Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

Falconer says that lower studding sails were used on the main and fore. The booms were generally hooked on to the chains by a gooseneck, and kept steady by a guy. Topmast and t’gallant studding sails were spread along the foot by booms which slid out from the yards. This is well seen in the Queen and many another model which the reader will no doubt have examined. In a similar manner the head of the sail had small sliding yards for the same purpose. The sail on the mizzen mast now called a driver or spanker was chiefly used when on a wind, being usually stowed when running. The boom will be found to project very far over the stern, even to an almost incredible extent, yet this is quite accurate for the period. As is still the custom, the gaff was kept up when the sail was not in use, contrary to the practice on a modern cutter-rigged vessel. The origin of this sail we have seen develop from the old lateen, and modified in its transition by Dutch influence. Now, one characteristic of the Dutchman was his love of brails, and even when the boom was added and the diagonal sprit taken away from this sail on the little fore-and-afters the brailing system clung tenaciously to the sail. We have a very good instance of this in the mainsail of the bawley (see Fig. 86), which has neither boom nor sprit, but which can be brailed up all the same. The barge has a sprit but no boom, and stows her sail by brailing. When this sail came to be used as the driver on square-rigged ships and the boom was also added, using a loose-footed sail, the brails still survived as we see them on the Queen. In furling the driver, therefore, the brail hauled the sail to the mast: then in order to make a neat job of it a kind of clew-garnet drew the leach end of the foot diagonally across the sail to the mast also. This will be noticed in many contemporary prints of this period and earlier. I have talked with one old sailor who remembers, when the ship had got into the favourable trade-wind, not merely setting every stitch of canvas the vessel had to put up, but even stepping the masts of the ship’s boats lying on deck and hoisting the sails of these boats to drive the ship along yet faster still. The reader may remember that Nelson’s Victory, one of the fastest line-of-battle ships of her day, went into action at Trafalgar with studding sails set.

We have already shown that it was not long in the new century before iron was introduced in connection with shipbuilding, though it was some time before it was able to take the place of wood for the hulls of ships. By the ’thirties steam was becoming gradually to be reckoned with as a serious menace to sail, and in the Navy the Tartarus, of four guns and a tonnage of 523, was classed as a paddle sloop. Nevertheless, paddle-wheel steamers attached to the fleet were regarded with scorn and spoken of as “dirty old smoke-jacks.” As a distinguished naval officer and explorer, happily still with us, Admiral Moresby, says: “There was obviously no future for this type in the service, and sails would continue to waft us as they had done from the beginning. So we thought; but one day a long, low craft, barque-rigged, and possessing no outward sign of a steamer but the funnel, joined the fleet. She was the Rattler, the first man-of-war screw-ship. We viewed her with interest but did not realise her significance. Pitted against her in every trial was the Alecto—a paddle-sloop of equal tonnage and horse-power—the Rattler an easy first in all circumstances. Finally they were lashed stern to stern in a ‘pull devil, pull baker’ grip, and ordered to put forth all their strength to see which could tow the other—a strange scene which I well remember. It was a calm day, with a long, heaving swell. Alecto’s paddles were revolving and churning the foam like a whale in a flurry, while a slight ripple under the Rattler’s stern alone showed that there was power at work.... Alecto, in spite of frantic struggles, was dragged slowly astern, and the era of the screw had begun.”[111] The same author relates an amusing instance as showing the manner in which steam was contemplated by the old school. A certain captain was bringing his ship into harbour under steam and sail. As he ran up he shortened sail and came to anchor in handsome style, but unfortunately forgot that his engines were still going, with a result that could only spell disaster!

There was between the naval ships of the ’forties and those of the time of Charles II. a similarity a hundredfold closer than that which can be found to exist between the former and those of King Edward’s ships to-day. With a change in ships came a change in personnel. “The officers of the early ’forties,” writes Admiral Moresby, “with few exceptions, were content to be practical sailors only. They had nothing to do with the navigation of the ship or the rating of the chronometers. That was entirely in the hands of the master, and no other had any real experience or responsibility in the matter. For example—I recall a captain, whose ship was at Spithead. He was ordered by signal to go to the assistance of a ship on shore at the back of the Isle of Wight. In reply he hoisted ‘Inability. The master is ashore.’ He was asked, ‘Are the other officers aboard?’ and signalled ‘Yes.’ But to the repeated order, ‘Proceed immediately,’ he again hoisted ‘Inability,’ and remained entrenched in this determination until a pilot was sent to assist him.”

But to come back to the merchant service, to the old East Indiamen “with their stately tiers of sails and splendid crews of trained seamen,” although they were much finer in their lines and less unhandy than the vessels in the Royal Navy of this period, their rig was in most respects akin to the latter.[112] They carried three courses—foresail, mainsail and cro’jack, three topsails (in each of which there were three or four reefs), and three t’gallant sails and royals, or twelve sails on the three masts. The fore-and-aft sails were: on the bowsprit and jib-boom, a fore topmast staysail, an inner jib and outer jib and flying jib. Below the bowsprit was set on the spritsail yard, what the reader has been accustomed through these chapters to know as the “spritsail,” but which in the nineteenth century, even though triangular headsails were more in evidence than before, still continued, though known as a “water sail,” or “bull-driver.” Leslie, in his “Old Sea Wings, Ways and Words in the Days of Oak and Hemp,” says that spritsails were not only used when going free but when on a wind. The reef-points were placed diagonally so that when reefed that part of the sail nearest to the sea was narrower than the upper part. Two circular holes were cut, one in each corner, so that when the ship plunged her bows into a sea the water could run out and not split the canvas. Mr. Bullen says that this sail was not of much use, nor could he understand why it was carried at all, as it always had to be furled as soon as the ship began to pitch a little. However, this last and final relic of mediævalism has at last departed for good, although it dated back for its origin to the artemon of classical times. Even when the sprit topmast had disappeared, the sprit topsail was retained for some time by placing it below the bowsprit instead of above, but further forward of the spritsail proper.

Between the fore and main masts of the East Indiamen were the main topmast staysail, main topgallant staysail and main royal staysail. Between the main and mizzen were the mizzen topmast staysail, and mizzen t’gallant staysail, but a royal was seldom set on this mast. Abaft came the spanker or driver, often with the addition on the after-leach of a ring-tail. Stun’sles, too, were used. But in those days although these East Indiamen carried more hands than a sailing ship of like size does to-day, yet every night at sunset all light sails were taken off her and the ship was snugged down for the night. Still the old bluff-bowed East Indiaman had had its day when the young Republic of the United States, encouraged by the opportunity which freedom from war now afforded, introduced on the sea ships with clipper-bow that literally cleft the waves instead of hitting them and retarding the passage of the hull through the water. With a freedom of mind which has ever characterised the American, both as a nation and an individual, the marine architects on the other side of the Atlantic threw convention still further to the winds by modifying the design of the stern in such a way that instead of squatting and holding the dead water the ship slid through it cleanly with a minimum of resistance. Possessing unlimited supplies of timber, they were in a position to build ships at a far lower rate than we in this country. In fact, so much was this the case that in England between the years 1841 and 1847 no fewer than forty shipbuilders went bankrupt in Sunderland alone. The one object of the American designer was to build a ship that should sail every other craft off the seas and so obtain the maximum of trade-carrying. Besides the improvement in bow and stern they lengthened the ship till she became five and six times longer than in breadth. This gave an opportunity of adding a fourth mast to the ship and to carry more sails. The sails themselves were improved in cut, being no longer mere bags to hold the wind, but of a “close-textured, dazzlingly-white canvas.” In exact contradistinction to the East Indiamen, these Yankee ships did not reef down in anticipation of the gale that was to follow hours after, but took in sail reluctantly. The part played by the American clippers during the period that saw the close of the great wars and the beginning of the American Civil War is one of vast importance to the development of the sailing ship of any size. Even when steamers began to cross the Atlantic in 1840, these wonderful clippers were able to cross in about a fortnight. In every way superior to the old cotton-ships running between New York and Havre in the early ’thirties, the clippers of the ’forties and ’fifties were seaworthy as well as fast. One of the most famous was the Flying Cloud built in 1851, which performed the sensational run of 427 knots in twenty-four hours when on a passage from New York to San Francisco. The Sovereign of the Seas did even better still.

But yet again the English genius for improving on other peoples’ ideas showed itself at a critical point in the history of shipbuilding. Shipbuilders and architects put their heads together and decided to meet the American on his own terms. If he had built clippers that had flown across the sea, it was their duty to build something that would fly faster still; so a new chapter in British shipping begins, and headed by Mr. Richard Green, the famous Blackwall shipbuilder and shipowner, England built for herself the real thing in clippers, quite early in the ’sixties. The Challenger was in 1850 laid down in Messrs. Green’s yard to sail against the American Challenge, in an ocean race from China, and won. Besides Messrs. Green, other British firms entered the contest and built splendid clippers, amongst whom may be mentioned Messrs. J. Thompson & Co., of Aberdeen, who founded the well-known line of Aberdeen clippers; Messrs. Steele, of Greenock, and Messrs. Scott, of Greenock. Built of teak planking with iron frames, these new vessels were made to last, unlike the American ships, whose life was quite short, built as they were merely out of soft stuff. The enormous spars which the new British ships were given caused no little surprise at that time, but they managed to carry them none the less. The Great Republic, launched in the early ’fifties, was the first vessel to carry double topsails. Owned and built in America, she was 305 feet long, 53 feet broad, 30 feet deep, and had a tonnage of 3400. She carried also double t’gallant sails as well as staysails, and was barque rigged, having 4500 square yards of canvas. So perfectly was she rigged that she was handled by a crew of 100. She was chartered by the French Government to carry troops to the Crimea,[113] had four decks and was strengthened with iron lattice-work.

But about the year 1853, we enter upon the final and most perfect stage of the sailing ship. Spurred on by competition and necessity, builders and architects had been compelled to put forth their best and to get right away from the old-fashioned ruts. So now wood at last was to give place to iron as the material for constructing sailing ships as well as steamers. In this year Messrs. Scott of Greenock built the iron sailing ship Lord of the Isles which, three years later, beat two of the American crack clippers, though nearly double her size, in the race from Foo Choo to London. The adoption of iron meant a saving of about a third of the weight of the hull; moreover, as ships became longer, increased structural strength was found to be lacking in wood.[114] As we saw in the time of Charles II., English oak had been getting gradually so scarce as to put us at a serious disadvantage in competition with such a well-wooded region as North America. The gold rush to California in the ’fifties, and to Australia, gave a tremendous impetus to shipping. The reader must recollect that by this time there were no railways across the American continent, and so when the inhabitants of the Eastern States of America decided to go west, they could only go viâ Cape Horn. This was the chance for the clipper ship to show her superiority to her predecessors, and in these voyages she soon showed that speed meant money.

But we must come now to the influence which the China tea trade had on the sailing ship. I understand that tea is a commodity which, as long as it is kept in a ship’s hold, quickly loses its delicate flavour and quality. Consequent on this, and the desire on the part of London merchants to obtain each year the first portion of the new tea crop at the earliest possible moment, it was to their interest to encourage a quick passage. Therefore enormous prizes were held out as an inducement, and the keenest rivalry existed between different ships in the race home. Solent regattas, the international race from Dover to Heligoland, even the famous race a few years ago across the North Atlantic look ridiculous when one thinks of the excitement that reigned on board during a race all the way from China to the River Thames. For a long time the American ships had been successful. Before the introduction of iron such craft as the Sea Witch, a clipper built in 1842, of 907 tons register, and carrying 1100 tons of China tea,[115] caused tremendous jealousy among the British skippers. In 1853 the Challenge had sailed from Canton to Deal in 105 days, though in the same year the English Chrysolite clipper sailed from Canton to Liverpool in 106 days. For a few years the Americans had the best of the competition; but before the ’fifties had ended the China trade had been won by British clippers, and the American Civil War of 1861-1865 dealt a fatal blow to their clippers as rivals to ours. But none the less those keen races to England did not diminish. The rivalry which had existed between nation and nation now continued between ship and ship, between skipper and skipper, shipowner and shipowner. This led to the finest development of sailing ships, and as long as the word remains in the English language, so long will these clipper races remain famous alike for the skill as for the sporting instinct in the crews that got them home in record time.

Fig. 73. The “Ariel” and “Taeping,” two of the finest Tea-Clippers, racing Home, off the Lizard, on September 6, 1866.