How close to wind can square-riggers sail?
somebody
trade winds, and at best could perhaps manage a broad reach with their spars
moved to the wind. But I was reading a book last night that described the
Spanish Conquistador galleons "tacking" up the Guadalquívir river into
Seville. So could they sail a bit into the wind?
Ian Sandell
ships got embayed and could not escape the lee shore of places like
Lyme Bay. If they could do better than beam reach, it would have been
in less wind, sea state, etc.
Ian
Paul Cooper
wrote:
Square riggers certainly can make progress into the wind, though they
cannot sail as close-hauled as a modern fore-and-aft rig. There are
two distinct mechanism:
1) The square sails are braced at an angle to the centre-line of the
ship, making an angle with the apparent wind direction in the same
manner as a fore-and-aft sail does. This is not as efficient as a
fore-and-aft sail, a) because the sail is cut fuller, b) because the
windward edge cannot be held rigid and c) because the geometry of the
rig and how it fits on the vessel limits how sharply the sail can be
braced into the wind. However, it will get you to windward!
2) Most square rigged vessels also use staysails, which are
fore-an-aft sails rigged (you guessed it!) on the stays, like a job
(which is, of course, a staysail!). Draw-back here is the relatively
limited area of sail that can be set compared with the square sails.
Using these two techniques a square rigger can point up to about 45
degrees from the wind direction. However, the vesels concerned usually
made a lot of leeway, and in heavy weather might not be able to make
ground to windward at all.
Incidentally, even the worst handling of naval vessels, Bomb Ketches,
could be worked to windward - I happen to have done research involving
the voyage of James Clark Ross to the Antarctic in 1843, and his
vessels, the re-rigged bomb ketches Erebus and Terror, were capable of
making ground to windward - I happened to be particularly interested
in a part of his travels where he was investigating Admiralty Sound.
If you really want to know more, try: Cooper, A.P.R., 1997, Historical
observations of Prince Gustav Ice Shelf: Polar Record, v. 33, p.
285-294.
I have done this from memory, but if you are interested in how square
riggers were handled, there is a modern facsimile reprint of the 19th
century manual of seamanship "The young sea-officer's Sheet-Anchor" by
Darcy Lever. Not exactly sure of the title, but that should be good
enough to find it on Amazon!
Paul
somebody
"Paul Cooper" <a.paul....@NOntlworldSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:3d4319b1...@newscache.cable.ntlworld.com...
> Square riggers certainly can make progress into the wind, though they
> cannot sail as close-hauled as a modern fore-and-aft rig. There are
> two distinct mechanism:
>
> 1) The square sails are braced at an angle to the centre-line of the
> ship, making an angle with the apparent wind direction in the same
> manner as a fore-and-aft sail does. This is not as efficient as a
> fore-and-aft sail, a) because the sail is cut fuller, b) because the
> windward edge cannot be held rigid and c) because the geometry of the
> rig and how it fits on the vessel limits how sharply the sail can be
> braced into the wind. However, it will get you to windward!
>
advantages when running before the trade-winds outweighed their
disadvantages when close-hauled? Or were their technical obstacles which
hindered the use of larger fore-aft sails other than the small staysails and
occasional mizzen that they mostly used?
Even warships (I'm looking at my airfix model of HMS Victory!) had only very
small fore and aft sails, and I would have thought that they would put a
premium on manouevrability, which suggests that perhaps they could not at
that time make masts and rigging strong enough to support large fore and aft
sails? Also, looking at pictures of large sailing ships just before the move
to steam, they tended to have much greater ratio of fore-aft to
square-rigged sails.
Ken McCulloch
> Why did they sail for so many centuries with such rigs? Was it because their
> advantages when running before the trade-winds outweighed their
> disadvantages when close-hauled? Or were their technical obstacles which
> hindered the use of larger fore-aft sails other than the small staysails and
> occasional mizzen that they mostly used?
The best explanation is that 18th & 19th century square riggers were
working within or at the limits of the available materials and
techniques. More and samller sails mould be easy to handle compared to
fewer larger sails. Rigs made of wood and natural fibre ropes could only
be made so high. etc.
--
Ken McCulloch
Edinburgh
Simon Brooke
It depends on a lot of things. Repro viking longships go to windward
very well. Reason: slender hull with plenty of lateral resistance,
fairly clean rig. Victorian period tea clippers could as well for much
the same reason, but plenty of larger Victorian period ships were
worried about getting embayed in the Bay of *Biscay* in bad weather.
The Bay of Biscay doesn't take a lot of tacking out of.
But consider where the big sailing ship ports are in England: Bristol
and Liverpool. Both on lee shores with respect to the prevailing wind.
Boats which could not go to windward under reasonable conditions could
not use these ports, period. Yet the ports prospered.
Equally, look at the tactics of sailing naval warfare. An awful lot of
effort went into getting to windward of your opponent before closing to
fight, and so battles often began with, in effect, a race dead to
windward.
If you read books by people who sailed square riggers with no engines -
I was brought up on Alan Villiers - you'll see that only the best of
these boats could tack. Most had to 'wear ship' - in effect gybe - at
the end of each tack, and had large turning circles, so short tacking a
big square rigger up a river probably wasn't easy.
Modern yachts have developed over two hundred years of racing which has
emphasised manouverability and, in particularly, short tacking ability.
So we're used to boats which tack easily and have forgotten that people
for generations confidently sailed boats which didn't. For example,
right up to the introduction of the steam trawler, over 95% of the
fishing boats in Scotland used dipping lug rigs. The dipping lug is an
extremely powerful sail, and very effective to windward - very similar
to a genoa, but on a shorter mast. The downside of a dipping lug is
that to tack you have to lower the sail, move it round to the other
side of the mast, and raise and set it again. Scottish fishemen were
certainly aware of gaff rigs, and had been aware of them for
generations. Many of them will have worked as yacht crews during the
summer, and as fishermen through the winter. Nevertheless, working
difficult and often dangerous waters where getting home with the catch
often involved a beat to windward, they chose to use the dipping lug.
In practice in open water, if you adapt your tactics, a boat which is
hard to put about is not at a huge disadvantage. So the effective
windward performance of square riggers boils down to two things: tack
angle and leeway.
Many - perhaps most - square riggers - post fourteenth century, anyway
- had quite good underwater shape. The 'cod's head and mackerel tail'
design is pretty clean and has good lateral resistance. Of course they
suffered badly from fouling, but when the bottom was clean the hull was
pretty good.
Then there's the rig. In theory under ideal conditions a square sail is
more effective to windward than a fore-and-aft rig, because the airflow
over the sails is not disturbed by turbulence off the mast. However, of
course, most square riggers had a considerable amount of parasitic
windage in the form of large amounts of standing rigging. Furthermore,
of course, for maximum efficiency a square sail needs a high aspect
ratio, and individual square sails - increasingly towards the end of
the square rig period - had very low aspect ratios. They were stacked
in arrays and the array had a high aspect ratio overall, but I'm not
sure to what extent the slots in the array were detrimental.
But historically the best of the tea clippers - Cutty Sark and
Thermopylae - could sustain average speeds in excess of twenty knots
for weeks in varied southern ocean weather. They could sustain those
very high speeds in wind forces from three up to ten. They could also
make good a tack angle of 120 degrees, which is to say sail 60 degrees
off the true wind. There are very few modern yachts that could beat one
of those boats on any point of sail in open water, including dead to
windward.
At the other end of the spectrum you have the East Indiaman arriving
back in Europe after over six months at sea, with most of her crew
disabled by sickness, her bottom foul with weed and marine growths, her
sails worn out and her rigging slack, with no GPS, no effective
chronometer and only at best a very vague position fix. That boat was
very vulnerable to adverse wind and it isn't surprising that many of
them piled up on one side or other of the approach to the channel.
I also suspect that there was a low point in western European ship
design - in terms of handiness, anyway - around the fourteenth century.
We only have one good surviving example of a Cog (the Bremen ship), and
we know the contemporary illustrations are highly stylised.
Nevertheless, the illustrations appear to show a hull which is fairly
blunt at each end, and with very high castles. They're rigged with
usually one but up to three masts, hoisting a single sail on each.
Frankly I think it's unlikely that these boats are effective to
windward. But at the same time remember that they have evolved in an
environment where the competition is the viking ship at the peak of its
evolution.
Let's take two extremes of the viking ship: the 'Knarr', or heavy cargo
ship, and the longship. With modern sails reproductions of both types
are effective to windward. We don't know what viking sails were made of
but I think the best guess is that in the early period they were woolen
canvas reinfoced by a lattice of leather straps. Early viking period
illustrations show a diagonal grid over the surface of the sail, and a
complex collection of control lines below the sail. I don't know how
this sail will have done to windward. However by the end of the viking
period - the Bayeux tapestry, for example - shows a sail with vertical
cloths with sheets leading to the lower corners. There was little
change in the construction of the square sail from that point to the
end of the square sail period, and it seems probable to me that the
sailcloth was flax. We know historically from viking period sailing
directions that Knarrs were regularly sailed to windward - not from
preference, but obviously effectively. The Knarr, of course, didn't
carry a crew which could effectively row her. Longships were certainly
substantially better to windward than Knarrs, but also carried a crew
which could row her very effectively. We know that the vikings
preferred to row into sea battles, probably for manouverability reasons.
Yet the Cog replaced both the Knarr and the longship. Why? It can't
have been as bad as we think it was. It certainly carried (a lot) more
cargo than a Knarr. In sea battles before the development of firearms,
it was certainly an advantage to be above your opponent. Given that
north atlantic sea battles emphasised boarding and de-emphasised
ramming, perhaps the more sturdily built cog also tended to smash the
more lightly built longship when they came alongside. Whatever the
reason, the apparently less handy, less manouverable cog did replace
the more manouverable viking types, and probably does much to give us
our picture of the unhandy square rigged ship.
--
si...@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; better than your average performing pineapple
Simon Brooke
>
> "Paul Cooper" <a.paul....@NOntlworldSPAM.com> wrote in message
> news:3d4319b1...@newscache.cable.ntlworld.com...
>> Square riggers certainly can make progress into the wind, though they
>> cannot sail as close-hauled as a modern fore-and-aft rig. There are
>> two distinct mechanism:
>>
>> 1) The square sails are braced at an angle to the centre-line of the
>> ship, making an angle with the apparent wind direction in the same
>> manner as a fore-and-aft sail does. This is not as efficient as a
>> fore-and-aft sail, a) because the sail is cut fuller, b) because the
>> windward edge cannot be held rigid and c) because the geometry of the
>> rig and how it fits on the vessel limits how sharply the sail can be
>> braced into the wind. However, it will get you to windward!
>>
> Why did they sail for so many centuries with such rigs? Was it because
> their advantages when running before the trade-winds outweighed their
> disadvantages when close-hauled? Or were their technical obstacles
> which hindered the use of larger fore-aft sails other than the small
> staysails and occasional mizzen that they mostly used?
Square sails are not less effective to windward than fore and aft
sails. On the contrary, in theory, they're better. See the various AYRS
publications on the theory of sail design. What pre-nineteenth century
boats suffered from was the lack of high tensile strength materials
both for rigging and for sailcloth. Until you have good tensile
strength materials (egyptian cotton or terylene for sails, steel wire
for standing rigging, terylene for running rigging) you can't make a
rig of any kind which will compete with modern yachts.
The increasing popularity of barques and schooners through the
nineteenth century was not because they were better to windward but
because they required smaller crews. The best square riggers of the day
could equal the best schooners to windward.
--
si...@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; not so much a regugee from reality, more a bogus
;; asylum seeker
Rasmus Hayseed
"Simon Brooke" <si...@jasmine.org.uk> wrote in message
news:ngi0ia...@gododdin.internal.jasmine.org.uk...
> on Saturday 27 Jul 2002 8:29 pm, somebody wrote:
--- snip ---
> We don't know what viking sails were made of
> but I think the best guess is that in the early period they were woolen
> canvas reinfoced by a lattice of leather straps.
The current opinion is that they were woolen and reinforced as you say, but
the wool was vastly different from the fluffy stuff we know. The thread was
the longer outer hair whose strands are long and function as a rain barrier.
Icelandic and Faroe sheep still sport this stuff and experiments at the
Viking ship museum in Roskilde (Denmark) have shown that this can indeed
yield a stable thread and cloth. They've made a woollen sail and treated it
with "horse mane grease", ochre and pitch, and after that with ox tallow,
ochre and pitch again, to seal the cloth.
Here's a page in Danish (with pictures):
http://www.mac-roskilde.dk/Article1.asp?ArticleID=54
The English site is crap and the whole thing is full of errors.
Rasmus Hayseed
"Simon Brooke" <si...@jasmine.org.uk> wrote in message
news:ngi0ia...@gododdin.internal.jasmine.org.uk...
Another link about woolen sails:
http://www.mac-roskilde.dk/nyhedsbrev1.asp?articleid=70
Paul Cooper
I suspect that the reasons are manyfold, one being that sailors are
enormously reistant to change! However, I think that at least part of
it is simply the materials available. Before the 19th century, the
only practicable materials were wooden spars, hemp rigging and canvas
sails. Wood only comes in limited lengths, so complex rigging was
required to set mast upon mast (look at the way the masts on your
model of HMS Victory are set up). Basically, the mast was a pretty
weak structure, and a close-hauled sail would simply put too much
stress on it. And, of course, although hemp is an amazing strong
material, it isn't anywhere near the strength of steel wire. And while
new canvas is pretty strong, canvas that has seen a voyage to the
tropics and back isn't going to be worth much. Another factor is that
the only motive power available to handle the rig was man-power. Under
adverse conditions, it could take most of the crew of a ship like
Victory to handle the sheets and braces - the large crews of naval
vessels were required a) to fight the guns and b) to handle the
rigging when operating under conditions that the merchant sailor would
ride out.
All this meant that although the principles of a fore-and-aft rig were
well known, and used on smaller vessels such as coastal protection
vessels and privateers, they couldn't be scaled up until the advent
of steel rigging and masts. The late sailing vessels you mention had
tubular steel masts and wire rigging, and were (of course) much more
efficient than the classic square riggers. The very latest ones also
used steam winches to handle rigging.
Incidentally, you over-estimate the importance of manoeuverability to
an 18th century naval vessel. Certainly it was a factor in smaller
vessels, but in ships like the Victory, the main aim was, as Nelson
put it, "to put ones ship alongside the enemy" - and when there, fire
the guns as quickly as possible! The manouevering was done at the
level of fleets - Nelson's successes were down to his genius in
ensuring that he concentrated the fire-power of many of his ships on a
small number of the enemy's, resulting in the disorganization of the
enemy fleet while retaining control of his own. The results, as they
say, are history!
Paul
Sarah & Tony Boas
"somebody" <some...@somewhere.com> wrote in message
news:ahusb4$9pf$1...@wanadoo.fr...
Niarchos & Prince William, they can sail at about 70 degrees to the
wind, but making leeway, so CMG not as good as that.
They can tack, but unless they have enough way on and conditions are
right, they may not be able to get through the wind so will very often
wear ship (gybe) instead.
I remember once doing 3 hours on port tack, 3 hours on starboard and
making only 2.5 miles to windward at the end of the 6 hours!
It really brings to life the meaning of a lee shore or getting embayed!
Tony Boas
Sadler 34 - Bold Warrior
TonyB
some point, they will then start sailing backwards and pick up speed! This
required a tricky manoeuvre involving putting some sails to lee, some to
wind and turning the ship so that she's back to windward again. Hence the
benefit of wearing ship rather than a tack, something which is still done
today (in reverse!) in racing dinghies if the wind is so strong that the
boat is overpowered and will not turn away from the wind when gybing round a
mark. I speak from frightening experience when I gybed my Enterprise and
with rudder hard over sailed at high speed for a metal piled bank! At the
last minute I tacked instead but a close shave!!
TonyB
"Sarah & Tony Boas" <s.b...@dial.pipex.com> wrote in message
news:3d44278e$0$12039$cc9e...@news.dial.pipex.com...
rjh...@ucs.ed.ac.uk
> Incidentally, even the worst handling of naval vessels, Bomb Ketches,
> could be worked to windward - I happen to have done research involving
> the voyage of James Clark Ross to the Antarctic in 1843, and his
> vessels, the re-rigged bomb ketches Erebus and Terror, were capable of
> making ground to windward - I happened to be particularly interested
> in a part of his travels where he was investigating Admiralty Sound.
> If you really want to know more, try: Cooper, A.P.R., 1997, Historical
> observations of Prince Gustav Ice Shelf: Polar Record, v. 33, p.
> 285-294.
Snap!
I did some calculations several years ago based on the figures quoted in
the journal of this voyage (which I no longer have). Allowing for leeway
and tide as far as I was able to from the figures quoted, these vessels
managed to make a startling 5 degrees to windward on each tack!
RH
ANDREW ROBERT BREEN
Sailing ships could certainly go to windward, though not as well as
fore-and-aft rigged ships. 60 degrees off the wind would be typical
for an indifferent 18th century ship (a 50-gun two-decker, say),
while a particularly good ship might get up as close as 50 degrees.
Even singlularly unpromising ships could make their way to windward
given good enough handling - as late as 1891 Gerald 'Sharkey' Noel
brought the ironclad warship Temeraire into Suda Bay (Crete) under
sail and upwind all the way - 13 tacks to get into the harbour,
and not an awful lot of room. Temeraire - the largest brig ever
built - was notorious for not sailing well, especially not to
windward.
http://www.btinternet.com/~britishempire/empire/forces/navyships/ironclads/hmstemeraire.htm
If *that* could go to windward under sail then I'd say that most ships
could get there in the end..
--
Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group
http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)
Five Cats
<a...@aber.ac.uk> writes
>In article <ahusb4$9pf$1...@wanadoo.fr>, somebody <some...@somewhere.com> wrote:
>>I always assumed they just got blown around the world running before the
>>trade winds, and at best could perhaps manage a broad reach with their spars
>>moved to the wind. But I was reading a book last night that described the
>>Spanish Conquistador galleons "tacking" up the Guadalquívir river into
>>Seville. So could they sail a bit into the wind?
>>
>
>Sailing ships could certainly go to windward, though not as well as
>fore-and-aft rigged ships. 60 degrees off the wind would be typical
>for an indifferent 18th century ship (a 50-gun two-decker, say),
>while a particularly good ship might get up as close as 50 degrees.
>Even singlularly unpromising ships could make their way to windward
>given good enough handling - as late as 1891 Gerald 'Sharkey' Noel
>brought the ironclad warship Temeraire into Suda Bay (Crete) under
>sail and upwind all the way - 13 tacks to get into the harbour,
>and not an awful lot of room. Temeraire - the largest brig ever
>built - was notorious for not sailing well, especially not to
>windward.
>
>http://www.btinternet.com/~britishempire/empire/forces/navyships/ironclads/hmste
>meraire.htm
>
>If *that* could go to windward under sail then I'd say that most ships
>could get there in the end..
Maybe the metaphorical hand on the tiller was the crucial bit.... Plus
I bet they did it on a favourable tide.
>
--
Five Cats
Paul Cooper
The amazing thing is the accuracy of his navigation. As part of my
work I was comparing his daily positions with the very latest map of
James Clark Ross Island created by my colleagues, which we know to be
accurate to about 100 m. The one point I could check accurately was
within a mile of being correct, and only one point plotted in an
impossible location - and that only barely, on a day when he probably
had other things on his mind - he was navigating in very tight ice
conditions, and reading between the lines, he nearly got stuck. I was
driven to admire his navigation, which was carried out under extremely
difficult conditions, but which was about as accurate as celestial
navigation from a mobile platform can be. I did note one obvious
mis-print on the daily summary locations, but that was obviously an
error in transcription.
Paul
Betina, Silje og Jens
than abt 70 degrees. (with ten degrees of drift, it makes tacking a little
depressing...)
Jens Lundgaard
"Paul Cooper" <a.paul....@NOntlworldSPAM.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:3d45975...@newscache.cable.ntlworld.com...