Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
A stiff breeze was blowing and some ugly clouds were gathering to seaward, but John proposed that we should try the boats for a short sail, and with the owners' consent we pushed off to round the outer buoy and back as a test of speed. The boats had each a single spritsail, but I felt sure that John's carried too much canvas and would not behave well in a gale.
The Guerrière would have renewed the action, but the wreck of the masts had no sooner been cleared than the spritsail yard went, and the Constitution having no new braces, wore round within pistol shot again to rake her opponent. The crippled ship lay in the trough of the sea, rolling her main deck guns under water.
The cutter was rigged with a dipping lug and a spritsail; so, no sooner had crusty old Draper given his laconic answer to Mr Chisholm, than the latter sang out to Larrikins, who was in the bows. "Look out there forrud!" he cried. "Stand by to dip!"
George's cross, but I believe thou art right, Dick Spritsail," cried the Captain. "It's some poor fellow, I warrant me, whose ship has gone down, and who made a raft to try his luck. Johnny Shark, do ye see, is no pleasant customer to become acquainted with, and so he took a venture on the spar for a Christian burial, instead of making Jonah's viage."
As the little brig felt the breeze and gathered steerageway, she was headed for the chase, bringing the wind on her starboard quarter. In less than five minutes all the studding sails that would draw were set, as well as everything that would pull. The best quartermaster was sent to the wheel, with orders to keep the chase directly over the weather end of the spritsail yard.
Another way was to mask the open space with a ranged hemp cable, which could be cleared away after the fight. The ships were rigged much as they were rigged two centuries later. The chief differences were in the rigging of the bowsprit and of the two after masts. Forward the ships had bowsprits, on which each set a spritsail, from a spritsail yard.
The spritsail would then be furled, and the spritsail-yard brought alongship. The lower yards were slung with chain, and the important ropes, sheets and braces, etc., were doubled. The bulkheads and wooden cabin walls were knocked away, or fortified with hammocks or bedding, to minimise the risk of splinters. The guns were cast loose and loaded.
The bowsprit staved very much, and was to appearance almost as a fourth mast: the more so, as she carried a square spritsail and sprit-topsail. On her quarter-deck and poop-bulwarks were fixed in sockets implements of warfare now long in disuse, but what were then known by the names of cohorns and patteraroes; they turned round on a swivel, and were pointed by an iron handle fixed to the breech.
It is a raft, with a disc not much larger than a dining-table, constructed out of two small spars of a ship, the dolphin-striker and spritsail yard, with two broad planks and some narrower ones lashed crosswise, and over all two or three pieces of sail-cloth carelessly spread. Slight as is the structure, it is occupied by two individuals, a man and a boy.
The spritsail filled with the wind, suddenly, careening the frail open craft till it seemed it would surely capsize. A whitecap foamed above it and broke across in a snow-white smother. Then the boat emerged, half swamped, Leach flinging the water out and Johnson clinging to the steering-oar, his face white and anxious.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking