A New Rig for Ships and Other Vessels Author:Robert Bennet Forbes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and ve have the sum of $200. Now, if the advantages of the rig are not worth that sum in the first cost of a ship, they are not worth adopting. But the spar-m... more »aker has deducted nothing for the decreased diameter of yards and topmasts, and which I think nearly equal to the sum of $50. Secondly. The next objection is to increased weight aloft: let us examine into the extent of this. The lower masts are longer by eight feet at the head; this is counterbalanced by the reduced weight of the masts above the lower masts; there is one more yard on each mast, the extra weight of which is partly made up by the reduced diameter of all except the lower yards, by the reduced weight of the topgallant sail, which represents the upper half of the old topsail, and by the fact that the topsail yards are always lower down. The booms are all lighter than in the old rig, excepting the foretopmast-studdingsail boom, so that the effect to heel the ship is not greater than in the old rig. These arguments are used only to meet the objections of those who prefer to be light aloft; and if all ships are constructed deep and narrow, and are cotton or tea-loaded, with little ballast, the objections are valid. But for iron-loaded ships, and ships with any other heavy cargo, a little additional weight aloft is, to say the least, no disadvantage. Most of the serious accidents which happen to ships at sea, in gales of wind, arise from being too laborsome, and from not being able to reduce and To Make Sail quickly. More damage to ships is done by their having too little than too much sail set. Considering, then, that the extra weight aloft is a disadvantage only to crank-ships, I ask if, in this class, it is not made up tenfold by having the power to reduce and Make Sail quickly ? For what is more uncomfortabl...« less