David Steel's The Art of Rigging: Juxtapositions, analyses and the yet unknown

[dafi]

For the blocks of my Victory I had to work my way through David Steel's The Art of Rigging. Originally, I had oriented myself on McKay's AOTS, but then realized that there was still a lot omitted and there were also some errors.

Steel is much more detailed, but there are some ambiguities as well as differences to other sources. Here are a few that I am working on and wondering about

 

[dafi]

I was most surprised by the stirrups: 3 feet below the yard.



When I held my scale seaman next to it, my suspicions were confirmed: damn deep ...



... I would have instinctively hung it 4 mm higher so that my little Able Seaman had a chance of getting over it.



If you add up the 90 cm, the thickness of the yard is up to 60 cm, as in the case of the main yard. That's 150 cm, just under my chin. Then there is also the depth of the yard to consider, so that in addition to the 90 cm length under the yard, there is also approx. 0.5 x the diameter of the yard. Another escalating factor is that the horse can sag quite a bit in the middle between two stirrups.

To be able to judge this better, I trained two Able Seamen, one for the thickest part of the big yard with a diameter of 60 cm and one for the yardarm with a diameter of 30 cm.

First the variant with 3 feet under the yard. The sailor on the thick yard has very bad cards. The tar jacket on the thin end fits better.



If I refer the 3 feet to the center of the yard, it's better.



If you relate the 90 cm to the upper edge of the yard, it fits best. Here the sailor has the opportunity to use the horses at the thick point, the colleague on the outside still hangs at a similar height.



To confirm this interpretation of Steel's specification I had a closer look from the side.



The red part of the stirrups is about 3 Feet and it looks perfect both for the simply standing on it as for the working in a upswung position.

If one takes the other descriptions the remarks to the simplyfied "3 feet underneath the yard" it would possibly read like this:

Stirrup long 3 Feet, nailed to the top of the yard, with enough overlength to do 3 turns around the yard. Hangs behind and underneath the yard.

XXXDAn

 

[dafi]

Another difference I noticed are the yard tackle blocks and the braces pendants.




Steel mentions that the pendants of the braces of the main yard*** were 1/10 of the length of the yard. In the navy they were sometimes operated without pendants, i.e. the block was lashed directly to the yardarm.

In this matter, one probably has the freedom, as long as no direct references can be found in the logbooks. Are there any hints for that?

It is interesting to note that Steel has replaced many long tackle blocks with normal double blocks. In particular, the stay tackle blocks and the yard tackle blocks are equipped with 17" double blocks instead of 24" long tackle blocks. More stable blocks or simplification of the material list? Or signs of the beginning machine milling of blocks? All other sources speak of violin blocks for the entire time frame.

Steel also gives the length of the pendants of the yard tackle blocks as 1/10 of the yardarm length. In many other sources I have the impression that the pendants extend to the fishing in the middle of the yard, i.e. they were about twice as long.

The two different versions are shown opposite each other in the picture.

And how could it be otherwise, questions upon questions ...

XXXDAn

 

[dafi]

And another little tid bit that is not normally seen on models. According to Steel, the rope slings were replaced by chain slings in wartime. And if "the road to Trafalgar" doesn't count as wartime, what does ?!?





Here you can also see that the chain sits on a wedge at the back, whereas the rope slings is passed over the bolster of the mast head.

Until 1760, the braces were supported by preventer braces, whereby the hanger was doubled.



However, as this proximity was certainly not as effective when under fire, the preventer brace was later brought to the front of the yard.

Consequently, since the chains are attached here, the forward-facing preventer braces should also be attached. For this purpose, the standing part of the brace was attached to the rearmost shroud of the foremast, ran to a block on the front of the yard, back to a block on the rearmost shroud and from there to the forecastle.



Exciting.

XXXDAn

 

[Jack Jäger]

Great article Dafi, if you take a look at this YouTube vid,

Four Masted Barque rounding Cape Horn 1928 - Captain Irving​

you can see the footropes are barley below the yard.

Cheers JJ..

 

[fred.hocker]

Nice analysis!
Fred