A FIJI ISLAND OUT-RIGGED CANOE, APPROACHING A FULL-RIGGED SHIP HOVE-TO.
Masts have their proper names: the tallest is in the middle of the vessel, and is called the mainmast; the next tallest stands in front of it, and is the foremast; and the third is in the stern, and is named mizzenmast, because it carries the mizzen (sail). All the rigging, except that belonging to the bowsprit, is repeated for each mast, and each piece is named with reference to the mast or part of the mast or appropriate sail to which it belongs: as, for example, main shrouds, fore shrouds, mizzen shrouds, mizzen-royal, maintopsail yard, foretopmast studdingsail downhaul, and so on. In a proper full-rigged ship all the sails upon the masts, except the spanker, are square, and are named from the sections of the mast opposite which they hang. Counting from the deck to the truck, or tiptop of the mast, they are as follows: on the mainmast, mainsail or maincourse, maintopsail, maintopgallant-sail, mainroyal, and skysail; on the foremast, foresail or forecourse, foretopsail, foretopgallant, foreroyal, and skysail; on the mizzenmast, cross-jack (and behind it the spanker, mizzen, or driver), mizzentopsail, mizzentopgallant, mizzen-royal, and skysail. The bowsprit sails are the forestaysail, foretopmast staysail, jib, flying jib, and outer jib, or jibstaysail. Each of the stays running diagonally from mast to mast bears a triangular sail known by the name of the particular stay on which it hangs, as maintopmast staysail, and so on—nine in all. In addition to all this, a little sail is sometimes set above the skysail, and another under the bowsprit, while out beyond the ends of the yards are often extended light additional spars carrying studdingsails. In favorable weather, when the captain wishes to “crowd all on,” as sometimes can be done for days and weeks together before the trades, almost forty sails may be spread, and the ship moves grandly along under a swaying cloud of canvas that reaches far beyond her rails on each side, and towers more than one hundred feet into the steady air.
But the cost of building, maintaining, and handling these grand fabrics is so great that they are steadily diminishing in numbers, and perhaps are destined before long to disappear altogether from the seas to which they have lent so much picturesqueness and romance. The supremacy of the schooner seems likely to prove complete. Unwilling to concede everything at once, many vessels are now rigged with square sails on the foremast and mainmast and fore-and-aft sails on the mizzen (a bark), or square sails on the foremast only, and the others schooner-rigged (a barkentine); but even these are disappearing in favor of the three-masted or four-masted schooner. This is due to the fact that the schooner rig will sail closer to the wind and gives as much force in proportion as the ship style, while it is far less expensive to build, and more quickly and easily managed, not requiring nearly as many men, and therefore being cheaper to run as well as to set up. It is for these reasons that I have called it one of the greatest of Yankee notions.
A MULETA, OR PORTUGUESE LATEEN-RIGGED FISHING-BOAT.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS
PART I—PREVIOUS TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
