The Main Fiferail...

In the old days, when the Balclutha was towed to sea, twenty five sails were ready to set as soon as the tug released the towrope. Handling this canvas required much additional cordage rove off, including buntlines, leech-lines, clew garnets, halliard, and downhauls, which were not in place while the vessel was in port and the sails were stowed below decks. The visible manila running rigging on the ship in port would be doubled when she put to sea. This rope rigging was made fast to belaying pins in the pintails along the ship's side and in the teak fireflies at the base of each mast; the fiferail took its name from the tradition that on men-of-war the ship's fifer and drummer perched there during court martial. A spider band about five feet up on the mast held other belaying pins for additional cordage and for the chain topsail sheets. Because of the strain of this large sail, chain instead of rope sheets were necessary to control it; these passed through rings on the fore part of the mast and then up to the spider band. Each of the hundred and twenty-five or more hauling ends coming down the masts was made fast to its own particular belaying pin, a system that never varied from ship to ship so sailors could always find the right rope no matter how dark the night. In 1918 aboard the bark Kilmallier, during a hurricane in which the barometer fell sharply and the ship ran before the storm, Capt. Henry warned all hands on the poop that the ship might founder at any time. Although the vessel had already been stripped down to a lower tops'l before the hurricane struck, Capt. Henry considered even that too much canvas. Twice during two days, the second mate, carpenter, and an apprentice went to slack the main tops'l sheets, which were made of two to two and one-quarter inch chain coming down from the main yard amidship, through fixed steel rings, and made fast criss-cross to the steel belaying pins on the mast ring. It took a top maul to persuade those sheets to slack around the pins because of the force of the wind on the tops'l, and on both occasions the ship responded by not burying herself so deeply as before.

San Francisco, California · United States