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Updated: May 25, 2025
We then selected two much stouter spars than before for fresh masts, got the standing rigging over their heads, and by means of tackles got them set up to the stumps of the fore and main masts, next securing them much more effectually we hoped than the former jury-masts had been, with light spars of different lengths lashed round them, and additional backstays.
One and another of the backstays parted, the foretopsail burst with a cannon-like report, after which a terrible rending sound, followed by an indescribable crash, told that both masts had gone by the board.
Brown will want me on deck." We followed, for there was the prospect of seeing topsails reefed, the most glorious event of a landsman's sea-experiences. We had begun the day with a dead calm, but toward night the wind had come out of the eastward. Each plunge the ship gave was sharper, each shock heavier. The topmasts were working, the lee-shrouds and backstays straining out into endless curves.
Aloft, a cloud of white sail swelled to the breeze, till the cloth seemed inclined to say goodby to the bolt ropes, bending the masts like willow wands, as if the devil, determined to beat Paganini himself, was preparing fiddlesticks to play a spring with, on the cracking and straining weather shrouds and backstays, and tearing her sharp wedge like bows out of the bowels of the long swell, until the cutwater, and ten yards of the keel next to it, were hove clean out of the sea, into which she would descend again with a roaring plunge, burying every thing up to the hause holes, and driving the brine into mist, over the fore top, like vapour from a waterfall, through which, as she rose again, the bright red copper on her bows flashed back the sunbeams in momentary rainbows.
Shrouds extend from the mast-head to the gunwale of the canoe; besides which, slender backstays are carried to the extremity of the out-rigger; and these ropes, by reason of their great spread, give such powerful support to the mast, though loaded with a prodigious sail, that a very slender spar is sufficient. The method of working the sails of these canoes is as follows.
This time they saw it, for the Laocoon's helm was put down, her great sails shivered and threshed, and she stood off on the other tack. As she stood away we saw an officer leap on to the taffrail, holding on by the mizen backstays. "Tar my wig," said Marah, "if he isn't bowing to us!" Sure enough the officer took off his hat to us and bowed gracefully. "Polite young man," said Marah.
In the Morning the Carpenter reported the Maintopmast to be Sprung in the Cap, which we supposed hapned in the P.M., when both the Weather Backstays broke. Our Rigging and Sails are now so bad that something or another is giving way every day. At Noon had 13 Sail in sight, which we are well assured are the India Fleet, and are all now upon our Weather Quarter.
"Hard a-port now!" cried Pearce, and the vessels came in collision, the spare anchor in the Aspasia's fore-chains catching and tearing away the backstays and lanyards of the enemy's fore-rigging, and, with a violent jerk, bringing down the fore-topmast to windward.
The ship answered quickly and rounded to while her weather fore and mizzen yards flew forward until they touched the starboard backstays and the men hauled in the slack of the braces. With the main yard square to check her way the jibs drooped down along the stays. "Mr. Broadrick, you may let go the starboard anchor and furl sails."
The mainmast had gone, as had the main chains, but part of the main rigging, the backstays and shrouds still hung on to the wreck, and these he ordered them to haul up, and by securing the shrouds to the stern, and carrying the other end to the rocks, he formed an easy means of communication, by which Ada and Nina could gain the main rock.
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