Fig. 97. The “Tillikum,” Schooner-rigged “Dug-out,” which sailed round the World.
The illustration seen in Fig. 97 shows one of the smallest schooner-rigged craft that ever sailed the ocean. This is the famous Tillikum, adapted from a “dug-out,” in which Captain J. C. Voss, F.R.G.S., sailed round the world to England. The sketch which we give here of this odd ship was made in November 1906, while she lay off the Houses of Parliament. She has since changed ownership and been fitted with a motor, and in her green paint is a familiar sight to those who bring up in the Orwell off Pin Mill.
The origin of the ketch is also Dutch, although the word is in old French quaiche and in Spanish queche. We frequently find the influence of the bomb-ketch in old pictures and engravings, in which the mizzen is close up against the mainmast, and the latter is stepped well abaft of amidships, so as to allow the shot fired to clear the rigging, leaving a large fore-triangle. (See Fig. 62, the galiote à bombe.) This influence is felt even as late as the second half of the eighteenth century. The ketch is descended from the Dutch galliot, which, besides having a gaff mizzen, had a sprit mainsail like the barge, and with no boom, but three brails and one row of reef-points. The usual vangs led down aft from the peak, and she also had lee-runners. But, besides her triangular headsails, consisting of a fore(stay)sail and a couple of jibs, she carried also a small t’gallant sail, with big topsail below, and often a large lower course below that—all these last three being square, as on a full-rigged ship, and to this day many Baltic ketches continue to be rigged in like manner. At the close of Charles II.’s reign we find that among the 173 ships in the British Royal Navy there were three ketches, but before this date, in his “Seamen’s Dictionary” of 1644, Sir Henry Manwayring defines them simply as “a small boate such as uses to come to Belinsgate with mackrell, oisters, &c.” From the time of Charles I. the Dutch have had the privilege of mooring three of their fish-carrying craft off Billingsgate in recognition of “their straightforward dealings with us,” and any day the reader likes to go down in the vicinity of London Bridge he will see two or three Dutch schuyts swinging to their moorings. In an eighteenth century work on naval architecture it is curious to see the galliot also called a galleasse. In this case the mainsail has discarded the sprit and taken on a small gaff with boom and loose foot. Two rows of reef-points are also added, and the squaresails are still there. An old English engraving also shows a close similarity to the former bomb-ketch. But in the course of time all the squaresails were abolished, the mainmast brought further forward, and the mizzen sail enlarged so as to be not much smaller than the mainsail. Nowadays nowhere is the modern ketch rig so prominent as on the east coast of England, from as far north as Whitby to as far south as Ramsgate, and even Brixham. The billy-boy, with her long raking bowsprit, setting almost as many jibs as a full-rigged ship, and whose general design bears the most remarkable likeness to the ship in the seal of Dam in Fig. 40, is the Yorkshire adaptation of the old Dutch galliot, and, with her leeboards and ketch rig, is well known in the North Sea. In the ’seventies our East Coast fishermen were almost all rigged with the lug-sail, but now some of the finest ketches will be found in the fishing fleets of Yarmouth, Lowestoft, and Ramsgate. For powerful, seaworthy craft, able to heave-to comfortably, and with the capacity of riding out gales that few modern yachts with their cut-away bows could survive, there is nothing on the sea, size for size, to beat these ketches. In Fig. 98 we give an illustration of a Lowestoft “drifter.” With her boomless mainsail and raking mizzen, setting a jackyard topsail over both main and mizzen, she sets also in light winds a large reaching jib.
Fig. 98. Lowestoft Drifter.
Fig. 99. Thames Barge.
We come next to the yawl. Correctly speaking this word has reference not to rig but to shape. The Scandinavian yol was a light vessel, clinker-built and double-ended, like the Viking shape. The Yarmouth yawls that we shall consider presently, were correctly called yawls with their bow and stern alike. But the word has now come to refer to a later adaptation of the ketch, in which the mainsail has grown bigger and the mizzen smaller. In a ketch the mizzen mast is stepped forward of the rudder-head; in the yawl the mizzen mast is abaft the rudder-head. The Jullanar, for instance, in Fig. 117, is a yawl. But to the Londoner no more familiar example could be found of a yawl than the Thames barge, of which the illustration in Fig. 99 is a fair specimen. Still inheriting her Dutch-like spritsail and brailing arrangement, she has also the vangs that were first attached to the peak in the sixteenth century. The old-fashioned topsail is a cross between a modern jackyarder and the old Dutch square topsail. Aft she carries another small spritsail on the diminutive mizzen. Smaller types of barge, called “stumpies,” have only pole-masts and neither bowsprit nor jib nor topsail. But the larger type of barge, carrying topmast and setting a big jib-headed topsail, known as topsail barges, with their red-ochred canvas and the untanned jib, always known by bargemen as the “spinnaker,” have grown to such sizes that they go right down to the west end of the English Channel. Yet these are rather ketches than yawls. But even in the Thames barges developments have not ceased. Obviously Dutch, as they strike one in a moment, the old Dutch bluff bows have been replaced by the straight bow as seen in the sketch. A whole book could be written about the barge and her ways, her history, her leeboards, her lengthy topmast, and the wooden horse on which the staysail works; but we must pass on.
Fig. 100. Norfolk Wherry.