- Member since
March 2007
- From: Portsmouth, RI
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Posted by searat12
on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 11:15 AM
 CODY614 wrote: | | On page 113 of McKays book...Looking at numbers 10,79,81,82 they all appear to pick up the load of the 'Spritesail'. I dont' think it is a standing rigging thing. I belive that it is 'Running Rig' setup. I cant' say for sure...other thatn what I see in the books....But...The guy's at.... http://www.pete-coleman.com/forum/ Will surely know! Sorry that I cant' be positive about this Chuck. Jeff |
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Well, by the time Victory and the other ships at Trafalgar were fighting, the spritsail (i.e. the square sail slung beneath the bowsprit, not the triangular sail slung from the forestay) was as much vestigial as anything else, as its primary purpose was replaced by various types of jibs. The square spritsail was never really designed for use with the wind from aft, but instead, would be twisted up on one side or the other to take advantage of wind coming from the forward quarter, and this helps balance against either a spanker, or lateen sail slung from the mizzen mast. In other words, the spritsail actually functioned like a fore-and-aft sail! The flexibility and utility of the spritsail was not well known in modern times, until the replica of 'Mayflower' sailed across the Atlantic. Capt Alan Villiers was quite surprised at just how useful the spritsail was, especially in sailing to windward! As time went by, and the superior usefulness of jibs were thoroughly recognised, the square spritsail fell out of favor. However, the yard and its sail remained a fixture for quite a long time (because shipwrights and sailors are extremely conservative!!), initially as a 'fallback' in case the jibs were so shot up as to be useless, and then as an additional stiffening element to keep the bowsprit from flexing too much from side to side (because of the pressure of the jibs at work). Eventually, the spritsail yard was replaced entirely by whiskers, dolphin-strikers, bobstays and martingales (as in the USS Constitution). If you think of the whole bowsprit assembly as essentially a normal square-rigged mast tilted at an extreme angle, it will all make a lot more sense to you. There are in fact quite powerful central downhauls that keep the spritsail yard from riding up the bowsprit, and of course the braces to the forestay control the angle of the yard itself when the spritsail is actually deployed.
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