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Top Spritsail is impossible on HMS Victory?

Y.T.

Y.T.

Joined
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Good afternoon,

I am confused at how was it possible to hang the spritsail topsail off the jib boom when right under this sail there would be four martingale ropes preventing for this sail to hang there. Looks like we eighter can have a sail there or the four martingale ropes, but not both. Could someone explain?

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I thought the yard was only used at some point to widen the angle of the bowsprit shrouds. The dolphin striker was used when jib sails alone were in fashion and no squaresails were set on the bowsprit.
 
Books show sails as you can see. Besides jib boom and flying jib boom shrouds (guys) are mounted on spritsail yard only, guys are not attached to spritsail topsail.
 
I believe those are stays to support the jibboom attached to the end of the yards. maybe it was incorrect to refer to them as shrouds . I do think that once the dolphin striker was added no squaresails were flown on her bowsprit.I don't know about the Victory but this was the general course of evolution in regard to headsails.
 
There are a lot of photos at RMG that may add to the confusion. Nothing ever seems to be consistent back in the day.

1720
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1719
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1737
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1765
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1800
1774111449094.png
 
pzak said:
rigging practices evolved over time. Victory has had a long, long life.
Click to expand...
Not just the rigging. :) Looking at the scantlings of the various parts. Changes in dimensions as well as inclusions, and exclusions of parts occurred as well. Even within one nation's navy there was change/growth. Some of it was caused by outside forces (lack of trees and their compass timber) other times by advances in materials (steel in place of iron and brass) Then there are some that do not have obvious reasons. The size of the keel is a good example. I assume it changed for added strength but how did they come up with the actual numbers?

The following shows the dimensions of a keel of a 100 gun ship from the 1719 Establishment for the RN compared to the dimensions in the 1788 Shipbuilder's Repository. NB: Not highly noticeable, but unlike the depth, the siding of the keel changed fore and aft, it was never the same from the stem to the post. The sketch is not to scale, but the dimensions shown are from the contemporary given sources.

Allan

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