THE BOOK OF
THE SAILBOAT
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By A. Hyatt Verrill
The Real Story of the Whaler
The Book of the Sailboat
The Book of the Motor Boat
Isles of Spice and Palm
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Publishers New York
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[Illustration: FORE-AND-AFT SAILS AND RIGS]
1—Leg-o’-mutton sail. 2—Gunter sail. 3—Lateen sail. 4—Sprit
sail. 5—Lug sail. 6—Boom-and-gaff sail. 7—Cat rig.
8—Jib-and-mainsail rig. 9—Sloop rig. 10—Yawl rig
(Polemast). 11—Schooner rig (Polemast).
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THE BOOK OF
THE SAILBOAT
_HOW TO RIG, SAIL AND
HANDLE SMALL BOATS_
BY
A. HYATT VERRILL
AUTHOR OF “THE BOOK OF THE MOTOR BOAT”
“ISLES OF SPICE AND PALM,” “THE REAL
STORY OF THE WHALER”
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1916
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COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A SHORT HISTORY OF BOATS 1
The first boat. Rafts and canoes. Catamarans.
Early forms of boats. Coracles and goofahs. The
evolution of the sailboat. Types of modern boats.
Schooners, sloops, ketches, catboats, round- and
flat-bottomed boats.
II. WHAT BOAT TO USE 10
Speed, stability and seaworthiness. Boats for
various uses. Whale-boats, surf-boats, life-boats,
fishing boats, oyster-boats, pilot-boats,
spongers, skiffs, dories, skip-jacks, etc.
III. PARTS OF BOATS 19
Various parts of a boat’s hull. Masts and spars.
Blocks and tackle. Anchors and cables. Deck
fittings. Cleats, chocks. Rudders, tillers,
wheels, etc. Keels and centerboards. Leeboards.
Ropes and standing rigging. What each is for.
IV. VARIOUS RIGS 39
Square-rigged vessels. Ships, barks, barkentines,
brigs, brigantines, topsail-schooners, schooners.
Ketch and yawl rigs. Sloop rigs. Catboats. Types
of fore and aft sails. Lateen, lug, gunter, sprit,
leg-o’-mutton and other sails. What rig to use.
V. HOW TO SAIL A SMALL BOAT 59
First steps in learning to sail. Handling and
sailing small boats. Getting under way. Sailing on
the wind, tacking. Coming about. Sailing before
the wind. Wearing ship. Jibing. Luffing. Reefing.
Coming to a landing. Coming to anchor.
VI. THE CARE OF BOATS 87
Equipment. Anchors and safety appliances.
Moorings. Sea anchors. Stowing sail. Care of boats
and sails. Caulking, painting, etc.
VII. MARLINSPIKE SEAMANSHIP 102
Ropes and their parts. Simple and useful knots.
Splices. Bends and hitches. Ornamental knots.
VIII. SIMPLE NAVIGATION 125
Rules of the road at sea. Lights, beacons and
signals. Buoys and lighthouses. Channels. Use of
compass. Charts and their use. Dead reckoning.
Logs. Sounding. Landmarks. Bearings. Currents and
tides. Fogs. Stars. Winds and waves. Storms.
Sailing in heavy weather. What to do in case of
accident.
IX. BUILDING SMALL BOATS 164
The simplest boat to build. How to build a
round-bottomed boat. Building from patterns.
X. WHAT NOT TO DO 180
NAUTICAL TERMS AND THEIR MEANINGS 187
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Fore-and-aft sails and rigs _Frontispiece_
Primitive boats 2
Types of small boats adapted to special uses 12
Types of bows and sterns 22
Keels, centerboards, leeboards and rudders 27
Boat fittings and parts of boats 30
Running rigging of fore-and-aft rig 34
Standing rigging, masts, etc. 36
Various rigs 41
Parts of rails, spars, etc., of fore-and-aft rig 43
Ketch rig. Cat yawl rig 45
Sails of square-rigged vessels 48
Hull, spars and rigging of a ship 52
Effect of wind on boats of various forms 63
Sailing 71
Reefing a sail 84
Caulking tools 93
Anchors 96
Useful knots and splices 105
Ornamental knots 116
Ropework 121
Rules of the road and buoys 129
Harbor chart showing lights, buoys, channels,
soundings, bearings, bottom, etc. 136
Use of compass in boat 140
Compasses 143
Effect of waves on stability 151
Building a flat-bottomed boat 171
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THE BOOK OF
THE SAILBOAT
CHAPTER I
A SHORT HISTORY OF BOATS
No one knows who first invented boats. Probably they were used by
primitive man long before he discovered how to use bows and arrows or
had even learned to chip stones into simple tools and weapons. But those
early boats were not boats as we know them today, for it has taken
untold centuries for mankind to improve and develop boats to their
present state of perfection. It was a natural and easy matter for a
savage to straddle a floating log and, thus supported, cross some pond
or stream, and when some member of the tribe discovered that two logs
lashed together were more comfortable and less likely to roll over and
dump their passengers into the water than a single log, he no doubt felt
as if he had made a marvelous invention and was probably looked upon as
a prehistoric Fulton by his fellowmen.
Later on some man found that a hollowed log was more buoyant and stable
than an ordinary tree trunk and from this crude beginning rude dugout
canoes were developed. Even today many races have never progressed
beyond the hollowed-log state of boat-building and dugouts, forty or
fifty feet in length and capable of carrying great weights, are in daily
use in many lands. Some of these are very crude, heavy craft, while
others are beautifully made, are light in weight and are very speedy and
seaworthy.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE BOATS]
1—Dugout made from a log. 2—Birch bark canoe. 3—Eskimo kyak
made of skins. 4—Catamaran. 5—Turkish goofah. 6—East
Indian balsa. 7—Malay proa.
Quite a different type of savage craft were the canoes of bark or skins.
These may have been evolved from dugouts but it is more likely that
accident or chance led to their discovery. A piece of floating bark
bearing some wild animal or bird may have pointed the way toward the
graceful birchbark canoes of the American Indians, while a stiff piece
of dried hide may have given the first hint of a kyak to the Eskimos.
However, it is useless to speculate upon the incidents that led our
primitive and savage ancestors along the path to the shipyard for such
matters are shrouded in the impenetrable mists of the dim and distant
past. We know, however, that nearly every race possessed boats of one
kind or another as long ago as there was any history and we know that
the boats used thousands of years ago varied as greatly in construction,
form, materials and other details as boats of today.
Strangely enough, many of the most primitive forms of boats are still in
daily use. I have already mentioned dugouts, but birchbark canoes and
kyaks are also used at the present time as widely as ever. It is evident
that some of these prehistoric craft had been developed to the utmost
point of perfection before the advent of civilization for many of them
have never been improved upon. With all our knowledge we have never
found any boat so well adapted to its purpose as the red man’s canoe,
and while we now make them of canvas instead of bark, we follow the same
models as those used by the Indians centuries ago.
In certain parts of Great Britain the people still use the queer craft
called _coracles_ which Cæsar found the Britons using when his Roman
legions invaded Albion, and although these curious boats, that look like
the shell of a turtle or half of a walnut shell and are made of plaited
willow, are among the most ancient forms of boats, yet the Welsh find
them superior to modern boats in many ways. Somewhat similar are the
_goofahs_ of the Orient, circular, basket-like craft made of willow
wands and covered with pitch which are used upon the Tigris and
Euphrates and have not changed in the least since Bible days.
In the South Seas and other places the natives still use _catamarans_
and _proas_ which are really nothing but two logs fastened together, and
yet the most efficient and safest of life rafts used by our greatest
steamships are merely modifications of these same catamarans.
The purpose of any boat is to float and support its occupants while
traveling across the water, and while it seems a far cry from the
coracle or the dugout to a palatial steamship or a stately, four-masted,
sailing ship, yet the principle of each is identical and each serves the
purpose for which it was designed equally well; it is merely a matter of
improvement, and many of the terms and names of parts which were used by
the earliest sailors are still retained on our greatest liners and
largest sailing vessels.
_Starboard_ and _larboard_, for example, are merely corruptions or
_steerboard_ and _leeboard_, terms applied to the two sides of the ships
of the Vikings and referring to the great steering oar on the right-hand
side of the vessel and the board dropped over the opposite side to
prevent the craft from making _leeway_ or sliding sideways through the
water. The _bowsprit_ was originally a small spritsail spread to the
vessel’s bow; the _stern_ was once the _steering_; the name _forecastle_
was given to the sailors’ quarters when the deckhouses were literally
_castles_ in form, and we still speak of _cockpits_ though we seldom
stop to remember that the term was originally bestowed because this open
portion of a boat resembled the circular areas wherein cockfights were
held.
The enormous steel frames which support the great plates of a
steamship’s sides are still as much _ribs_ to the sailor as the flimsy
bits of wood bent into place by the naked savage building his frail
canoe, and scores of the ropes, sails, rigging and other portions of a
ship’s fabric retain their ancient names in a similar manner. The seaman
is the most conservative of beings and adheres to every time-honored
custom, belief and habit and when the last sailor and the last wooden
ship have disappeared many of the terms and ways that were dear to the
heart of Jack Tar will still live on and be perpetuated for all time.
It is partly owing to this unwillingness on the part of the sailor to
adopt anything new or unusual which has led to the survival of distinct
forms of boats, for the seaman and boatman of every country believed the
craft of his own waters to be superior to those of any other place. In
rig, sail and other details each race of maritime people has preserved
the traditions of their ancestors and even in neighboring localities we
find boats which in form of hull, sails and rigging are absolutely
distinct. Many of these are used only in one locality, one harbor or on
one small island, but many others have been carried hither and thither
and one can almost trace the history of a country or the wanderings of
its people by the types of boats used.
Of course, the first boats were propelled by hand, either by pushing
them along with poles or by rough paddles, but even naked savages soon
learned that they could let the wind work for them and raised mats,
skins or even bushes to catch the breeze and waft them across the water.
But it was many, many centuries before man learned that he could do away
with oars entirely and could sail in any direction, regardless of the
way the wind blew.
Even in the time of Columbus the ships could scarcely make headway
against the wind and were more or less at the mercy of every passing
breeze, but once sailors discovered the secret of sailing to windward
the advance and improvement of ships and rigging was very rapid. The
great, cumbersome, square sails of the earlier ships were divided into
many pieces so as to be more readily handled and trimmed; triangular
sails took the place of the picturesque spritsails on the vessels’ bows;
hulls were built lower and deeper and while the number of masts varied
they were reduced until two- and three-masted, square-rigged vessels,
known as _brigs_ and _ships_, were the standard types of ocean-going
craft.
Among smaller vessels there were sloops, luggers, ketches and other
types of fore-and-aft-rigged craft, and as these sails had many
advantages over the square sails and their awkward yards they replaced
the latter in some cases and thus _barks_, _brigs_ and _brigantines_
came into use.
Then some brilliant sailor genius did away with the square sails
altogether and a new type of vessel came into existence which was called
a “schooner.” But conservative, croaking Jack still pinned his faith to
yards and square sails and for many years schooners carried lofty
topsails of the same form as the upper sails of square-rigged ships.
Today the fore-and-aft-rigged vessels are more numerous than all other
rigs combined and the square-riggers, stately and beautiful as they
were—the handsomest vessels ever built by man—have been almost driven
from the seas. With the outbreak of the European War and the demand for
ocean-going cargo-carriers the old square-riggers have once more come to
the fore, and in ports and harbors where a crossyard mast had not been
seen for many years, barks, ships and square-rigged vessels now line the
docks and are an everyday sight. But they are only temporary and every
boy and man who loves the sea and its ships should take advantage of
this opportunity to view a passing type of vessels and should learn all
about them, their rigging and their sails, for to them we owe much of
our commerce and prosperity, our independence and our progress.
Although the cheaper, more easily handled and more simple schooners
forced the square-rigged ships into the background, and while these in
turn have been largely superseded by steam for deep-water voyages, yet
the small boat has held its own throughout the centuries. In form, rig
and other details the small boats of today vary as widely as ever, for
small boats are designed and used for specific purposes and no one can
say which is the _best_ boat or the _handiest_ rig.
Steam and motor boats have taken the place of sailboats for business
purposes in many places, but as long as men love the sea, as long as
they enjoy the sting of the salt spray and the thrill of a plunging bow,
as long as our eyes brighten and our pulses quicken as we grasp tiller
and sheet and lee rails are awash, so long will the small boat hold its
own. We may conquer distance by steam, we may annihilate time by
paper-like hulls loaded with roaring motors of gigantic power, we may
travel in floating palaces called yachts, but nothing will ever be made
by man to take the place of the small boat for the out-and-out pleasure
and perfect enjoyment it gives the true boat-lover.
Although there is an endless variety of hulls and rigs among small boats
they may all be divided into a few general classes. In form of hull most
boats may be grouped under two broad types: round-bottomed and
flat-bottomed boats, but there _are_ intermediate forms and there are
also some kinds of boats which are a sort of hybrid or combination of
both.
In rig we have the schooner, ketch, yawl, sloop and cat and while these
cover the matter in a general way there is a wonderful variety in the
sails, rigging and other details, and many boats which possess great
advantages cannot be properly classed in any of these groups.
The best boat to use and the best rig to adopt depend largely upon the
purpose of the boat and its rig, the place where it is to be used, the
owner’s ability as a sailor, the weather likely to be encountered, the
character of the neighboring shores and waters and various other
conditions.
In order to select intelligently the best boat for your use it is
necessary to consider the various types of hull and rig, their
advantages and disadvantages and the purposes for which they are
intended, and then, knowing these things, select the one which you think
best adapted to your own requirements.
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