XI.
RIGGING AND SAILS.
Wire has entirely superseded rope for standing rigging, and deadeyes and lanyards are fast giving way before the advance of the turnbuckle. An old sailor cannot help regretting the decline and fall of his profession and the growing popularity of the art of the blacksmith. So far as the rigging of ships is concerned, when wire rigging was first introduced it was thought that its rigidity would prove a fatal objection to its successful use.
Science has, however, set its foot down firmly on such objections. The decree has gone forth that rigging cannot possibly be set up too taut, and the less it stretches the better. The old argument that a yacht's standing rigging should "give" when the craft is caught in a squall, which old sea dogs were so fond of advancing, has been knocked on the head by scientific men who declare that a vessel's heeling capacity affords much more relief than the yielding quality of rigging. Thus all or nearly all of the modern immense steel sailing vessels in the East Indian and Australian trade have their steel masts stayed as rigidly as possible by means of turnbuckles, and practice seems to have demonstrated the truth of the theory. These ships encounter terrific seas and gales off the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, and their masts are thus subjected to violent and sudden strains, but I have been assured by the commanders of several of these great freight carriers that they have never known their "sticks" to be imperiled by the rigidity of the rigging, and the tauter it can be set up the more secure the masts are supposed to be.
SHROUD, DEADEYE, LANYARD.
There are, however, a number of old salts who condemn this theory as rank heresy, and go in for deadeyes and lanyards of the old-fashioned kind, and the greater the stretch between the upper and the lower deadeyes the better are they pleased. There is no doubt that turnbuckles look neater than deadeyes, and they are probably well suited for small craft. The Herreshoffs have long used them for setting up the rigging of the sloops and yawls of moderate size which they used to turn out in such numbers, and which first laid the foundation of their fame. The boat owner can please himself as to which method he may choose, and he can rely that with either his mast will be perfectly secure. Both methods are shown in the accompanying cuts.
There is one thing in connection with wire rigging that I must warn the amateur against. Beware of shod wire rigging. "Shoes" are iron plates riveted to the ends of wire rigging to receive shackle bolts. They are never reliable. Eye splices in wire never draw. "Shoes" often collapse without notice.
TURNBUCKLE.
Turnbuckles are very handy appliances for setting up rigging in a hurry, whereas the same operation conducted by means of a deadeye and a lanyard takes much more time and trouble. A small craft rigged as a sloop, cutter or yawl, requires only one shroud on each side to afford lateral support to the mast, and a forestay—which in the case of a cutter or yawl should set up at the stem head, but on a sloop is set up on the bowsprit. A simple way to fit the rigging is to splice an eye in each shroud, forming a collar sufficiently large to pass over the masthead, first covering the part that is to form the eye with canvas sewn on and painted. The starboard shroud goes over the masthead first, then the port one and last the forestay. In large yachts the lower rigging is often fitted in pairs, the bight of the shrouds being passed over the masthead and secured in the form of an eye with a stout wire seizing.