Foremast

“ The foremast had been carried away, shivered to the deck, and hung over the bows, from which part of the crew were endeavouring to clear it. The main and mizen-topmasts had likewise been carried away. Smoke was coming up the fore hatchway, down which the rest of the people were pouring buckets of water. I went forward to render assistance. The foremast had been struck by lightning, and the electric fluid, after shattering it, had descended into the hold and set the ship on fire. We worked with the desperation of despair. Should the fire once gain the mastery, no human power could save us. ”

“ So far, he had climbed a good broad “ladder”—the ratlines stretched between the three stout steel shrouds. From the cross-trees to the top of the slender mast, there was but a single-breadth foothold between the two shrouds running from the tip of the foremast to the cross-trees.
Far above him, cut off from his vision by darkness and flying scud, Jack knew that the footpath he had to follow narrowed to less than a foot in breadth. At that height the vicious kicking of the mast must be tremendous. ”

“ We soon had canvas on her aft, and she headed the sea, dropping back from the wreckage to a mooring hawser bent to the standing rigging of the foremast. We got a lashing to the foot of the mast, and she dragged the mass broadside, making a lee of it, and riding easily to the heavy seas, which now took her almost dead on her bows.
When I had a chance to look about me again, the light of the morning had grown to its full height, and we were able to see around us.
The gray light made things look almost hopeless for us. The pumps worked full stroke, and the water gained rapidly on us. ”

“ Few if any need to be informed that the mizzen mast is the hindmost of the three masts of a ship. The mizzen mast of the Golden Fleece is a solid stick, but the foremast and mainmast are built. In this section of the country it is not always easy to find trees large, tall, straight enough for the foremast and mainmast of a large ship. A smaller one will answer for a mizzen mast. The foremast and mainmast are specimens of ingenious mechanical work, eight or nine pieces in each of them making a circumference of sixty-two inches. ”

“ Heave the mast in over the bulwarks; fit the trestle-trees and after chock; reeve girt-lines by which men may be hoisted when the mast is in; point the mast in, and lower away. Always take in the mizzen-mast first. Get in the main and then the foremast in the same manner, rousing the shears forward, with their shoes, by means of the heel tackles. Having stepped and secured the foremast, carry the forward guys aft and rake the shears over the bows; toggle the lower block of the main tackle to a garland lashed to the upper part of the bowsprit inside of the centre. ”

“ Ready, having persuaded two of the men to take the helm, made a sign to Mackintosh (for now the wind was so loud that they could not hear each other speak) , and, going aft, they obtained axes, and cut away the mizen-rigging; the mizen-topmast and head of the mizenmast went over the side, and then the stump of the foremast was sufficient to get the ship before the wind again. ”

“ The mainmast holds up a top mast also with its yards and sails, a top-gallant mast with yards and sails, the royal, and sometimes a sky sail. Then the foremast also, which bears the same burden and is also a manufactured thing; as you think of it, a hundred feet ahead of you, pioneering your way and taking the first brunt of the sea, you cannot help regarding it as the most heroic of the three masts. Inspiring as the sight of these always is, I cannot withhold from the mizzen mast peculiar attachment. As already stated, one end of the hammock is fastened to it, the other end to the rail ”

“ About twenty minutes after she struck the mainmast fell over the side towards a rock, which we could distinguish rising above the water, followed by the foremast and mizen-mast. Hoping that the rock would afford us more security than the ship herself, I, with others, made my way towards it, though at no little risk of being carried off by the seas. On reaching it we shouted to the rest to come on, as at any moment the ship might go to pieces. The whole crew followed our example. Many parts of the rock itself were scarcely above water. ”

“ The foremast of the ship was broken off about fifteen feet from the level of the deck, and I went to work to splice on a jury-mast. It was slow and pretty hard work. I had to arrange the blocks and tackles in the most scientific manner, in order to lift the heavy timber to its place; and it required a great deal of strength to bring the ropes around the fore and jury-mast, so as to bind them securely together. I then [Pg 121] managed to rig a yard to the mast, and, in the course of another day, had quite a respectable sail set. ”

“ Our crow’s nest on our pole-foremast is the highest they can attain to on the St Ebba. The aftermast—or mainmast, I suppose I should call it, as we are schooner rigged—is of hollow iron cut short above the top (this is technical, not a bull) ; this forms the exhaust from the engine. You see only a little vapour, still, it does seem a trifle odd even to see faint smoke coming out of a mast! We will rig up topmasts in the South Seas, and have topsails in fine winds and the Trades, when we do not need the motor, and will then look quite conventional. ”

“ From the deck to the truck of the maintopmast is something over a hundred feet, while the foremast with its topmast is eight or ten feet shorter. I am giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which holds twenty-two men may be appreciated. It is a very little world, a mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a contrivance so small and fragile.
Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail. I overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian, talking about it. ”

“ Yes; it was the very mast to which we had clung! So it seemed to me, and so Oliver thought. If so, what had become of our unfortunate companions? Shortly afterwards another mast was seen. A human form was entangled in the rigging. We eagerly looked down on it as we passed. The dark skin showed that it was the body of one of the Lascars. The mast was undoubtedly the foremast to which they had clung. A light boat was launched from the deck of the prow, and three hands went into it to the mast. ”

“ If the aftermost mast is not square-rigged, the order is foremast, main, mizzen and jigger. In some four-masters the masts are named fore, first-main, second-main and mizzen.
Should the vessel be three-masted, and have yards only on the two front masts, she is a "bark;" and, by-the-way, the spanker of a bark is her "mizzen." Should she have yards only, as the foremast, she is a "barkentine;" should she be a two-master, and have yards on both, she is a "brig;" should she have yards on the foremast only, she is a "brigantine." ”

“ Presently back it came to the mast, and darted out to the lee yardarm. It had not yet finished its journey. Once more gliding back, it ascended the mast, when it made its way by the main-topmast stay, on to the foremast and there went gliding backwards and forwards along the yard.
“I wish it would come down on deck, and then we might have a chance of catching it,” said Tom. “I have read somewhere that a man going aloft with a bucket, clapped it over the light, and brought it down a prisoner. It is a sort of gas which is driven about through the air until it finds something to rest on. ”

“ Her length was about thirty meters, and her width somewhere between seven or eight. She was rigged with three masts. Of these, the after two, the mainmast and the mizzen-mast, carried only fore and aft sails, whereas the foremast had two square sails. The ship was originally intended to be manned by a crew of five, besides the captain. There were now fifty of us aboard her. Provision for berthing the crew had been made in a special crew’s cabin in the extreme forward part of the ship. But here there was room for only six men at the most; the rest of my crew had to sleep in the hold. ”

“ The breast-backstays are turned in upon blocks instead of dead-eyes, and set up with a luff purchase. The fore topmast stay sets up on the starboard, and the spring stay on the larboard side of the bowsprit.
All the fore-and-aft stays are now set up on their ends, and should be leathered in their nips, as well as in their eyes.
The main topmast stay goes through a heart or thimble at the foremast-head, or through a hole in the cap, and sets up on deck or in the top; and the mizzen topmast stay sets up at the mainmast-head, above the rigging. ”

“ The ships were rigged much as they were rigged two centuries later. The chief differences were in the rigging of the bowsprit and of the two after masts. Forward the ships had bowsprits, on which each set a spritsail, from a spritsail yard. The foremast was stepped well forward, almost over the spring of the cutwater. Generally, but not always, it was made of a single tree (pine or fir) . If it was what was known as "a made mast," it was built up of two, or three, or four, different trees, judiciously sawn, well seasoned, and then hooped together. ”

“ The “Naval Chronicle” for 1807 contained an account of a full-rigged ship of only thirty-six tons’ burden, which for one hundred and thirty years previous to that date had been cruising about the English coast, and may be doing so yet, for aught I know.
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) . ”

“ M., and all hands, being mostly in their nightclothes, made haste to the forecastle, the water coming in at once. There they remained; the passengers in the forecastle, the crew above it, doing what they could. Every wave lifted the forecastle roof and washed over those within. The first man got ashore at nine; many from nine to noon. At flood-tide, about half past three o'clock, when the ship 184 broke up entirely, they came out of the forecastle, and Margaret sat with her back to the foremast, with her hands on her knees, her husband and child already drowned. ”

“ Upon the windlass, the bulwarks, the fore-mast shrouds, around the head, and out to the bowsprit-end, was a continuous swarm of human forms, so thickly clustered that scarce any part of the vessel could be seen, except the fore-mast, with its spars and rigging towering high above. ”

“ The mainmast, an enormous spar of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part of the pressure when running before the wind, so that on gazing up at its dizzy height one continually wonders why in heavy weather it does not go by the board or pound its way through the bottom of the vessel. ”

“ The mainmast being in the centre of the ship is continually scraped, oiled, and varnished. The iron hoops are painted vermilion, which sets off the color of the spruce wood. It is pleasant42 to look on the manufactured masts which show what human skill can do; for example, a mainmast that can support those immense yards which when lowered to the deck you can scarcely believe are each of them itself less than a mast, for it supports a huge weight of canvas stretched upon it. ”

“ A gale seldom lasts long after he has come. Look at him, he is rather playful to-night.” He was indeed. Sometimes the light would ascend and then descend the masts, then run along the yards, and waiting a little at each yard-arm, would be back again and slip down one of the stays to the fore-mast, and mount up in a second to the fore-topmast head. Sometimes, when the ship rolled very much, the mast-head would leave it floating in the air, but as she rolled back again it would quickly re-attach itself. ”

“ Next day, the mast-steps clear and everything in readiness, we started to get the two topmasts aboard. The maintopmast was over thirty feet in length, the foretopmast nearly thirty, and it was of these that I intended making the shears. It was puzzling work. Fastening one end of a heavy tackle to the windlass, and with the other end fast to the butt of the foretopmast, I began to heave. Maud held the turn on the windlass and coiled down the slack.
We were astonished at the ease with which the spar was lifted. It was an improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous. ”

“ At one time, the intricate net-work of the cordage of the burning ship was traced, as with a pencil of fire, upon the black sky beyond, the many threads of flame twisting, and writhing, like so many serpents that had received their death wounds. The mizzen-mast now went by the board, then the fore-mast, and in a few minutes afterward, the great main-mast tottered, reeled, and fell over the ship’s side into the sea, making a noise like that of the sturdy oak of the forests when it falls by the stroke of the axeman. ”

“ At 6-20, our main-mast fell by the board, the enemy’s mizen-mast falling at the same time; at 6-50, our fore-mast fell, and the enemy’s main-mast almost immediately afterwards. At 7-10, she slackened her fire; but having her fore-mast standing, she succeeded with her fore-sail in getting out of range. During the whole of the action we kept up a heavy and well-directed fire; nor do I know which most to admire, the seamen at the great guns, or the marines with their small-arms, they vying with each other who should most annoy the enemy. ”

“ If the bowsprit is lifted the fore-topmast loses part of its support. In the case of a small vessel, the lifting of a bowsprit would wreck her whole system of rigging in an instant. If fig. 1 is followed from the bow to the mizzenmast, it will be seen that a succession of stays connect the masts with the hull of the ship or with one another. All pull together to resist pressure from in front. Pressure from behind is met by the backstays, which connect the topmasts and topgallant masts with the sides of the vessel. Lateral pressure is met by the shrouds and breast-backstays. ”