A square-rigged yacht combines a sail arrangement with recreational use. Sea Cloud, built as the private yacht Hussar in 1931, supplies a conventional example. Her published sail plan has four principal masts: the first three carry square stacks, and the last carries a gaff sail and gaff topsail. That is a four-masted barque allocation. Yacht describes the original use; barque describes the rig. Sea Cloud’s history and labelled sail plan.

The plan also puts the upper-sail vocabulary to work. Its fore course lies beneath separate lower and upper topsails; topgallant and royal sails continue above them. The third square-rigged mast repeats those five levels. The mainmast carries an additional skysail above its royal, while the other square stacks stop lower. No moonraker is shown. The exceptional extra sail on James Baines is therefore a named addition to its particular inventory, not a missing requirement in Sea Cloud’s barque rig. The mast positions and the vertical levels answer different questions.

Tall ship is a broader description for a traditionally rigged large sailing vessel, not another unique allocation of cloth. It can include a barque such as this as well as a full-rigged ship. Sail Training International’s event classification places square-rigged vessels and some large vessels of other rigs together in Class A. Its categories serve that organisation’s events; the phrase tall ship alone cannot tell us what is set on the mainmast. Sail Training International’s vessel classes.

Older vessel names also bring hull construction, work and period into the description. A cog belongs to a medieval northern European cargo-vessel tradition. The unfinished Bremen hull dated to 1380 has a broad, high-sided form, flat bottom, overlapping side planks and a stern rudder. Those features describe carrying space, construction and steering. The familiar single square sail comes from the historical pictorial comparison, including Stralsund’s 1329 seal; the wreck did not preserve an operational rig. The Bremen find is valuable evidence, rather than a blueprint for every vessel called a cog. Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Bremen Cog.

A caravel was a smaller trading and voyaging vessel whose name also covers different rigs. The Berlin museum model representing a Portuguese caravel of about 1450 shows three lateen sails on separate inclined yards, a rounded hull and a raised afterdeck. The cloth uses the lateen support already examined. The vessel tradition combined cargo or exploration work with a wooden hull whose planks could meet edge to edge, instead of overlapping. That construction will receive its own explanation later. Neither three masts nor triangular cloth alone identifies a caravel. Deutsches Historisches Museum’s model; The Mariners’ Museum’s caravel account.

The carrack provides a larger cargo-carrying example. Portugal’s Madre de Deus was built in 1589 for the India route and returned laden on its second voyage in 1592. The Portuguese Maritime Museum’s modern model represents her with a deep, capacious hull, high structures at bow and stern, square yards on fore and main masts, and a lateen yard aft. Its cutaway shows the internal decks and cargo space. This is a museum reconstruction of a named trading vessel, not a surviving sixteenth-century sail plan. The cargo purpose and hull belong to the vessel description; the different sail supports can be read separately. Portuguese Maritime Museum, model made in 2000.

The galleon likewise names a historical vessel family used for trade and war. In the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century arrangement described by The Mariners’ Museum, fore and main carry square sails and the mizzen carries a lateen sail. The hull is elongated, with a lower forward structure and a raised after structure. That allocation can resemble a carrack’s, while the hull proportions, period and work differ. A mast-count table alone cannot settle the historical name. Modern Golden Hinde, launched in 1973, is a researched reconstruction; no detailed original design survived to make it an exact plan of Drake’s vessel. The Mariners’ Museum’s galleon account; Golden Hinde’s construction history.

A sloop of war introduces a service classification. The United States Navy’s Constellation, built in 1854, was so designated while carrying three square-rigged masts, with a fore-and-aft sail aft. Her naval patrol and later training work explain the service context. The one-mast fore-and-aft sloop described earlier is a different use of the word. The 1854 vessel must also be distinguished from the earlier frigate bearing the same name. Historic Ships in Baltimore, Constellation.

These examples put the arrangements in time without making chapter order into a history of invention. Medieval cargo hulls, fifteenth-century lateen and mixed rigs, the later staged square machinery and a twentieth-century square-rigged yacht answer different needs with related physical tools. A surviving hull, a dated manual, a reconstructed model and a working sail plan each tell us different things. The strongest description joins what is known about the vessel to what is known about its actual rig.

The next changes reach into the machinery itself: a mast may rotate with a sail, a boom may balance cloth on both sides, or a whole square stack may gain a different way to turn and gather.