Toronto Topsail Reaches Bahamas: Schooner Days MCCLIV (1254)

by C. H. J. Snider

KINGARVIE, Capt. Wm. Larmour, "New Yeared" in the Bahamas, reporting at Nassau, 200 miles offshore from Miami, with all five on board well. She had a generally pleasant passage since leaving Toronto in November. With Capt. Larmour are a Toronto couple, and a Port Arthur one.

Kingarvie is the last vessel to sport a gafftopsail in the RCYC and possibly on the lakes. The star-tickling triangular marconi rig has superseded such millinery.

Time was when every sailing vessel of any pretension to full rig, whether yacht or timber drogher or collier or grain carrier, carried topsails. Those without were called baldheads. In the Queen City Yacht Club "Pop" Brown's 20-footer Winona and Owain Martin's Enid each had a club-topsail in her full cutter rig of five sails - and they sailed them single handed! The contemporary Canadian schooner Minnedosa, 225 feet long, had four gaff topsails for her four masts.

OLD friend Doc, who sailed in the Snowbird with "Black Jack" Thomas fifty years ago sent us this hail for the New Year:

"Ready for stays!"

"Hard-a-lee!""

"Light up forrad!"

"So it's over and, under, then under and over.

"Sheet home!"

"Tack down!"

Public relations counsel couldn't 'be expected to know what he meant, but it was plain as print to anyone who ever sailed a fore-and-aft, schooner. Just the regular liturgy of the watch in tacking. The calls would made by the Old Man, repeated by the mate for good measure and responses "sung out" by the crew, to show they heard and understood.

Nine kinds of topsails we have encountered our sailing. Of the square brand there were single, double, upper and lower and roller-reefing, the latter only known on salt water. Of the fore-and-aft the yachtsman had the jib-headed, jackyard and club. He used to have also the sprit. In commerce is the raffee, gaff and fisherman, the latter being actually a quadrilateral maintopmast staysail. Triangular m.t.s.'s were called queen staysails in yachts and fly-by-nights in lake schooners. They are not considered topsails. Nor is the jibtopsail, which is somewhat of a paradox.

In our lakers the fore gafftopsail was the bane of the lubber and the pride of the smart man for handling. The other topsails swung from tack to tack without attention, there being no interfering stays. But between the fore and main mastheads stretched the important stay known to us as the triatic, though salties call it the springstay. Above it the maintopmast stay and top-gallant or jumper stay also came to the foremast head. The fore gafftopsail had to be shifted over these stays every time the schooner tacked or came about - and sometimes the job required all hands and much profanity.

Much depended on the strength and smartness of the man at the masthead. Before the helm was put down (hard-a-lee) to come in stays, one man had to climb the forerigging to the crosstrees and then up the jacob-ladder to the triatic stay.

The crew on deck cast off the gafftopsail sheet, and hauled the clewline, which dragged the outer corner of the sail in to the masthead. Then they hauled on the tripping-line which lifted the tack or inner corner of the sail.

The man aloft, working maybe in blowy blackness in driving rain, had to untoggle the sheet (a rope, ladies, not a coverlet) and pass it over the maintopmast stays and the triatic stay and the masthead and toggle it back to the clew. Then he had to do the same thing for the tack, which, again, ladies, in this case is a hundred-foot rope, not something to sit on.

The masthead man also had to boot and fist and haul the great thundering loosened sail over those three stays when he yelled "Tack on deck", and "Sheet home!" He would drop the coiled up tack to windward, because that was the right side for it when the sail was set. The deck crew would heave on the topsail sheet till the clew crept out to the peak of the gaff again. Sometimes these sheets were of chain for the sail was large, and the strain was taken on a single part. In the sea-barge Will Everard, in the North Sea, we used to take the topsail sheet to the anchor winch. Like Kingarvie's it did not have to be shifted in tacking. In the lake schooners the fore gafftopsail sheet was often taken to the capstan to get it "home." The tack, being a straight down pull, gave less trouble.