'Black Pearl's' cutter, midship section.
A wooden false keel of more graduated shape, deep in the middle and tapering to nothing at the ends, is a better contrivance, but it is open to some of the same objections about landing, in a minor degree.
It is hardly necessary at the present day to combat the prejudice against centreboards. But for many years there was a curious dislike and distrust of them among British boat-sailers and builders. They were excluded altogether from most regattas; and not one in twenty of the boats that would have been vastly improved by them were ever fitted with them. They were regarded, for some mysterious reason, as unseaworthy, unsportsmanlike, and unfair; and when the average boating man found his craft beaten out of sight in going to windward by a centreboard boat, he considered the discovery that she had a centreboard a satisfactory explanation of his defeat, and seldom drew the further conclusion that a centreboard was an excellent thing.
And yet, after nearly twenty-five years' experience of them, I have never been able to discover what the objections to them are. The case of the centreboard is said to get in the way; but unless you want to load your whole boat with very bulky cargo, I am unable to conceive what it can get in the way of. And the merits of a centreboard are many and obvious. It enables you to combine the advantages of deep and shallow draught. You can run your boat up on a beach, and be holding your own to windward against a deep-keeled yacht ten minutes afterwards. It makes the most ordinary boat weatherly, smart, and handy to steer. It gives you timely warning of shallow water, and the only result of its touching the bottom or striking a rock is to send it up into its case. I have never had my centreboard either bent or broken by such contact. But it is well to have it lowered on a chain or wire rather than on an iron shank, with a joint or two near the handle, as in most of White's boats. Because when the centreboard hits the bottom and is forced up into the case, these joints will double up inside the case, and the solid part of the shank be driven through the top of it; which would be unpleasant for anyone who happened to be sitting there.
A centreboard, except in so far as its weight makes ballast, does not make a boat stiffer, as the uninitiated often suppose, but in the case of a broad, shallow boat, rather the reverse, as it prevents her from being blown away to leeward. And in a boat such as is being here considered, it should not be too heavy for one man to haul up. It should be made of a thin sheet of galvanised iron.
As regards her rig, nothing is really so handy and capable as the cutter, or, to speak more accurately, the sloop rig; consisting of mainsail and foresail, as ordinary working canvas. I prefer the sloop rig of a single foresail on a short iron bumpkin, to the end of which the forestay is attached, to the cutter rig of staysail and jib with a regular bowsprit; for a bowsprit is an awkward thing in rounding to and coming alongside a ship, under all sorts of conditions of wind and tide, and a second head-sail gives you more gear to attend to when you are single-handed. And on a boat of this size a single foresail is not too large to be easily handled.
What makes this rig so suitable for the peculiar and varied purposes of a yacht's boat is, that, with mainsheet and peak halliards kept in hand, it gives such absolute control over the pace and direction of the boat at a moment's notice. In whiffing round the rocks after pollack, for instance, in a flawy wind, by lowering and raising the peak, and easing off and hauling in the mainsheet, it is easy to maintain a perfectly level pace of two or three knots. In a squall, or in going alongside a ship or a landing-place, the peak can be dropped and the boat eased or checked at once without becoming unsailable. This constitutes, in my opinion, a very important advantage over the standing lugsail, of which, of course, the peak cannot be lowered. A downhaul should be attached to the end of the gaff, as the peak will not always drop when the wind is pressing the sail against the topping lift.
Mainsheet on iron horse.