Sloop (ship)

“ I can assure you they are able to do you a great deal of harm, and perhaps burn your ship.
W. Suppose that were true, as I am sure it is false; you see we have more ships to carry us off (pointing to the sloop) .
[N.B.—Just at this time we discovered the sloop standing towards us from the east, along the shore, at about the distance of two leagues, which was to our particular satisfaction, she having been missing thirteen days.]
D. We do not value that; if you had ten ships, you dare not come on shore, with all the men you have, in a hostile way; we are too many for you. ”

“ The whole ship's company were indeed surprised at their stay, and the captain of the sloop would fain have had me let him have sailed up the river with the sloop, as far as the channel would serve; which really we found was deep enough. Indeed, as I was unwilling to run any more risks, I could not persuade myself, but that the force I had already sent was sufficient to fight five thousand naked creatures, such as the natives seemed to be, and therefore, I was very unwilling to send. ”

“ One morning while the watch was washing down the decks the lookout at the masthead gave the always welcome “Sail ho!” and upon closer inspection the vessel in sight proved to be a small sloop hugging the shore to the northward and evidently running down the coast on her way to the Rio Grande.
Of course we slipped our anchors at once and made sail in chase; but the wind was light and the sloop was of such light draft that, having a leading wind, she could safely keep almost in to the surf line, where we could not possibly get at her with the ship. ”

“ The sloop-of-war was unable to cripple or follow him.432
Sometimes the very perfection of the privateer led to dangers as great as though perfection were a fault. Captain Shaler of the “Governor Tompkins,” a schooner, companion to the “General Armstrong,” chased three sail Dec. 25, 1812, and on near approach found them to be two ships and a brig. The larger ship had the appearance of a government transport; she had boarding-nettings almost up to her tops, but her ports appeared to be painted, and she seemed prepared for running away as she fought. ”

“ At the head was Captain Alexander Farrington, under whose directions several ships had been fitted out at Scapa with great ingenuity and success. Every class of ship was brought into the service: steam cargo vessels, trawlers, drifters, sailing ships, ketches, and sloops specially designed to have the appearance of cargo ships. These latter vessels were known as "convoy sloops" to distinguish them from the ordinary sloop. Their design, which was very clever, had been prepared in 1916 by Sir Eustace T. D'Eyncourt, the Director of Naval Construction. ”

“ I will venture roundly to affirm that the smallest station sloop in his Majesty's service is every year more expensive than such a ship, where every rope, every sail, every rope-yarn even is obliged to do its duty most thoroughly before it can be dismissed. ”

“ Here we find a similarity between the sloop and cutter; as a cutter may also be a ship's boat or a powerful sea-going vessel.
Another class of sloop was length over all 42 feet; breadth, 9 feet; keel, or sole, 7 feet wide; stem, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 61⁄2 feet 6 inches rake; stern-post, 7 feet high and 2 feet rake. These sloops were rigged with two masts: mainmast, 24 feet long; gaff, 12 feet 6 inches, and main-boom 21 feet long; foremast, 15 feet long; gaff, 10 feet; boom, 11 feet 6 inches long. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When I reached the deck, some of the men were engaged in heaving in the new cable; others were just then called aft by the captain to assist in bearing off a sloop on one quarter and a schooner on the other, and in disengaging the rigging which had caught in the spars. The sloop had the appearance of a wreck. The laniards of the shrouds had been cut away on both sides, and the tall and tapering mast was quivering and bending like a whipstock, from the action of the wind and the waves. ”

“ They mann’d the Sloop, and sent her in Quest of one or both of these Ships to the Western Islands aforesaid, whilst they carreen’d their Ship Rose, at one of the Cape de Verds: But now Fortune that had hitherto been so propitious to them, left her Minions, and baffled for the present all their Hopes, for the Sloop missing of their Prey, was reduced to great Necessities for want of Provisions and Water, so that they ventured to go ashore at St. ”

“ Square-sail, studding-sails, ring-tail and water-sails were all set and full; every place an inch of canvas could be put there was one, and the schooner rushed through the water like a mad creature, heaving high the waves, until they ran over her bows and deck in a perfect cataract. But all would not do! Steadily astern of them came on the sloop-of-war, with her lofty sails piled upon one another, until she looked like a mountain, moving in the schooner’s wake. Every moment she gained upon the slaver. ”

“ Nicholas and I succeeded in chartering the sloop very cheaply; and between laughs, while getting up sail, we agreed that she was even crazier and older than she had been described. She was a big, flat-bottomed, square-sterned craft, sloop-rigged, with a sprung mast, slack rigging, dilapidated sails, and rotten running-gear, clumsy to handle and uncertain in bringing about, and she smelled vilely of coal tar, with which strange stuff she had been smeared from stem to stern and from cabin-roof to centreboard. ”

“ SLOOP. In general parlance is a vessel similar to a cutter; the bowsprit, however, is not running, and the jib is set on a standing stay with hanks. In North America the sloop proper sets only a main-sail and fore-sail, the latter jib-shaped, on a short standing bowsprit, and has no top-mast. The rig is greatly used for yachts there, and is most effective in moderate weather. Sloop in the royal navy is a term depending on the rank of the officer in command. ”

“ Thunder and lightning all this day.
Sunday 5th. Att 5 AM. Shipt a hand Mathias Sallam. Our Mate went a Shoar to fill Water. he Came on board about 8 and Informed us that the two Country Sloops lay att the Hook and only waited for a pilott to bring them up, which hope will prove True, being all Tyred of Staying here. Att 2 PM. Weighd Anchor and Gott nearer in Shoar to Gett out of the Current. Rainy Squally Windy Weather. here Lyes a Brigt. bound to Newfoundland, a Ship to Jamaica and a Sloop which att 6 PM. weigh'd Anchor bound to Barbadoes, Loaded with Lumber and horses.391 Opened a bb. ”

“ Their craft, with too much sail on, broached to on the crest of a great wave. This one great sea changed the aspect of affairs suddenly as the flash of a gun. Three minutes later the same wave overtook the Spray and shook her in every timber. At the same moment the sheet-strop parted, and away went the main-boom, broken short at the rigging. Impulsively I sprang to the jib-halyards and down-haul, and instantly downed the jib. The head-sail being off, and the helm put hard down, the sloop came in the wind with a bound. ”

“ Now, you can’t get up and do a grand march along the deck of a driving sloop. It’s against all human nature and boat nature. You’ve got to sit tight, and mind the sloop, and follow her moods, and get ahead of them too. A sloop has got more moods than any boat I know of. A yawl is sort of divided in her ways, like a widow after her second husband. She’s got one before, and one behind, so to speak, and it steadies her a bit, but a sloop’s sails act in close sympathy, and when one of them starts acting kittenish, the rest follow suit. ”

“ The subtle varieties of curve in the drawing of the sails of the near sloop are altogether exquisite; as well as the contrast of her black and glistering side with those sails, and with the sea. Examine the wayward and delicate play of the dancing waves along her flank, and between her and the brig in ballast, plunging slowly before the wind; I have not often seen anything so perfect in fancy, or in execution of engraving.
The heaving and black buoy in the near sea is one of Turner's "echoes," repeating, with slight change, the head of the sloop with its flash of luster. ”

“ As for the men themselves, they were in the highest of spirits, and worked away hauling at cables and hoisting sail to such an extent that when the night wind came sweeping along the lower reaches of the river, the sloop careened over till it seemed as if she would dip her canvas in the swiftly flowing tide, but recovered almost to float upon an even keel. ”

“ The "bones" of a wreck tossed up lay bleaching on the shore abreast. The wind still freshening, I settled the throat of the mainsail to ease the sloop's helm, for I could hardly hold her before it with the whole mainsail set. A schooner ahead of me lowered all sail and ran into port under bare poles, the wind being fair. As the Spray brushed by the stranger, I saw that some of his sails were gone, and much broken canvas hung in his rigging, from the effects of a squall. ”

“ Passing the sandbaggers, the next popular and most universally used yacht is the ballasted sloop. A sloop may be a center-board boat, or a keel boat, or a combination of both. She has only one mast and carries a topmast. Her sails are many, and, like the cutter, she is permitted to carry clouds of canvas in a race. Technically speaking, a cutter differs from a sloop only in one point, as the terms “sloop” and “cutter” really apply to the rig of the yacht. The cutter has a sail set from her stem to her masthead; the sloop has not. ”

“ It is necessary to shorten sail at once. The yawl simply lowers her mainsail and, holding way under mizzen and jib, forereaches along, while the crew, having secured the boom, proceed to tie in the reefs. The sloop is in such a situation that she cannot run off; she must either anchor, lower everything and drift, or else jolly along with head sheets flowed and the peak of the mainsail up. ”

“ HOY. A call to a man. Also, a small vessel, usually rigged as a sloop, and employed in carrying passengers and goods, particularly in short distances on the sea-coast; it acquired its name from stopping when called to from the shore, to take up goods or passengers. In Holland the hoy has two masts, in England but one, where the main-sail is sometimes extended [395] by a boom, and sometimes without it. In the naval service there are gun-hoy, powder-hoy, provision-hoy, anchor-hoy, all rigged sloop-fashion. ”

“ The wave and squall that carried away my boom dismasted the felucca outright. I perceived his thieving crew, some dozen or more of them, struggling to recover their rigging from the sea. Allah blacken their faces!
I sailed comfortably on under the jib and forestaysail, which I now set. I fished the boom and furled the sail snug for the night; then hauled the sloop's head two points offshore to allow for the set of current and heavy rollers toward the land. This gave me the wind three points on the starboard quarter and a steady pull in the headsails. ”

“ Hail and sleet in the fierce squalls cut my flesh till the blood trickled over my face; but what of that? It was daylight, and the sloop was in the midst of the Milky Way of the sea, which is northwest of Cape Horn, and it was the white breakers of a huge sea over sunken rocks which had threatened to engulf her through the night. ”

“ In front of the fore-mast are the staysail, the jib, and the flying-jib; these last are triangular sails. If a schooner were cut in two in the middle, cross-wise, the front portion would be in all respects a sloop with a square top-sail; the stern part would also be a sloop, minus the bowsprit and the triangular sails before the mast. Schooners sometimes carry a large square-sail, which is spread when the wind is “dead aft.” They are much used in the coasting-trade; and one of their great advantages is that they can be worked with fewer “hands” than sloops of the same size. ”

“ Every thread of canvas was spread, and for forty hours the frigate and the sloop stretched away across the stormy sea with every sail as round and firm as the breast of a giant runner; with the weather60 rigging singing taut; with every man on deck alert, and with each captain pacing to and fro without rest, looking at every turn from the sea to the clouds and from them to his sails and then away to the enemy ”

“ The sloop was not half-a-score fathoms from the outermost point, over which the sea boiled white. She sank heavily into a deep foaming trough of sea, and her sail flapped in the lull. Up again, as though cast by a sling! She leaped at the next surge—a blast which made me stagger back on the rocks—almost tearing the mast out of her, and lifting her, as it were, bodily over the furiously ridging and tumbling water. ”

“ The sloop ran down her jib topsail, and as the iron hanks screamed along the stay a negro trotted nimbly out along the flat bowsprit top to secure the sail in its gaskets. The wind was dropping with the sun, and because the current raced manfully down the bight where the stranded steamer was lying, the sloop made but a fathom or so to the good by every board across the river. The one-eyed man danced a barefoot tattoo of fury on [200] the floorboards of the cockpit at this slowness; and his loose-limbed partner, who still sprawled on the cabin-roof, chuckled with easy amusement. ”