Sailing ships

by E. Keble Chatterton

Fig. 85. “River Scene.”
After the painting by W. Van der Velde. No. 978 in the National Gallery.

For many years, though the Dutch had changed their rig for small craft, yet they still felt the influence of the bigger squaresail ships, notably in the design of the sterns. Thus the familiar decoration and the sheer to a high poop will be noticed in the vessel that occupies the centre of Fig. 85, which is rigged with a spritsail. This has been copied from another Van der Velde in the same gallery (No. 978). I have selected this picture expressly for the purpose of indicating, as Van der Velde has done, as many of the prevailing types of Dutch seventeenth-century craft as possible in a small space. The short gaff, the spritsail furled by means of its brails, the large squaresail for spinnaker work seen on the ship to the left of the picture, the high stempost (relic of the Vikings) on the ship to the right—these will all be found deserving of notice. It was no doubt a ship very similar to the high-pooped yacht in the centre of this picture that was sent to Charles II. in 1660 by the Dutch. The vessel was called the Mary, and was the first yacht ever owned in this country.

In England the revenue and other sailing cutters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were rigged with the square topgallant sail and “goared” topsail below, with a hollow foot. Old prints of the beginning of the eighteenth century (1717) show British cutters sailing with the jack flying from the staff at the end of the bowsprit just clear of the jib. The bowsprit is steeved remarkably high and is very long. In a like manner were rigged also the yachts of this period. So the cutters continued until the ’forties and ’fifties, when the bluff bows and rough rig gave way to a larger, cleaner lined, and more scientific production than the slavish copying of a seventeenth century Dutch type could produce. Now the old-fashioned square topsail has utterly disappeared in fore-and-afters, and one of more or less triangular shape has taken its place. But since it is in the building and rigging of yachts that the most complete changes have occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries we shall postpone the further progress of the cutter until later in the chapter.

Fig. 86. The Bawley.

No modification of the cutter rig in England is so thoroughly Dutch as the bawley (Fig. 86). Not even the least observant of passengers on the Margate steamer can have failed to notice these little ships off the Nore or cruising somewhere up and down the Thames estuary. Off Southend and Whitstable they are as common as flies in summer, and bigger children of the same family are to be seen brought up in the Stour abreast of Harwich. The bawley inherits the Dutch ancient mainsail, with brails that can speedily shorten canvas, and without a boom to be kicking about from side to side as the ship rolls in the trough of the nasty seas that can get up off the entrance to our great waterway. With their transom stern and easily brailed and triced mainsail these bawleys are excellent bad-weather boats.

Some of the finest cutters in the country are the Brixham Mumble Bees, trawlers of about 27 tons. They have their mast stepped well aft, so that they are able to set an enormous foresail. Here especially the long bowsprit has survived, and without a bobstay to support it. The Plymouth hooker, with her mast stepped well amidships, with her square stern, no boom to her mainsail, and pole-mast, cannot be said altogether to have escaped Dutch influence, although it is said that the Devonshire men in Elizabeth’s time possessed cutters of their own.

The illustration in Plan 1 shows the sail and rigging plan of the Gjöa. The vessel is shown here because in combining much that is old and new she is one of the most interesting cutters afloat. Her tonnage is 70, length over all 69 feet, beam 20·66 feet, depth 8·75 feet, draught 7·5 feet. In June 1903 she set out from Christiania, and three and a half years later she had navigated the North-West Passage and reached San Francisco. Obviously built for the hard service of the Arctic regions, her hull is bluff and strong. The bowsprit is more that of an old-fashioned full-rigged ship than of a modern cutter, and the squaresail, whose yard and braces will be noticed, has come back from the times of the old Dutchmen, being, as already mentioned, of inestimable value for running across vast expanses of ocean. But in spite of her old-fashioned bow and stern and rigging she is fitted with a heavy-oil motor, as will be seen from Plan 2. This was found very useful, giving the ship a speed of 4 knots per hour; and it was the first time a motor-propelled ship had been so far north. Plan 3 gives an adequate idea of Gjöa’s deck arrangement.

Pass we now to trace the progress of the schooner. It is a common error to suppose that this rig was derived direct from the cutter by merely adding another mast and sail of the same shape as the mainsail. Such a statement is pure guess-work, and entirely contrary to fact. The schooner originated quite independently of the cutter and much later, though the shape of her mainsail and foresail was obtained from the former. About the beginning of the seventeenth century a craft far from uncommon among the Dutch was the sloop. Now in order to clear the ground, let us carefully separate the three distinct kinds of craft to which this name belonged at that time. The word sloop, or more properly sloepe, was applied less to the rig than to the size of the craft, denoting a somewhat small tonnage. Thus it was primarily applied to a ship’s big boat, such as was used to run out the kedge anchor and for fetching provisions and water from the shore. The same name was also given to the Dutch vessels of about 55 feet long and 12½ feet beam which sailed to the Cape Verde Islands. More familiar to us was the custom of applying it to the early cutter-like craft which carried a triangular foresail yet no jib. But not one of these is the sloop we are looking for. This is found in that kind of sailing craft which was about 42 feet overall and with 9 feet beam. She was rigged with two pole masts, the mainmast being 24 feet long. On each she had just such a sail as we see in Fig. 83 of a modern schuyt, with loose foot and with both gaff and boom, but the most important fact is that she had neither bowsprit nor headsails of any kind, while her foremast was stepped right as far forward as it could get. There are plenty of contemporary prints and paintings in existence to show such a vessel, which usually had an enormous sheer coming up from bow to stern. This, then, was not a schooner but a sloop, and you may search high and low in all the seventeenth century dictionaries, marine and otherwise, but you will not find such a word as “schooner” in existence. We come, then, to the early part of the eighteenth century, and we cross to North America. When in 1664 the British, during the war with Holland, seized the Dutch colony of the New Netherlands and changed the name of New Amsterdam to New York in honour of Charles II.’s brother, most of the Dutch settlers who had come out from Europe remained. So, like those early people who trekked westwards across the Syrian desert to Egypt, the Dutch had also brought with them their ideas and practical knowledge of shipbuilding, included in which was that of making sloops. It was at Gloucester, Massachusetts, still to-day famous for the finest schooners and the very finest schooner-sailors that ever tasted brine on their lips, that in 1713 the first genuine schooner with a triangular headsail was built. To add the latter to the two-masted sloop was but the easiest transition. Not till the first vessel of this now enormous class was actually making its first contact with water was the name schooner bestowed on it. As she was leaving the stocks some one remarked “Oh, how she scoons.” “Very well, then,” answered her proud builder, “a scooner let her be.” And so she has remained ever since.