CHAPTER III

THE BUILDING AND RIGGING OF SHIPS

As late as 1861 an exploring ship was visited by natives of Western Australia, riding simple rough logs. To smooth and sharpen the log’s end and then to hollow it out has been thought to be the first step taken by primitive man in his progress toward a boat; but I think the dugout probably came later, or at any rate no earlier, than the folding of bark into a trough and tying up the ends, as some savages are still content to do. In North America, where materials were favorable, this germ developed into the very highest type of canoe—the Algonkin birch-bark. It may have been an attempt to imitate the bark canoe in a more durable form which led to the laborious hollowing of dugouts; but here again, in regions where suitable trees grew, the art developed so highly as to produce the great sea-boats of the Papuans and our Northwest Coast Indians, carved from a single log, yet able to carry sixty or more persons and their luggage. Such boats as these, when provided with sails, are practically “ships,” and satisfy every need of their owners.

Another root of naval architecture lies in the raft, which long ago reached a high degree of usefulness in the sea-going balsa of western South America. It is probable that the South Sea catamaran is a clever outgrowth of experience with a raft. In Polynesia it took the form of two great canoes, exactly equal, fastened close together and covered by a single central deck; and such are the seaworthiness and speed of these double boats, that the Polynesians voyage hundreds of miles in them.

Similar in purpose—namely, to insure stability—are the various outriggers that at once characterize and distinguish among themselves the native craft of the South Seas. This device consists of a beam of the lightest obtainable wood, usually about half as long as the canoe, which rests upon the water parallel to and a few feet away from the side of the boat, and is connected with its gunwale by elastic rods or planks. Sometimes these are covered, or partly covered, by a light platform, and there are many variations in form; but the idea in all cases is to keep the boat from overturning.

In many parts of the world logs could be obtained large enough only for a narrow bottom or hollowed keel, and the remainder of the boat was built up of planks and pieces ingeniously pegged and knit together with treenails, ratan, and cords made of vegetable fibers that tightened when wet. The Madras surf-boats are a familiar example in civilized waters of boats made in this way which have great elasticity, and out of them have developed, without much change, the swift proas of the Malays, and the junks of China, Korea, and Japan. One device for stitching these boats firmly together was the leaving of ridges on the inner side of the planks or pieces, through holes in which they could be tied to each other and to the inner framework without making a hole reaching the outside. This system seems to have been earlier than the use of treenails.

Of similar construction, apparently, were the boats of the Egyptians and other peoples about the eastern end of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which, as far back as three thousand years before Christ, at least, had reached the size and capabilities of true ships, making, as we shall presently see, extensive sea voyages. Pictures of them remain in the very ancient tombs, and show that the planking consisted of pieces about three feet square, which were laid on overlapping, like shingles on a roof, and fastened to the framework by wooden treenails. The Phenicians, and their pupils the Greeks and Romans, improved on these methods in various ways, at last substituting iron, copper, and bronze nails or bolts (which would not rust) for the wooden pegs of their ancestors.

All of these boats and those of all western Europe (of which the best outside the Mediterranean were the vikings’ ships) differed in one essential point of construction from Oriental ships: instead of making the shell of the vessel, and fitting into it a framework of connected braces, as the Malays and Polynesians did (and yet do), they laid a keel, bending it up or setting into it stem- and stern-posts at the ends, and inserted along its sides curving upright timbers, well styled “ribs,” which swelled out amidships, and narrowed in forward and aft, making a skeleton of the shape the hull was intended to be. Finally, over and upon this well-braced framework were securely fastened the planks, which were narrow and ran lengthwise in every case except that of the ancient Nile boats. The Scandinavian vikings developed a craft of their own, one of the most interesting of the ancient ships; and to these northern craftsmen is traceable the principal influence that has shaped British (and consequently American) ship-building and seamanship. This early Scandinavian boat was always made of oak, sharp at both ends, and rather shallow, the general form being much like that of a modern whaleboat, with a great rounding keel—if, indeed, this wonderful sea-craft may not be a lineal descendant of the viking ship. The hewn planks were attached to the keel and to the ribs (usually single, naturally bent V-shaped prongs of oak) in a most ingenious and serviceable manner, and they were always overlapping or clinker (_i. e._, clencher) built. Several of these and other prehistoric boats have been found buried in peat-moss and in mounds in Germany, Denmark, and Scandinavia, and have been described by various writers.

The motive power of all the early boats was found in human arms, wielding paddles or oars. It is said that the oldest forms of paddles of which we have any record among the Egyptian or Assyrian hieroglyphs show them to have been shaped somewhat like the arm and hand, and that similar paddles were to be seen a few decades ago on the canals in Holland. This is natural, because undoubtedly the first paddle ever used was the naked hand. Short paddles were soon found less powerful than long ones; but in order to work the latter it was necessary to brace them against something in the middle. Notches were therefore cut in the edge of the boat, or thole-pins were inserted, the paddle became an oar, and by and by boatmen learned the art of feathering, and so forth.

Steering could be done of old, as now, with a turn of the rearmost paddle in a canoe, and as canoes enlarged, the steering-paddle was lengthened. As the sterns of the ancient boats were usually either sharp, like the prows, or else built up into an ornamental height, the most convenient place for the steering-oar was over the right side, where it was balanced in a loop of cable, or otherwise, as close to the after end of the boat as practicable, and then a cross-piece extended inboard from the handle, enabling the steersman to move it more easily by giving him the benefit of leverage. Such was the arrangement of steering-gear in all the ancient Mediterranean boats, and it is to a similar arrangement in the sea-going craft of our northern ancestors that we owe our words _stern_ and _starboard_, which originally meant “steering-place” and “steering-side.” The modern rudder is substantially the same oar, set upright, tiller and all, and hinged to the stern-post; in fact, the word has descended from the old Teutonic name for “oar,” and all gradations between steering-oar and true rudder may still be found.

Though some romantic stories are told by the old mythologists as to its origin, the idea of rigging was as natural and practical in its development as that of hull or steering-gear. That a strong breeze moves a canoe, and that, if a man in a canoe holds his robe outstretched or a thick bush upright, the force will send him along without the labor of paddling, and lengthwise rather than sidewise, because that is the direction of least resistance, were facts quickly and gratefully seized upon by the earliest boatmen. To have a skin ready for the purpose, and to set up a pole and ropes to hold it in position, were easy matters; yet in this simple arrangement you have the first sail.

But skins were too heavy and valuable for such a purpose, except in such limited circumstances as those of the Arctic Eskimos.

Persons who spent much time on the water, therefore, like the most ancient Egyptians and the islanders of the Chinese and South seas, soon devised a way of weaving rushes or splints of bamboo into broad mats, and thus were able, on account of their lightness, to carry much larger and more effective sails, which were kept outstretched by one or more cross-poles or spars, and could be taken down quickly. Many such sails are in use to this day not only among Asiatic and African boatmen, but on the northwest coast of Canada. A fine example hangs above my desk as I write.

With the discovery of how to make cloth and cordage of woolen, silken, hempen, and cotton fibers (and in Egypt of papyrus), came a still better material for ropes and sails, since cloth was so much lighter that a far greater extent of it could be spread than before; its flexibility enabled it to be handled, changed, and rolled up snugly, and its cheapness encouraged its use and the practice of navigation generally. We read of silken sails on the royal barges of medieval times, but they could hardly have exceeded in strength or elegance those of the fine Phenician ships that carried the commerce of the world twenty-five centuries ago. “Fine linen with broidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail,” exclaims the sacred chronicler (Ezekiel xxvii. 7). Hempen cloth, indeed, was preferred for sails until the present century, as is expressed in our word _canvas_, which is derived from the Latin name of flax; but now cotton has mainly superseded it.

Anciently the sails were often colored, purple or vermilion being the badge of a monarch or an admiral. Black denoted mourning. “In some cases the topsail seems to have been colored, while the sail below was plain; and frequently a patchwork of colors was produced by using different stuffs.” Various inscriptions and devices were also woven or painted on the sails, sometimes in gold. The Venetians and Greeks do the same to this day, adding a gaudy feature to the lovely Levantine sea-scenery; and the sails of the North Sea fishermen are turned to a rich red and yellow by the tanning mixture in which they soak their canvas.

As for the shape, all rigs seem reducible to two types—the lateen and the square. The former is characteristic of the eastern half of the world, the latter of the western half, including primitive America, where, so far as I know, only plain, rectangular sails were ever made by the Indians.

There must be some good reason for a broad division like this, and it is found in the different conditions which eastern and western seamen had to meet. The lateen seems to have originated in the Indian Ocean, is seen wherever Arabs are, and has been taken eastward by the Malays as far into the South Sea Islands as their influence extended. It is a huge, triangular canvas extended at a steep angle by a long, flexible yard balanced across the mast to which it is loosely hung, and controlled by a sheet attached to the free corner. It is thus very lofty, and therefore suitable to a region of steady and usually light winds. This is the characteristic rig of the Arab dhow—a model that has come down from remote antiquity and is capable of excellent service on the northern and eastern coasts of Africa, where it prevails. It was probably in a small vessel of this kind that the Apostle Paul suffered shipwreck; and an outgrowth and perfection of it is the dahabiyeh of the Nile, now become famous as a tourists’ pleasure-boat, whose immensely lofty sail is precisely adapted to catch every faint breath that comes across the river from the deserts. Such sails are spread like the great pointed wings of an albatross over the narrow decks of the Malayan “flying proas” and other swift South Sea craft, and urge upon their fleet errands the xebecs, saics, feluccas, and other light craft of the Levant and Barbary coasts, identified with former piracy and modern smuggling, as well as with fishing and freighting. Some of these boats have two or three masts, the xebec and felucca being notable because of the curious forward rake of the foremast; and in that extremely picturesque Portuguese fishing-boat called the muleta there are, in addition to the big lateen, a huge free second sail ballooning out to leeward from the tip of the yard, and a host of little flying jibs forward, which somebody has well likened to a flock of birds hovering about the prow. Good examples of lateen-rigged boats may be seen in Louisiana, built and manned by the Greek, Maltese, and Sicilian fishermen.

The difficulty of handling in rough or squally weather this long yard and expansive canvas makes it unsuitable for such weather as prevails in the western Mediterranean or on the Atlantic; and to meet these stormy and frequently changing conditions, and obtain a rig with which they could beat to windward, the earliest rough-water seamen devised square sails. What the rig of the ancient far-voyaging Phenician ships was we have no means of knowing, but the indications are that they carried lug sails, which appear to be the simplest and earliest of the “square” forms; that is, sails suspended from short cross-yards, and controlled by ropes (sheets) attached to their lower corners. Such at least were the sails of the Roman and Greek merchant and war vessels of the classical era, and they persist to-day in the local fishing-smacks of the stormy Adriatic.

The true home of the square-sailed craft, however, was northern Europe, where the Norwegian, Dutch, and Norman coasters and fishermen of to-day probably represent fairly well the rigs of the bold viking boats of twelve or fifteen centuries ago.

Of the slow development of ship-building during the middle ages we have little information, but in the fourteenth century we begin to hear of a revival in the art, as, indeed, was needful when the long voyages were to be undertaken which the discovery of the mariner’s compass had then rendered possible. In this revival the Venetians and Genoese took the lead, but the English were not far behind. There was a large variety of vessels in that day, rude though they were, and called by names we should hardly recognize.

Though the hulls of these vessels were large and tight, their shape was poorly adapted for speed or for safety in bad weather. Their decks were built up into immensely high structures at the stern and bows, after the old galley model, and to form forts for soldiers. Our word “forecastle” reminds us of this old usage. Their masts were single sticks,—not divided into topmasts,—and hence, necessarily, were thick and heavy; and they bore upon their summits large “top-castles” where marines stood in battle to shoot down upon the enemy’s decks. This weight above, with the height of surface exposed to the wind and the clumsy rigging, made it impossible for them to sail safely except with a fair and gentle wind (they never attempted it otherwise), and they were required to carry an enormous quantity of ballast. There was so little room for anything except armament, sleeping-berths, and a cooking-room in the war-ships that every war fleet had to take with it small vessels carrying provisions; and the case was little better in respect to merchant vessels.

The ships in which Vasco da Gama, Columbus, the Cabots, and other explorers did their marvelous work were no better than this. Strangely inefficient they seem to us, and we wonder that some of the simplest contrivances in rigging were not adopted centuries before they came into use until we remember that it was not for long, speedy voyages that vessels were intended previous to the sixteenth century (with certain exceptions in northern seas), but simply as a means of carrying slowly from one coast-port to another a great number of men or huge cargoes.

However, as the known world widened and trade grew, inventions by private ship-owners continually improved the rigging, though it would be hard to find a class of men slower to change old ways for new than the seamen. Columbus’s “caravel” had four short masts, the forward one having a square lug-sail and the three after masts lateens. It was very gradually, indeed, that lateens were given up, and most curious combinations of sails were to be seen in this transition period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The old-fashioned Mediterranean barca, for example, had as foremast the forward-raking “trinchetto” of the felucca, with a huge lateen, while the mainmast bore three square sails and the mizzen two lugs; and in addition to this two banks of oars were provided! In fact, it was not until 1800 that English frigates substituted a spanker for the lateen-rigged mizzen.

Another curiosity of rigging possessed by these solidly built, beautifully carved vessels (no such exterior decoration has been seen since as adorned the ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) was the quaint little spritsail-topmast. By this time the single heavy pole-mast had been superseded by the three built-up masts and topmasts, braced by stays, made accessible by rope ladders (shrouds), and carrying several tiers of topsails instead of only one. A bowsprit had been added, also, and this became almost a fourth mast, so loaded were it and its stays with various small sails. Its outer end bore this miniature spritsail-mast, with topmast, shrouds, and tiny sails all complete, surmounted by a pole-head, or jack-staff, upon which was hoisted the flag since known as the jack, and always now carried at the prow of any national boat or ship, even such as the shapeless monitors.

But gradually, out of the experience of long voyages, the competition of merchants, and as an effect of improved gunnery and consequent changes in naval tactics, the lofty deck-structures, great tops, needless outworks, and odd sails, like this spritsail, were got rid of, and vessels were trimmed down and equalized until they became, as now, “ship-shape, Bristol-fashion.”

The rigging of modern sailing-vessels is divided into “standing” and “running”; the former includes the masts, their stays, now generally made of wire, and such other rope-work as is not adjustable.

The sails, also, may be assigned to two classes: first, those attached to a mast, with or without boom and gaff, or to a stay, which are called fore-and-aft sails because they may be ranged lengthwise of the ship; and, second, those suspended by their upper and lower edges to or between spars or “yards” swung across the mast, and known as “square” sails, the lowermost of which are really lugs. All the variations of shape seen in America, except the rare and local lateens, can be counted in one or the other of these classes.

The styles of rig visible in American waters are not many, and are easily learned. Let us begin with the simplest—that having one mast.

The _cat-boat_ (_i. e._, cat-rigged boat) is one having a simple pole-mast stepped very near the bow, and a fore-and-aft sail laced to a gaff and boom and managed by a sheet. This is the rig of the ordinary American sail-boat, which is noted for its ability in pointing up into the wind. In England it is known as a una-boat. Sometimes the peak of the sail is sustained by a little loose spar called a “sprit,” instead of a gaff. In the chapter on Yachting will be found further illustrations of these small rigs.

A _sloop_ has one mast (with topmast) set well back from the stem, and a bowsprit. The sloop-rig consists of a fore-and-aft mainsail, spread by means of a boom and gaff, a gaff-topsail, a forestaysail, and one or more jibs. A _cutter_ is now substantially the same thing, though formerly somewhat distinguished. Both are derived, probably, from the northern lugger, and old-time pictures show queer intermediate forms, often having a square topsail instead of a gaff. Thus the earlier of the Hudson River sloops, which were not only the freight-carriers but the packet-boats between New York and Albany from the time the Dutch introduced them until steamboats took their place, had the top of the mainsail supported, lug-fashion, by a short yard, and carried above that a square topsail; but this rig was steadily modified toward the modern type to make it faster and safer in the sudden squalls that beset this hill-girt river.

Of two-masted rigs, the oldest is the _brig_, which has square sails on both masts, just like the main and mizzen masts of a full-rigged ship. Then there is the _brigantine_, a slight modification of the brig, and the _hermaphrodite brig_, or _brig-schooner_, with fore-and-aft sails on the after mast. This kind of vessel has been greatly modified (one of its most extraordinary forms was the _ketch_), is less common now than formerly, and took its name, which is derived from the same source as “brigand,” from the fact that it was the most common rig of the pirates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its place was largely taken for small vessels by a purely American invention, and one of the greatest of Yankee notions—the _schooner_. The schooner was originally small, and had two masts; but now is often built of great size, with as many as five or six masts, each of which has a fore-and-aft rig—that is, a sloop’s mainsail and gaff-topsail on every mast, with forestaysail and several jibs in front, and staysails between. Sometimes a square sail is placed on the foretopmast, which makes the vessel a _topsail schooner_. The first one was built by a Gloucester sea-captain about 1817, and proved so satisfactory that all the fishing-fleet were soon rigged in that way, whence the idea has spread to all parts of the world.

Until recently, however, vessels large enough to have three masts were always “square-rigged,” as _barks_, _barkentines_, or _ships_; for, although we have come to speak of any big vessel as a “ship,” yet in proper nautical language a ship is a vessel rigged in a particular way, and it is nothing else. In fact, in olden times they were sometimes very small—too small to be economical, as we now know. The “Naval Chronicle” for 1807 contained an account of a full-rigged ship of only thirty-six tons’ burden, which for one hundred and thirty years previous to that date had been cruising about the English coast, and may be doing so yet, for aught I know.

Masts have their proper names: the tallest is in the middle of the vessel, and is called the _mainmast_; the next tallest stands in front of it, and is the _foremast_; and the third is in the stern, and is named _mizzenmast_, because it carries the mizzen (sail). All the rigging, except that belonging to the bowsprit, is repeated for each mast, and each piece is named with reference to the mast or part of the mast or appropriate sail to which it belongs: as, for example, main shrouds, fore shrouds, mizzen shrouds, mizzen-royal, maintopsail yard, foretopmast studdingsail downhaul, and so on. In a proper full-rigged ship all the sails upon the masts, except the spanker, are square, and are named from the sections of the mast opposite which they hang. Counting from the deck to the truck, or tiptop of the mast, they are as follows: on the mainmast, mainsail or maincourse, maintopsail, maintopgallant-sail, mainroyal, and skysail; on the foremast, foresail or forecourse, foretopsail, foretopgallant, foreroyal, and skysail; on the mizzenmast, cross-jack (and behind it the spanker, mizzen, or driver), mizzentopsail, mizzentopgallant, mizzen-royal, and skysail. The bowsprit sails are the forestaysail, foretopmast staysail, jib, flying jib, and outer jib, or jibstaysail. Each of the stays running diagonally from mast to mast bears a triangular sail known by the name of the particular stay on which it hangs, as maintopmast staysail, and so on—nine in all. In addition to all this, a little sail is sometimes set above the skysail, and another under the bowsprit, while out beyond the ends of the yards are often extended light additional spars carrying studdingsails. In favorable weather, when the captain wishes to “crowd all on,” as sometimes can be done for days and weeks together before the trades, almost forty sails may be spread, and the ship moves grandly along under a swaying cloud of canvas that reaches far beyond her rails on each side, and towers more than one hundred feet into the steady air.

But the cost of building, maintaining, and handling these grand fabrics is so great that they are steadily diminishing in numbers, and perhaps are destined before long to disappear altogether from the seas to which they have lent so much picturesqueness and romance. The supremacy of the schooner seems likely to prove complete. Unwilling to concede everything at once, many vessels are now rigged with square sails on the foremast and mainmast and fore-and-aft sails on the mizzen (a _bark_), or square sails on the foremast only, and the others schooner-rigged (a _barkentine_); but even these are disappearing in favor of the three-masted or four-masted schooner. This is due to the fact that the schooner rig will sail closer to the wind and gives as much force in proportion as the ship style, while it is far less expensive to build, and more quickly and easily managed, not requiring nearly as many men, and therefore being cheaper to run as well as to set up. It is for these reasons that I have called it one of the greatest of Yankee notions.