"There is only one other craft which we shall notice," continued the principal, changing the drawing. "What is it?"
"A sloop," replied Nat Long. "We have plenty of them on Lake Champlain."
"This is the simplest rig of all. But sloops, especially in yachts, vary a great deal. This is the rig of the English cutter, in the main; though some of them have a couple of yards on the mast, as you never see it in an ordinary sloop. As I have said before, there are many variations in all these rigs. Some vessels are provided with sails which others of the same rig do not have. The fashions change also. A ship now is quite a different thing from what it was forty years ago. The study is to work a vessel with the fewest men that can handle her; for, the less the number, the smaller the expense, and the more profitable the vessel is to her owners.
"For example, mercantile ships, as distinguished from naval vessels, have a different rig from what they had twenty-five years ago. Instead of one large topsail, they have two sails, called the upper and lower topsails, with an extra yard. It saves handling the larger sail, and avoids much of the difficult and dangerous work of reefing in heavy weather. But you do not see this rig in the navy. Men-of-war are always heavily manned, and they have force enough to handle any sail. Now we will turn to the business of rigging this schooner. It is better for you to learn the names and the uses of things as you proceed with the work, rather than attempt to get at them in a lesson.
"Nautical terms look very formidable to shore-people; and so they are, in fact, though not so much so as people generally imagine. There is a certain system about naming the various spars and pieces of rigging, which simplifies the whole subject. In a ship, the three words 'fore,' 'main,' and 'mizzen' distinguish the fore and aft position of every thing. For the elevation we have the word simply; then with the addition of top, topgallant, and royal, we fix the position above the deck.
"To indicate the side to which a part belongs, we say weather and lee if the vessel is under way, or starboard and port if she is at rest. The weather-maintop-gallantbrace covers the whole matter. If you know what a brace is, you can describe any similar piece of rigging in the ship. To-morrow afternoon, when some drawings I am having made are done, I shall explain the rigging of a ship.
"I might talk all the afternoon about the rigging of even a fore-and-aft schooner, but I am afraid it would only perplex you. There are at least thirty different kinds of blocks, each with its proper name, indicating its position or use."
"What is a block?" asked Sax Coburg.
"It is a kind of pulley," replied the principal, picking one up from the pile on the wharf. "It consists of a shell, which is the wooden frame, the sheave or wheel, the pin, or axis on which the wheel turns, and the strap, which is the rope or iron by which it is secured to some other body. The sides of a shell, which usually round outward, are called the cheeks. That's all we need say about blocks till we come to use them in setting up the rigging."
"The two round sticks, squared at the top, are the masts. Are they of the same length?"