Fig. 94. The “Fantôme,” 18-ton Brig. Launched 1838.
The illustration shown in Fig. 94 represents the 18-ton brig Fantôme. She was designed by Sir W. Symonds and launched about 1838. Her armament consisted of eighteen 32-pounders, and her complement was 148 officers and men. Her tonnage was 726, her breadth 37·7 feet, length 120 feet, and depth of hold 18 feet. This is from a photograph of the model in the South Kensington Museum. Fig. 95 is a photograph of the training brig Martin, actually afloat. The brig was the last sailing ship to disappear from the British Navy, and her final abolition is so recent that her picturesqueness still lingers in the imagination of Solent yachtsmen and others. The Martin was launched in 1836. As will be seen from the photograph, which obtains even greater interest when compared with the model just mentioned, she carried single topsails, t’gallants and royals. Stun’sails will be noticed on the foresail, fore-topsail, fore-topgallant sail as well as on her main topgallant sail. As we shall never see these sailing brigs again, the photograph is of more than ordinary interest.
Fig. 95. H.M.S. “Martin,” Training Brig. Launched 1836.
In olden days the brig was a favourite rig for small coasters. In the marine paintings of Turner and the early part of the nineteenth century one sees them frequently. In the eighteenth century, and even as late as the nineteenth, the brig was used for the coal-carrying trade. The nineteenth-century brigs often carried, besides the sails seen in the two illustrations, an enormous fore-topgallant staysail. But both the handiness of schooners and ketches began to oust her, and the coming of the steam collier finally did for her in the mercantile marine as, at a later date, she was abolished from the Royal Navy.
Fig. 96. A Hermaphrodite Brig, commonly but erroneously called a Brigantine.
I have intentionally introduced the brig at this point, notwithstanding that she is essentially a square-rigged ship, in order that we may compare her the more easily with that compromise between the square rig and fore-and-aft vessel, the brigantine. Strictly speaking, the brigantine is square-rigged at her foremast, but differs from the Hermaphrodite brig in carrying small squaresails aloft at the main. She differs also from the full-rigged brig in having no top at the mainmast and in carrying a fore-and-aft mainsail and sometimes a main-staysail instead of a square mainsail and try-sail. (The fore-and-aft sail at a brig’s mainmast is called a try-sail.) The illustration in Fig. 96 represents a Hermaphrodite brig, commonly and erroneously called a brigantine. The Hermaphrodite brig, or brig-schooner, is square-rigged at her foremast like a brig, but without a top forward, and carrying only a fore-and-aft mainsail and gaff topsail on the mainmast. And here it may not be out of place to mention another subtlety: while a barque has three masts, being square-rigged at her fore and main like a ship, and differing from a ship-rigged vessel in having no top at her mizzen, but carrying a fore-and-aft spanker and gaff topsail, yet what is known among sailormen as the “Jackass” barque resembles a barque proper, but has no crosstrees, does not spread lower courses and has no tops. (Tops are the platforms placed over the heads of the lower masts, while the crosstrees are at the topmast heads, being used for giving a wider spread to the standing rigging).
