Conference unifix::sailing

    
    Good question -- here's a guess or two...
    
    Did they tack at all?  Seems to me I've read somewhere that the old
    square riggers had no ability to sail into the wind, only to follow it
    more or less.
    
    For example, if the wind is out of the west, then they could sail in
    any direction from north through east to south, but could not sail
    westward.  If they wanted to go west, they had to sail north or south
    until they found an east wind.
    
    Made it a bear if you fell overboard, 'cause they couldn't come back
    to pick you up.  Just waved goodbye, I guess.
    
    What sail angle adjustments there were, I believe were done by
    loosening and tightening lines that ran from the ends of the horizontal
    spars down to the deck.  Loosen one side and take up on the other to
    change the angle of a sail.
    
    They climbed the rigging for the purpose of furling and unfurling sail
    or replacing damaged ones.
    
    Dick
    

    Tacking was done by "wearing about".  Spelling might not be right. 
    Anyway, it is basically falling off, jibing, and coming back as hard on
    the wind as they could sail.  
    
    Dave

    Don't take the following as gospel.  It's from a vague recollection of
    a diagram from a kid's book on clipper ships.
    
    Square riggers do sail to weather although not too closely.  Tacking
    through 90 degrees would be remarkable and over 100 was probably more
    the norm.  Leeway is also more pronounced.  Sorta like tight reaching
    with a chute.
    
    The relevant control for tacking (or gybing) are the braces - lines
    running from the ends of the yardarms down to the deck.  One one each
    side for each yardarm.  For a clipper with up to eight yardarms per
    mast, that's a lot of braces.  Thier purpose is to orient the yardarm. 
    The modern day counterpart are the spinnaker sheet and guy.  The
    Freedom gunmount spinnaker uses braces its centrally mounted pole.
    
    Assume the ship is on port tack.  Stbd braces are trimmed, port ones
    eased.  The yards are as parallel to the ship's center line as
    possible.  To begin the tack, the helmsman heads up, jibs cast off to
    allow the bow to spin up.  As the yards pass the eye of the wind they
    luff.  As the bow come up more, all sails backwind.
    
    Assume three masts.  Mizzen yards are squared to swing the stern down. 
    Main and foremast yards are not touched.  Main and foremast sails
    remain backed to swing bow past eye of the wind.  Jibs trimmed on new
    tack.  Mizzen yards trimmed on stbd tack by trimming port braces and
    easing stbd ones.  Finnally, main and foremast trimmed to new tack in
    the same way.
    
    Needless to say, much speed was lost in a tack.  In fact, ships could
    go backwards while tacking.  But it didn't matter.  The ability to
    independently back the sails on different masts meant that square
    riggers could spin within their own length.  Think of tacking as a
    three point turn in a car.
    
    If it was real windy, square riggers could also "wear" ship.  Gibe in a
    full circle instead of tacking.  But that took longer and used up more
    sea room in the wrong direction.
    
    Trimming all those braces took a lot of hands.  In the latter days of
    sail, multi-drum winches driven off a common shaft were invented.  All
    the braces for a given mast were lead to such a winch.  The port ones
    were wound around their drums in the opposite direction from the stbd
    ones.  This allowed one side to be eased while the opposite side was
    simultaneously taken in.  In theory one strong person could do all the
    sail trim since each mast's sails were adjusted sequentially.
    
    The opposite idea is used on maxi boat winches - multiple drive shafts
    lead to a common drum.
    
    With all the lines available, much of the sail handling, including
    furling, could be done from the deck.  The only thing they had to climb
    the rigging for was the final "gasketing" of the partially furled sail
    on to the yardarm.  
    
    Maybe sailing the Constitution wouldn't take that many bodies after
    all.
    
    - gene

    The winch that Gene refers to are called Jarvis winches.
    
     I have a book by Alan Villiers called "The Way of a Ship" he goes
    through all these maneuvers for square riggers. I'll put something in
    this weekend.
    
     Square riggers did tack. but wearing ship was sometimes easier.
    
     Gregg

Square riggers can either tack or gybe. Both take quite a long time -- 
perhaps half an hour -- and quite a bit of sea room. I rather doubt a 
large square rigger could turn in its own length. The windage of the 
masts and rigging is tremendous, and in any breeze the ship would drift 
quite a ways. The danger in tacking is getting the bow into the wind and 
losing steerage way (getting into irons). The ship is then more or less 
out of control with all the sails back winded. The standing rigging on a 
square rigger does not support the masts with the wind much forward of 
the beam, and with all the sails set and backwinded, there is a high 
probability of the masts coming down. Tacking at even a slow speed, say 
a couple of knots, would still require a mile of room. Square riggers 
are essentially incapable of sailing to windward. Many a ship was lost 
when embayed, this is, caught in a bay with the wind blowing directly 
into the bay. With no room to tack or gybe and no windward sailing 
ability, the ship had to depend on its ground tackle. If that failed, 
the ship was blown ashore and wrecked. Sailing a square rigger was 
mighty dangerous and unpleasant. Sterling Hayden's novel VOYAGE is 
supposedly a good fictional account of taking an iron barque around the 
horn. THE LAST GRAIN RACE (I don't recall the author -- the book is 
available in paperback) is an account of taking a square rigger from 
Ireland to Australia and back just before World War II. Lots of 
technical details on sailing square riggers. Leaving Ireland the captain 
intended to leave the Irish Sea by heading south. After some days of 
head winds he gave up and rounded the northern end of Ireland and headed 
into the Atlantic. Because sailing ships heel, cargo stowage to prevent 
shifting was quite an art and also essential to survival. The art has 
been rather lost apparently. 

    re. backing square sails.  
    
    I recall from the picture that during a tack all the sails on a square
    rigger are backed, but not in the same orientation.  My understanding
    of the procedure is that it's the backing on the foremast's sails that's
    essential to a ship's ability to tack at all.  They were backed in the
    same way a jib is backed to swing the bow around.  The yards were
    oriented such as to resemble a jib-boom being held to weather.  In this
    position, the foremast's sails would be backed before the bow passed
    the eye of the wind.
    
    The mizzen mast's yards were held perpendicular to the center line with
    sails backed - the object being to blow the stern straight downwind.
    
    The momentum of the boat didn't seem to have that much to do with it
    except to get the process started.  
    
    Because of the inability of the rig to sustain much backwind pressure
    wearing ship was done in a stiff breeze.  Ironically, the other time
    wearing ship was done was when there was too little breeze.  Then there
    wasn't enough wind pressure to back the bow around.
    
    I've seen some amazing diagrams of maneuvers that can be done by
    backing some sails while filling others.  They seem to have spent a lot
    time sailing backwards or sideways.  I guess that's were the term back
    and fill came from.
    
    - gene
    
    

>>>    Square riggers do sail to weather although not too closely.  

75-85 degrees off the wind was pretty good in those days.  Clipper ships 
with new sails were the most weatherly.  

Gene's account of tacking is excellent.  While making way, the rudder 
could initiate the turn, but once into the wind it took pressure on the 
sails to complete the maneuver.  

Tacking was usually attempted in only moderate conditions.  Heavier winds 
(not to mention pitching in the accompanying seas) could easily overstress
a rig designed for mostly abaft-the-beam loads, as Alan points out. 

Also, wearing ship was preferable mostly because it took only a few hands 
to manage the task, as sails remained full all the time, and could be 
adjusted over a longer period without impacting completion of the new tack 
as much.  Smartly tacked, however, a capable ship would lose less distance 
to leeward than wearing ship.

>>>  ...eight yards [on a mast]

That seems one or two more than I can account for from memory.  The 
largest and tallest rigs had on the Mainmast (from memory: the neck goes
out here:) 

                               ____|____
                              / moons'l \
                             /___________\
                              _____|_____
                             /  skysail  \
                            /_____________\
                             ______|______
                            /upper m.t'gal\
                           /_______________\
                            _______|_______
                           / lower m.t'gal \
                          /_________________\
                           ________|________
                          / upper m. topsail \
                         /___________________\
                          _________|_________
                         /  lower m. topsail  \
                        /_____________________\
                         __________|__________
                        /      main sail      \
                       /_______________________\
                                   |

Moonsails were rare, making up to six the usual maximum number of sails 
and therefore yards on a single mast.  Of course, complications were 
available through stuns'ls and stuns'l booms P & S....

Ain't sailing trivia fun?

J.

BTW, Sea History Magazine a year or so ago carried an article on tacking 
and wearing ship aboard a modern replica sail-training brigantine.  The 
article presented the simplest case of only two masts, and extrapolated 
to suppose similar and particular problems with three or more masts.

>>>  BTW, Sea History Magazine a year or so ago carried an article on tacking 
>>>  and wearing ship aboard a modern replica sail-training brigantine.  The 
>>>  article presented the simplest case of only two masts, and extrapolated 
>>>  to suppose similar and particular problems with three or more masts.

Make that "brig", not brigantine.  ;-)

J.

    John,
     Your "moons'l" - wasn't that also a royal?
    
    Gregg

    Re .5, The Last Grain Race was written by Eric Newby, who has also
    written lots of other travel books.
    
    Chris
    

	If you want a detailed account of the commands issued and lines used,try
the book Eagle Seamanship published by The Naval Institute Press.  This includes
(as I recall) the commands from the quarterdeck, the commands for the individual
masts captains, and the acutal control lines used for all of the sailing
evolutions.  I can't recall any of them now from memory, but most of the prior
notes seem pretty close.  Tacking was typically an 'All Hands' evolution, while
wearing ship would sometimes be done with the watch on deck (30-50?)...  The
large numbers were a result of lots of warm bodies being avilable.  It is
possible to wear ship with 7-9 (we tried it once using just the ready boat crew)
but it takes a looooong time, and you douse the royals and topgallants first.


I'll try to dig out my copy and post an author and maybe a more detailed
description.


				Steve

One of the last square riggers to round Cape Horn had a very small crew. 
I don't recall the number, but I think it was a dozen or less. Seems
incredible. Small crews do not make fast passages.

    The Cutty Sark sailed with crew of about 15.  Given the captain, a
    couple of mates, a cook and 3 or 4 "boys" that certainly leaves very
    few able bodied seamen to tack or wear the ship.
    
    However at the time of the clippers there were a lot of aids in the
    harbours to help the ships - steamtugs, bouys and posts along which to
    warp the ship etc.