Manual of Seamanship for Boys' Training Ships of the Royal Navy

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 Excerpt: ... span round the trysail-mast, half-way down, or seized to the luff of the sail. Small vessels are only fitted with one peak-brail. A treble block is now seized to the jaws of the gaff, which takes the peak and throat-brails, therefore a fiddle-block is now used on the gaff for the inner peak-brails. To Reeve Brails. They are each in one piece of rope, and when the sail is bent and hoisted, the position for the brails is determined on, they are middled, and the bight of each brail seized to the after-leech of the sail, as marked, and rove through their respective blocks, from aft forward down on deck. Lazy Guy. Is a pendant with a hook placed in one end and a single block in the other; the fall is rove through another single block with a hook, the standing part is spliced in the ass of the block, in the pendant. When in use, the pendant goes round the boom, and hooks to its own part between the topping-lifts and sheets, the block of the fall is hooked in the main chain for a brig, and the mizen for a ship; it is used when running free, to steady the boom. Jaw Ropes. A jaw rope is a piece of rope rove through a hole in the jaws of the boom or gaff, from out in. A stopper-knot is worked in the end to keep it from coming through; it is passed round before the mast through a number of round pieces of wood, called trucks, through another hole in the jaws of the boom or gaff on the opposite side, from in out, and a figure-of-eight knot is made in the end, to keep it from slipping through; it is to a boom or gaff what a parrel is to a yard. Vangs, or Peak-Downhauls. Vangs in large ships are double, and in small vessels single. There is an iron band round the gaff a short space, or about one-seventh in from the gaff end, with an eye-boll on either side of it; to the...