The Last Grain Race

The first sail I helped to send aloft and bend was a main lower topsail. It was stretched out across the deck and the head earrings (the ropes with which the head of the sail was stretched out along the yard) made fast to their cringles. Then the robands, the rope yarns with which the sail was bent to the jackstay, were put through each eyelet hole in the head. Next the sail was made up with its head and foot together and a gantline was rove through a block on the mast-head. One end of it was made fast to the centre of the sail, which was then hauled aloft with the help of the donkey-engine, a refinement we were not to enjoy at sea because the donkey-engine guzzled too much coal and water. Once at sea every sail was sent aloft on a gantline by hand capstan.

At the yard, clewlines, buntlines and chain sheets were ready to be bent to the lower topsail which now swung on the gantline above the yard. The sheets for the lower topsail had been cast off the cleats on the mainmast and enough chain hauled up from below to enable them to be shackled to the clew of the sail. The clewlines were shackled on and the buntlines were passed through the wooden thimbles on the front of the sail and clinched to the cringles in the bottom of the sail by a buntline knot which would not jam. The sail was now ready to be brought to the yard. Those on deck hauled away at the buntlines and those on the yard hauled on the head of the sail, one man sitting astride each yardarm to reeve the head earring through straps on the yard and haul out the head of the sail to make it quite square. The head of the sail was then made fast to the jackstay with the robands already in the cringles.

The sail was now bent, with the clews of the lower corners of the sail drawn right up to the yardarm by the clewlines and the body or bunt of the sail hauled upward by the buntlines. Now we had to furl it, as we were making a neat harbour stow. The weather leech had to be taken in first and the heavy weight of sheet and clew earring taken as far in towards the mast as possible. Next, the body of the sail was hauled up and beaten down in a neat package on top of the yard and the rope gaskets passed round both the yard and the sail, and secured.

To set the same sail one hand would be sent aloft to cast off the gaskets and overhaul the bunt and clewlines, leaving them slack. The lee sheet would be hauled down, then the weather sheet, and, on a movable yard such as the upper topsail, the yard would be raised by the hands on deck applying themselves to the topsail halliard winch. The last job for the man aloft was to overhaul the buntlines and make up the gaskets neatly on top of the yard, seizing them to the jackstays.

All this was mystifying to me. I had read of these things and, with the aid of the Sailmaker’s list, had tried to memorise the Swedish for buntlines, clewlines and so on, but it was different up in the rigging. In the fo’c’sle I might know that the upper topsail outer buntline on the port side was ‘babords övre märs yttre bukgårding.’ In practice my mind became blank. It was difficult enough to hang on and furl sail in a flat calm in dock. I trembled to think of performing these feats in the Atlantic.

7

Wild Life in the Irish Sea

We sailed from Belfast on Tuesday, October 18th, 1938, our destination Port Lincoln for orders. On board were a crew of twenty-eight, including the Captain, a man of huge size, who had come to us from Erikson’s four-masted barque Archibald Russell.

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