Mast (ship)

“ In hauling down our fore-stay sail it split; and as I looked aft from the forecastle, I saw the main and mizen masts had gone, though I never heard them go. By this time the ship righted much, and in about seven minutes the fore mast went by the board, but the bowsprit held fast. Our pumps were kept continually working. The third lieutenant being on the quarter-deck, sent forward to me to clear and let go the small bower anchor, which was immediately done. We found the ship drove to shore very fast. ”

“ The ship is lying over half upon her beam-ends; lee scuppers under water, and forecastle all in a smother of foam.—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 reff-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. ”

“ When she sails from port, her rigging is generally slack; the masts need staying; the decks and sides are black and dirty from taking in cargo; riggers' seizings and overhand knots in place of nice seamanlike work; and everything, to a sailor's eye, adrift. But on the passage home the fine weather between the tropics is spent in putting the ship in the neatest order. No merchant vessel looks better than an Indiaman, or a Cape Horn-er, after a long voyage, and captains and mates stake their reputation for seamanship upon the appearance of their ships when they haul into the dock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The carpenter seizes the hatchet, a few heavy blows, and a great notch gapes in the mast, they cut the weather shrouds, and after the ship has given two or three heavy rolls, the mast goes over with a loud crash, falling well over the side clear of the vessel; one man receives a nasty gash in the cheek, from a splinter from the falling mast, but is not much hurt. They cut the rigging of the mast from the vessel, and the mast is speedily carried astern by the tide. ”

“ A stock of masts was kept at each dockyard in a vat of pickle known as a mast-pond. For great ships, and indeed for nearly all the rates in the navy, the lower masts were “built,” or “made,” of two or more pieces of fir strongly hooped together with iron hoops. When a ship came alongside a sheer-hulk her lower masts and bowsprit were hoisted into her and stepped. The fore-mast was stepped at a distance of one-ninth the length of the lower gun-deck from the stem of the ship. The main-mast was stepped in the centre of the ship, or a little abaft the centre. ”

“ Though not literally perched on the high and giddy mast, he is pretty nearly as soundly rocked; for, after being bagged up in a hammock, and hoisted close to the beams, in the cable tier, with only a foot and a half of space above, and not half a foot below him, he is banged, at every roll, against the stanchions, or driven [Pg 67] by the motion of the ship against the deck overhead. ”

“ The exact height of the masts, in proportion to the form and size of the ship, remains yet a problem to be determined. The more the masts are elevated above the centre of gravity, the greater will be the surface of sail, which they are enabled to present to the wind; so far an additional height seems to be advantageous. But this advantage is diminished by the circular movement of the mast, which operates to make the vessel stoop to its effort; and this inclination is increased, in proportion to the additional height of the mast; an inconvenience which it is necessary to guard against. ”

“ I replied. "I'll go aloft with a hand-saw and wound the mast. What do you think? Shall we let it carry away?"
"Yes," he replied promptly. "She'll be another ship with them masts out of her. If it comes on fine we'll make shift to bend59 on the new foresail, and get a jib on her by a stay from the lower mast-head to the bowsprit end. Then," he continued, calculating on his fingers, "we shall have the main-topmast stays'l, mizzen-topmast stays'l, main-topsail, mains'l, mizzen, mizzen-tops'l,—six and two makes height—height sails on her—a bloomin' show o' canvas!" ”

“ The masts and yards of this great ship are also of hollow wrought iron plates rivetted together, and are both stronger and lighter than they would be of wood. A machine is placed at the lower part of each mast which by compressing, can crush it up, and cause it to break off and fall over the side of the vessel in case such a thing should be required, as in a very violent storm; and the standing rigging, which is of wire-rope, can be let loose in a few minutes so as to completely free the ship of the mast. This great ship is constructed to be propelled both by screw and paddles ”

“ This may give a landsman some notion of what is done on board ship.—All the first part of a passage is spent in getting a ship ready for sea, and the last part in getting her ready for port. She is, as sailors say, like a lady's watch, always out of repair. The new, strong sails, which we had up off Cape Horn, were to be sent down, and the old set, which were still serviceable in fine weather, to be bent in their place; all the rigging to be set up, fore and aft; the masts stayed; the standing rigging to be tarred down; lower and topmast rigging rattled down, fore and aft ”

“ The state in which the ship happens to be at the time she is commissioned, must decide, as I said before, the course to be followed in her equipment. If she be already masted and alongside the hulk, and the ballast in, the officer will most likely wish to make some show in the way of rigging—for as yet the masts are naked to the girt-lines, or single ropes rove through blocks at the mast-head, by which first the men and then the shrouds are drawn up, and the eyes of the rigging placed over the mast-heads. ”

“ MAST (1) (O. Eng. maest; a common Teutonic word, cognate with Lat. malus; from the medieval latinized form mastus comes Fr. mât) , in nautical language, the name of the spar, or straight piece of timber, or combination of spars, on which are hung the yards and sails of a vessel of any size. It has been ingeniously supposed that man himself was the first mast. He discovered by standing up in his prehistoric “dugout,” or canoe, that the wind blowing on him would carry his craft along. But the origin of the mast, like that of the ship, is lost in times anterior to all record. ”

“ 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 Bilander is particularly distinguished from other vessels of two masts by the form of her main-sail, which is a sort of trapezia, the yard thereof being hung obliquely on the mast in the plane of the ship’s length, and the aftmost or hinder end peeked or raised up to an angle of about 45 degrees, and hanging immediately over the stern; while the fore end slopes downward, and comes as far forward as the middle of the ship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our bit of a windlass and the mast breaks the force of it before it reaches the skylight. And that idee of yours in having it rounded at the fore end is a capital one; it turns the water off each side almost like the stem of a ship, besides bein’ stronger than a square-shaped consarn. At the same time, all this water coming in on deck don’t do no good if it don’t do no harm ”

“ Between the tops, too, and the mast-heads, from the fore to the main swifters, and thence to the mizzen rigging, and in all directions athwartships, tricing-lines were run, and strung with hides. The head stays and guys, and the spritsail yard were lined, and, having still more, we got out the swinging-booms, and strung them and the forward and after guys with hides. The rail, fore and aft, the windlass, capstan, the sides of the ship, and every vacant place on deck, were covered with wet hides, on the least sign of an interval for drying. ”

“ If we attempt it, Sir, we shall lose them, for a man aloft can do nothing; besides their being down would ease the ship very little; the mainmast is a sprung mast; I wish it was overboard without carrying any thing else along with it; but that can soon be done, the gale cannot last for ever ”

“ She is huge, but she is not elephantine. Her masts, even at the point where they enter the top mast or spar deck, are nearly three feet in diameter, that is, they are as high and as thick as patriarchal oak; but from a near distance they look slim and tapering. The same may be said of the ship’s boats which are as big as barges. The fact is, that everything about this latest creation of shipping enterprise is proportioned so beautifully that the mere hugeness of it all is only apprehended by remembering [Pg 310] such facts as, that her rudder and stern frame weigh 150 tons ”

“ At present masts are only used by warships for signalling and military purposes. In sailing merchant ships, the masts are more lofty than they were about a century ago. A merchant ship of 1300 tons, in 1830, had a mainmast 179 ft. in height; a vessel of the same size would have a mast of 198 ft. to-day.
A “jury mast” is a temporary mast put up by the crew when the spars have been carried away in a storm or in action, or have been cut away to relieve pressure in a storm. The word has been supposed without any foundation to be short for “injury” mast ”

“ The chief differences which appear in the several “counterfeit presentments” of the historic ship are in the number of her masts and the height of her poop and her forecastle. A few make her a brig or “snow” of the oldest pattern, while others depict her as a full-rigged ship, sometimes having the auxiliary rig of a small “jigger” or “dandy-mast,” with square or lateen sail, on peak of stern, or on the bow sprit, or both, though usually her mizzenmast is set well aft upon the poop. ”

“ AS they all stood looking in the direction where Bart was pointing,—
“I see it,” said Bruce. “It’s certainly the mast, and the mast of a ship, for there is the yard and the rigging; but there’s only one mast.”
“It’s a sloop,” said Phil.
“No,” said Tom; “it’s a square-rigged vessel of some sort.”
“Sure an it ain’t got no more ’n one mast,” said Pat; “an be the same token, there’s no hull at all at all. Be the powers, but it would be a quare thing intirely if it was to turrun out to be another wather-logged ship. An if it is, it’s meself that’ll not set fut aboord of her ”

“ In principle, the gear consists of a tall steel mast, of such a height that when the ship is attached by the nose it rides on an even keel at a height of upwards of one hundred feet. The mast has at the top a platform or deck. The head of the tower is entirely enclosed and contains the necessary apparatus for bringing a vessel to rest. This top portion is designed to rotate, so that a ship, when moored, may always lie directly head to wind. ”

“ Under the general name of spars are included the masts, bowsprit, yards, booms, and gaffs of a ship. It will not be necessary to inform the boys who live near our seaports what masts and yards are; but perhaps some of America's future admirals, who have yet to see their first ship, will be interested in knowing that a mast is a stick perpendicular to the deck, and yards are sticks to which sails are bent, and are at right angles with the masts ”

“ There is but one sail, made of canvas, and very large; and one mast, standing up about midships, but somewhat towards the stern. This mast, which is of the same length as the ship, is wound up by pulleys, and again lowered upon deck when the ship comes to anchor. The anchors are of iron. Ships of this burden have commonly thirty to forty hands to row them, if the wind fails. The rowers’ benches are towards the stern. They row in unison with the air of a song, or tune with words, which serves at the same time to direct and regulate their work, and to encourage each other to exertion. ”

“ As the 15th century advanced the growth of the ship made it difficult, or even impossible, to find spars large enough to make a mast. The practice of dividing it into lower, and upper or topmast, was introduced. At first the two were fastened firmly, and the topmast could not be lowered. In the 16th century the topmast became movable. No date can be given for the change, which was gradual, and was not simultaneously adopted. When the masting of sailing ships was fully developed, the division was into lower or standing mast, topmast, topgallant mast, and topgallant royal. ”