# Rigged?



## grootondermarszeil

This is the barque GLENCAIRN built in 1889. Is this ship rigged with single-gallant, royals and sky sails, or normal for the time, double gallant and royal sails. Who knows .


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## stein

Between double topgallant sails there are no stays (or the upper would not come down). If stays are present between the sails we are dealing with topgallants, royals, skysails...and eventual moonsails, all on their own piece of mast named accordingly. This ship is rigged with royals and skysails above single topgallants.


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## Stephen J. Card

Seems to be as you have it. The single-gallant OR the doubles. I guess it depends on what the owner wanted when built or rigged at some other time.

Stephen


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## Stephen J. Card

Thanks Stein. I hoped you would wade in and answer.

Hope you are having a good summer!

Stephen


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## stein

Thanks for that, and the same to you, but here we are having the combination of a heatwave, extreme humidity and gray blanket overcast sky. (Jester)


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## Stephen J. Card

stein said:


> Thanks for that, and the same to you, but here we are having the combination of a heatwave, extreme humidity and gray blanket overcast sky. (Jester)


Perfect weather in Bermuda. Mid 80s. Sunshine. A Norwegian 'pale blue' ship and a Celebrity over at the Dockyard.

Hmmm.... perhaps back to the pool today. ;-)


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## stein

In Bermuda there is no winter, so according to logic you should have no summers either, but I would sure love a pool right now - one with no mosquitoes...

Here, by the way, is the alledgedly first "bald-header." Built in 1874 for H. C. Stulcken of Hamburg as PAPA. Here under Norwegian flag as PAPA of Son. There are not many that immediately recognizes that she is without royals.


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## Barrie Youde

Query:-

Looking aloft on the masts of any square-rigged ship we see courses, topsails, t'gallants, royals, skysails and even moonsails (all of which, as far as I know, might be either single or double). Topmasts, t'gallantmasts and royal masts etc are also understood.

My query is (if I may be forgiven) how do you tell the sails of a topmast from a t'gallantmast etc, unless you can actually identify the vertical separation of the masts? Easy enough when on board and looking up from the deck, but how can these things be identified merely from a painting or even from the photograph shown here?


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## stein

If the uppermost sail on the PAPA had been a royal there would have been a topgallant-stay underneath it. The rest of knowledge needed is merely the sequence upwards or downwards. You start on bottom with the courses, for example the foresail. Above it goes the forestay, and so it is not double course. (I have never heard of any other sails than topsails and topgallants being double, but we do not need that to be so to use the system). Then comes the topsail, there is no stay above it so it is merely a lower topsail, and to finish with the topsail bit we therefore name the next an upper topsail. You can use the shrouds and backstays on the aft of the sail to separate the sails if you cannot observe what the situation is on the front.

Of course, if the ship has a normally shaped set of sails (which the PAPA has not), a mere glance should do. The single topgallants on the GLENCAIRN looks very much like what an ordinary single topgallant looks like.


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## Barrie Youde

Many thanks, Stein.

Much appreciated. Will try to work it out!

PS - Neither have I heard of doubles, apart from topsails and t'gallants, but in theory it would surely be possible? Impracticable, perhaps, as a matter of fine tuning, but surely possible? Perhaps not.


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## Shipbuilder

They split the topsails and t'gallants to make them easier to handle, as they were large sails if single. Not much point in making lower and upper royals and skysails double, when they could be furled by a ship's boy!
Here is the wool clipper _Wairoa_, with double topsails, single t'gallants and royals, and a skysail on the main.
Bob


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## Barrie Youde

Many thanks!

All points taken!


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## Shipbuilder

Forgot to mention - Glencairn isn't ship-rigged - it was a four-masted barque!
Bob


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## grootondermarszeil

Sorry, I am named the Glengairn a barque, instead of 4 masted barque. Regards john


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## cueball44

grootondermarszeil said:


> This is the barque GLENCAIRN built in 1889. Is this ship rigged with single-gallant, royals and sky sails, or normal for the time, double gallant and royal sails. Who knows .


 Is the date it was built correct ?


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## Shipbuilder

I don't think so. Lloyds Register 1889 shows _Glencairn_ as an iron four-masted barque completed in 1878 by Dobie of Glasgow for J. & A. Allan, of Glasgow. 1,619 tons 252.4 feet long, 40 feet wide and 22.4 feet deep.
Bob


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## grootondermarszeil

Hello I have myself not enough informed. After control via internet-side and the book Windjammer I of Lubbock shows the year 1878 and the yard Dobie and co. in Glasgow. A reason of my deception was also noticing <but wrong> a Liverpool house. This development was, in my view, certainly ten years later Regards john.


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## cueball44

This is artwork of Glencairn in the National Maritime Museum >


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## cueball44

This is Moshulu which is similar to the first image of Glencairn >


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## stein

Similar insofar as she is a four masted barque with a Liverpool house, but the Moshulu definitely had double topgallants and nothing above royals. Our mystery ship would seem to be the Milton Stuart built by Swan & Hunter in 1892. Here as German Thekla: http://www.agenziabozzo.it/vecchie_...TON-STUART_1892_cantiere_Swan_Tacoma_1902.htm


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## Samsette

stein said:


> Similar insofar as she is a four masted barque with a Liverpool house, but the Moshulu definitely had double topgallants and nothing above royals. Our mystery ship would seem to be the Milton Stuart built by Swan & Hunter in 1892. Here as German Thekla: http://www.agenziabozzo.it/vecchie_...TON-STUART_1892_cantiere_Swan_Tacoma_1902.htm


Thekla, as captured by Wilhelm Hester's old camera, and featured in Robert A. Weinstein's "Tall Ships" collection of Hester's work.

Bald-headed, stump-t'gallant were sometimes called jubilee rigged, due to their first appearance during Queen Victoria's jubilee year. I think I must have read that in Sails Through the Centuries, a nice little work by Sam Svensson and Gordon Macfie, both Swedish born.


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## stein

"In the background is the Hotel Tacoma and, right, the civic tower." Says the Italian text. And Tacoma in Washington is where you would find Wilhelm Hester, but that townscape does not look like the USA to me. In addition, I have gotten so used to seeing sawmills and other square-riggers in the background of Hester pictures that I just had to look up that hotel. I guess the artist who made this have prettified the surroundings a little: https://sherrlock.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/3-tacoma-hotel-etch-web1.jpg But it is the same building.

You must have learned about the jubilee rig somewhere else, there is nothing about it in that little square format book by Svensson and Macfie. I have the Norwegian edition, it was lying around on the M/S Tourcoing in 65, and I appropriated it. According to some ballpoint scribble on the title page it belonged to one Manuel Sicueiro Fonsaca, but he was not around then. The other book, "Tall Ships on Puget Sound", I have now ordered.


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## dmaco09

Thanks to all for the informative commentary and photos!!


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## reefrat

I was taught, by an old Finnish ships carpenter, that the sails take the name of the mast they were rigged on, thus you can have single or upper and lower tops sails and t/gallants, never heard of upper and lower royals or skysails but in theory it would be possible, the same naming convention seems to apply to the staysails as well.


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## stein

So, what with the sail nomenclature on one of those modernised square-rigged training or cruise ships, with one-piece masts and all yards stuck at one height on it. Perhaps with sails roller-reefed on a drum inside the yard and the whole thing swung around on a rotating mast. On such ships there will be absolutely no need for doubling anything, you can make any vertical section of the sail area carried of whatever depth that suits you. (EEK)


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## Samsette

stein said:


> "In the background is the Hotel Tacoma and, right, the civic tower." Says the Italian text. And Tacoma in Washington is where you would find Wilhelm Hester, but that townscape does not look like the USA to me. In addition, I have gotten so used to seeing sawmills and other square-riggers in the background of Hester pictures that I just had to look up that hotel. I guess the artist who made this have prettified the surroundings a little: https://sherrlock.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/3-tacoma-hotel-etch-web1.jpg But it is the same building.
> 
> You must have learned about the jubilee rig somewhere else, there is nothing about it in that little square format book by Svensson and Macfie. I have the Norwegian edition, it was lying around on the M/S Tourcoing in 65, and I appropriated it. According to some ballpoint scribble on the title page it belonged to one Manuel Sicueiro Fonsaca, but he was not around then. The other book, "Tall Ships on Puget Sound", I have now ordered.


While looking up Garthpool and her history I came upon this "jubilee rig" term for bald-headed rigs and, while it is not where I first heard of the term, it does indicate a wider usage among British circles. Here it is;

https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?139830


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