Gaff topsail

“ The gaff-topsail (3) is set by hauling out the after-leach and foot to the end of the main-gaff, which part of the gaff is called the peak, by means of a rope, which is named the gaff topsail-sheet, which reefs through a sheave in the gaff end, and hence under the gaff to the throat, and thence through a block to the deck. The other clew, formed by the luff and foot, is stretched by means of a rope leading to the deck, called the tack; and the sail is hoisted by means of halliards, that reeve through a block fastened at the topmast head, and thence leading to the deck. ”

“ The setting of the sail was a decided success; and with less system, the whole affair might easily have been snarled up, as it often is.
The anchor was weighed, the jib was hoisted, and the Goldwing remained just where she had been at her moorings. There was no wind at all in the lower regions; but the gaff-topsail soon filled, and the boat began to move, though it could hardly be seen. Then Dory ordered the crew to set the jib-topsail. This sail was fitted with snap-hanks, by which it could be set upon the main-topmast-stay. ”

“ Ramsay did not intend that it should be necessary to reef when it blew a twelve-knot breeze, and, like the Skylark, she was expected to carry all sail in anything short of a full gale. But she was provided with an abundance of "kites," including an immense gaff-topsail, which extended on poles far above the topmast head, and far beyond the peak, a balloon-jib, a jib-topsail, and a three-cornered studding-sail. ”

“ Either clincher or carvel-built, no jib-stay, the jib hoisting and hanging by the halliards alone. She carries a fore-and-aft main-sail, gaff-topsail, stay-foresail, and jib. The name is derived from their fast sailing. The cutter (as H.M.S. Dwarf) has been made to set every sail, even royal studding-sails, sky-scrapers, moon-rakers, star-gazers, water and below-water sails, that could be set by any vessel on one mast. One of the largest which has answered effectually, was the Viper, of 460 tons and 28 guns ”

“ The vessel continued in pursuit, changing her course as we changed ours, to keep before the wind. The captain, who watched her with his glass, said that she was armed, and full of men, and showed no colors. We continued running dead before the wind, knowing that we sailed better so, and that clippers are fastest on the wind. We had also another advantage. The wind was light, and we spread more canvas than she did, having royals and sky-sails fore and aft, and ten studding sails, while she, being an hermaphrodite brig, had only a gaff-topsail aft. ”

“ But on the fore we have the head-sails. The extreme outer one we cannot see; it comes down from the fore-royal and ends half-way down, being a mere "kite;" it is called the "jib topsail." The outer one we can see is the "flying-jib," on the flying-jibboom. Then come the "outer jib" and the "inner jib" and the "foretopmast staysail."
The "trysails" are gaff or jib-headed sails sometimes carried on the fore and main, as the spanker is carried on the mizzen. ”

“ Our main difficulty was that the dream ship was too heavily sparred. The boom was the size of an average mast for a vessel of her tonnage, and the gaff little smaller in proportion.
Next time, we shall have smaller spars, and a top-mast instead of a pole mast. Aboard the dream ship our topsail yard was twenty-three feet long, and many were the anxious moments in lowering it when taking in the topsail during a squall. The topmast does away with any necessity for a yard, and can be lowered to the deck in foul weather, thus also eliminating considerable top-hamper. ”

“ The Lily is to be provided with gaff-topsails, not so much to increase the amount of canvas, as because, among the hills that surround the lake in places, there is often a breeze aloft, when there is none, or next to none, below. These sails are triangular in form, and are usually bent on a pole to which the halyards are attached. Sometimes the sail is shaped like the mainsail, and then the pole becomes a sort of yard. Besides the halyard by which the pole is hoisted, there are two other ropes by which the sail is worked from the deck. ”

“ He was willing for adventure.
"Bill an' me'll take the rodney," Topsail drawled. "I s'pose you might's well fetch the punt, an' we'll send you back with the first haul."
"Hooray!" cried Billy; and with that he waved his cap and sped back up the hill.
"Fetch your gaff, lad!" Topsail called after him. "Make haste! There's Joshua Rideout with his sail up. 'Tis time we was off."
"Looks more'n ever like snow," Bill Watt observed, [71] while they waited. "I'm thinkin' 'twill snow."
"Oh, maybe 'twon't," said Topsail, optimistic in a lazy way.
The ice-floe was two miles or more off the coast ”

“ If it is too high, it gives the wind a very dangerous degree of leverage. If it is too low, it violently strains the whole vessel by being completely blanketed when in the trough of the sea and then suddenly struck full when on the crest. The main lower topsail is at just the proper height. But only the fore and mizzen ones are wanted to balance the pressure aloft. So in it has to come. And a dangerous bit of work it gives; for it has to be hauled up from right amidships, where the deck is wetter than a {125} half-tide rock. The yellow-oilskinned crew tail on and heave. ”

“ One learns more widely and more thoroughly by reefing topsails when it has to be done, than by doing it at a routine hour, without the accompaniments of the wind, the wet, and the lurching, which give the operation a tone and a tonic—the real thing, in short. Doubtless we may wait too long, like Micawber, even for a reef-topsail gale to turn up, though the ocean can usually be trusted to be nasty often enough; but, on the other hand, one over sedulously bent on making opportunity is apt to be too preoccupied to see that which makes itself. Truth, doubtless, lies between the extremes. ”

“ Archie shouted, when the anchor was down and all sail stowed. “Let’s put these dodgers where they’ll do most good.”
The handbills were faithfully distributed before the punts of Coachman’s came in from the fishing grounds; and that night, to an audience that floated in punts in the quiet water, just beyond the schooner’s stern, and by the light of four torches, Topsail, Armstrong, Grimm & Company presented their first entertainment in pursuit of business, the performers operating upon a small square stage which Bill o’ Burnt Bay had rigged on the house of the cabin. ”

“ I am very certain no good action ever goes unrewarded in one way or another, though, perhaps, through our blindness, we do not always find it out.
A few days after this a terrific gale sprung up. All hands were roused up in the middle watch to reef topsails. We Englishmen, hearing the cry and roar of the tempest which had suddenly struck the ship, sprang on deck. The crew were aloft in vain struggling with the bulging topsails. At that moment the fore-topsail, with a report like thunder, blew out of the bolt-ropes, carrying with it two men off the lee yard-arm. ”

“ Clouds look black and wild; wind rising, and ship working hard against a heavy head sea, which breaks over the forecastle, and washes aft through the scuppers. Still, no more sail is taken in, for the captain is a driver, and, like all drivers, very partial to his top-gallant-sails. A top-gallant-sail, too, makes the difference between a breeze and a gale. When a top-gallant-sail is on a ship, it is only a breeze, though I have seen ours set over a reefed topsail, when half the bowsprit was under water, and it was up to a man's knees in the lee scuppers. ”

“ Our ship was fitted with patent reefing topsails, but as most good things have drawbacks to them this particular main topsail had developed a habit of carrying its halliards away, and their replacement usually caused some little trouble. For one thing, it was an “all hands job,” and with the scanty rest the crew were permitted, this did not tend to increase the smoothness of current matters either for officers or men. ”

“ In one yacht he kept two mainsails in use for cruising and racing, and thus preserved the racing mainsail in good condition for a considerably longer period than would otherwise have been the case, and with the fittings just named the shift of sails was a small matter.
Topsails, perhaps, are the sails which require renewing more frequently than any other, as they get out of shape so quickly if very much is demanded from them. For a small yacht, if she carries a topmast, three topsails are a sufficient outfit. They should be a jibheader, a gaff, and a balloon or jackyarder. ”

“ Double gaskets were passed round the yards, rolling tackles and other gear bowsed taught, and everything made as secure as could be. Coming down, we found the rest of the crew just coming down the fore rigging, having furled the tattered topsail, or, rather, swathed it round the yard, which looked like a broken limb, bandaged. There was no sail now on the ship but the spanker and the close-reefed main topsail, which still held good. ”

“ All square-rigged vessels carry fore and aft sails, three cornered, stretched between the bowsprit and jib-booms, and the fore topmast. These sails are called jibs.
Fore and aft vessels also carry jibs; but on each upright mast they have one great sail, the size of which makes it less easily handled in an emergency, therefore less fit for fighting. Above the big sail they have a small, light, three-cornered topsail, but this is merely a fair weather sail, useless in battle. ”

“ I’d say,” he added, “t’ put back t’ Conch.”
“It’s going to blow, Skipper Bill.”
It had already begun to blow. The wind was moaning aloft. The long-drawn melancholy penetrated to the cozy cabin. In the shelter of the cliff though she was, the schooner tossed in the spent seas that came swishing in from the open.
“Well,” the skipper drawled, “I guess the wind won’t take the hair off a body; an’ I ’low we can make Conch afore the worst of it.”
“I’m with the skipper,” said Billy Topsail.
“Me, too,” said Jimmie Grimm.
Bagg had nothing to say; he seldom had, poor fellow! in a gale of wind. ”

“ Here, you, Dickson, call the watch t' make sail. Mr. Girth," to the [268] second mate, "take a crew t' the ice. Blast that pan in three places. Lively, now, every man o' you!"
Roaring subordinates, answering "Ay, ay, sirs!" rattling blocks and chains, the fall of hurried feet, cries of warning and encouragement, the engine's gasps: these sounds confounded the confusion, and continued it, while the ship, snorting like a frightened horse, was backed to her first position.
"He'll try it again," Archie gleefully observed to Billy.
The captain was pacing the bridge. Try it again? ”

“ They are up in a moment, scarcely waiting to pull on their jackets, for the instant they are awake they perceive that the vessel is on her beam ends, and they can hear the thunder of{22} a gale of wind raging overhead. All three topsail halliards have been let go, and the watch are yelling out at the reef-tackles, the skipper shouting at the mizzen-rigging, the chief mate bawling from the break of the poop, and the second mate and boatswain roaring in the waist and on the forecastle. ”

“ They ran in––full into the lee of her––and rounded to under the stern. The sails of the skiff flapped noisily and the water slapped her sides. They rested breathless––waiting an event which might warn them to be off into hiding in the fog. But no disquieting sound came from the schooner––no startled exclamation, no hail, no footfall: nothing but the creaking of the anchor chain and the rattle of the blocks aloft. ”

“ It shows fairly accurately the proportion also to which the sides of the hull just above the water-line projected as compared with the narrow beam on deck. Whereas we saw in the illustration of the bucco in Fig. 35 a fighting-top of slender basket-work, we have now a much more solid structure. No topsails are shown here, but Columbus’s ship carried a main-topsail. Mr. Mason’s model shows a fore-topsail which was certainly carried on ships of this time, though not on the Santa Maria. The [182] Whitehall model should not carry the heavy figurehead, and a bowsprit should of course be shown. ”

“ You cannot ever disguise the appearance of such a sailing ship altogether, no matter what name you give her, nor what colour you paint her hull. A three-masted topsail schooner is that and nothing else, and would henceforth be regarded with the utmost suspicion. Then, on comparing her with the sketch and examining her with the eye of seamanlike experience, no astute submarine officer could have had much doubt in his mind. ”

“ Rigging all let go, and washing about decks; topsail yards down upon the caps, and sails flapping and beating against the masts; and starboard watch hauling out the reef-tackles of the main topsail. Our watch haul out the fore, and lay aloft and put two reefs into it, and reef the foresail, and race with the starboard watch to see which will mast-head its topsail first. All hands tally-on to the main tack, and while some are furling the jib and hoisting the staysail, we mizzen-top-men double-reef the mizzen topsail and hoist it up. ”

“ Skipper Bill 100 shouted, lifting his voice above the wind. “We’ll reef the fores’l!”
The crew had been intent upon the task in hand. Not a man had yet smelled smoke. And they continued to wrestle with the obstinate sail, each wishing, heartily enough, to get the dirty-weather job well done, and to return to the comfort of the forecastle. It was the cook who first paused to sniff––to sniff again––and to fancy he smelled smoke. But a gust of wind at that moment bellied his fold of the sail, and he forgot the dawning suspicion in an immediate tussle to reduce the disordered canvas. ”