Looking at the rigging diagram of HMS Victory, I do not see any provision in the standing rigging for taking the forward thrust of the spritsail and preventing the sprilsail yard slings from riding up the bow sprit. Could it be that the entire thrust of the spritsail is transmitted through the sheets and braces only?
Not an expert on the Victory, but can’t imagine all the load being carried by just the braces and sheets. Do your plans show any spritsail yard lifts or downhauls running parallel to the bowsprit?
Mark
No, I don’t see anything that is arranged to pull the spritsail yard back towards the ship. There is a fixed spritsail yard halyard that pulls the spritsail yard out towards the cap of the bow sprit. There are fixed and moving spritsail yard lifts, but these act to pull the spritsail yard up. Nothing would seem to pull the yard back against the thrust of the sails.
Chuck…
If you have McKay and McGowans books…They do show how it is done…
Page 110 for McKay…And Page 162 and 167.
If you dont’ let me know and I will scan the drawings.
Jeff
Hi, Jeff
I have these two references, but unfortunately I still don’t see what is restraining the spritsail yard against the foreward thrust of the spritsail. The guys for the jib boom and jib boom traveller are threaded through thimbles on the spritsail yard, so they would not contribute to pulling the spritsail yard.
On page 113 of McKays book…Looking at numbers 10,79,81,82 they all appear to pick up the load of the ‘Spritesail’.
I dont’ think it is a standing rigging thing. I belive that it is ‘Running Rig’ setup.
I cant’ say for sure…other thatn what I see in the books…But…The guy’s at…
http://www.pete-coleman.com/forum/
Will surely know!
Sorry that I cant’ be positive about this Chuck.
Jeff
Well, by the time Victory and the other ships at Trafalgar were fighting, the spritsail (i.e. the square sail slung beneath the bowsprit, not the triangular sail slung from the forestay) was as much vestigial as anything else, as its primary purpose was replaced by various types of jibs. The square spritsail was never really designed for use with the wind from aft, but instead, would be twisted up on one side or the other to take advantage of wind coming from the forward quarter, and this helps balance against either a spanker, or lateen sail slung from the mizzen mast. In other words, the spritsail actually functioned like a fore-and-aft sail! The flexibility and utility of the spritsail was not well known in modern times, until the replica of ‘Mayflower’ sailed across the Atlantic. Capt Alan Villiers was quite surprised at just how useful the spritsail was, especially in sailing to windward! As time went by, and the superior usefulness of jibs were thoroughly recognised, the square spritsail fell out of favor. However, the yard and its sail remained a fixture for quite a long time (because shipwrights and sailors are extremely conservative!!), initially as a ‘fallback’ in case the jibs were so shot up as to be useless, and then as an additional stiffening element to keep the bowsprit from flexing too much from side to side (because of the pressure of the jibs at work). Eventually, the spritsail yard was replaced entirely by whiskers, dolphin-strikers, bobstays and martingales (as in the USS Constitution). If you think of the whole bowsprit assembly as essentially a normal square-rigged mast tilted at an extreme angle, it will all make a lot more sense to you. There are in fact quite powerful central downhauls that keep the spritsail yard from riding up the bowsprit, and of course the braces to the forestay control the angle of the yard itself when the spritsail is actually deployed.
I’m not sure that Victory was ever without a Spritsail yard, photos of her even in the late Victorian period in her round bow configuration show her with one in place.
The Martingales, dolphin Striker, and Bobstays were all features at the time of Trafalgar.
The Spritsail Topsail Yard however was I understand abolished by about 1815.