Tall Ships : A Guide to Sailing Ships Around the World

100 Pages·2015·45.34 MB·English

by  Max Mudie

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED
TALL SHIPS
A GUIDE TO SAILING SHIPS AROUND THE WORLD
PUBLISHED BY
No.6
£7.95
Sagres at sunset, start
of the Cutty Sark Tall
Ships race, 1995.
Editor • Nicholas Leach, Art Editor • Mark Hyde, Author • Max Mudie, Proofng • Natasha Singletonz
Published by Kelsey Publishing, Cudham Tithe Barn, Berrys Hill, Cudham, Kent TN16 3AG, tel [phone], www.kelsey.co.uk.
Printed by William Gibbons & Sons Ltd, West Midlands
© 2015 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden except with prior permission in writing from the publisher.
The publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher. ISBN 978-1-909786-76-9
SHIPS ILLUSTRATED
TALL SHIPS
A guide to sailing ships round the world
Max Mudie
SHIPS ILLUSTRATED
Lord Nelson in the
Bahamas in 1989: the
frst tall ship photograph
For Miles, with much love taken by the author,
using a manual Nikon
with 50mm lens and
transparency flm.
THE AUTHoR
Max Mudie
Author Max Mudie is a British
photographer; he frst sailed on a tall
ship in 1987 and has been sailing, and
photographing them, ever since. His
images are used worldwide, in books,
in calendars and on stamps. Outside of
this he also photographs cars, houses,
weddings and conferences. His images
are online at tallshipstock.com.
Acknowledgements
To my parents Colin and Rosemary, and
Frank Scott, for fact checking, and for
their encouragement over many years;
Ron Dadswell, OBE for the author’s
photo; and to Arthur Saluz for the
drawing of Cutty Sark.
4 I Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships
Contents
Contents
Part One Part Four Military barques ... 36 Part Seven
Rigs, rigging and races ........ 6 Sisterships from the Blohm + Voss yard 60m and under ................. 69
What is a tall ship, and how to decide what and the South American barques that Big brigs, and four barques that defne
rig it has, the tall ships races and why sail they inspired, such as USCGC Eagle, what sail training is all about, including
training makes it all work. Cuauhtémoc and Gorch Fock (II). the STA’s schooners and brigs.
Part Two Part Five Part Eight 50m and
The biggest tall ships ..........12 Big national ships .............. 43 smaller ............................. 84
The only fve-masted ship Royal Clipper, More full ship-rigged tall ships, including Barquentines including Morgenster,
the big Russians Sedov and Kruzenshtern, the Clipper Stad Amsterdam class, Pelican, Tre Kronor and Spirit of New
the Japanese Kaiwo Maru II and Nippon Danmark and Gloria. Zealand, and a bark that is not a barque.
Maru II and two ‘nearly’ sisterships.
Part Six Civilian tall ships ... 52 Part Nine The small fleet .... 94
Part Three National ships ... 24 Ships that did not start their lives as tall The feet of vessels 40m and under,
Tall ships that are 100m or longer. The ships and the world’s biggest mixed ability including Shtandart, Royalist and two
ship-rigged vessels include six sisterships vessel, including Christian Radich, Gulden freshwater brigantines, Pathfnder and
all built in the 1980s, Leeuw and Sørlandet. Playfair, that are perfect for match racing.
Frigate, barquentine and full rigged ship: Shtandart, Loth Lorien
and Sorlandet after the race start, Stavanger 2011.
Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships I 5
SHIPS ILLUSTRATED
PART ONE
Rigs, rigging and races
Kogge replica Roland von
Bremen: launched in 2000
and based in Bremen,
and pictured at Sail
Bremerhaven in 2005.
hat is a tall corners, the upper two of which are lashed to which led to an increase in size.
ship? Poet John the outer ends of the yard. The ships of the line, HMS Victory and HMS
Masefeld is The square sail goes back to the trireme of Trincomalee, have a shape and rig familiar to
probably to Roman times and the Viking longship. It is a modern tall ship sailors. By the middle of the
blame: his poem rig that has evolved to a point where it cannot nineteenth century wooden cargo vessels, such
‘Sea Fever’ really be improved on. To see this evolution, as Dunbrody, also carried a barque rig which
Wcontains the most the story can be told through a number of had settled in shape and layout through trial
widely known use of the phrase ‘tall ship’. replicas and recreations. Firstly, the Cogs and error. Iron-hulled clippers, such as Cutty
The poem was written at the end of a century of the Hanseatic league, with a single mast Sark, had the running rigging coming down
that had started with Nelson and ended with and single squaresail, sailed from the tenth to deck level to pinrails in a pattern that is
clipper ships and the steam-driven iron hulls. century as cargo carriers and were also used as standardised. Any sailor from HMS Victory or
In perhaps its purest sense a tall ship is warships. Then the ships of the Tudor era, such Cutty Sark would fnd the layout of a modern
square rigged: a vessel carrying square sails. as John Cabot’s Matthew; this was a caravel tall ship pretty familiar. It is only the change
The key to a square-rigger is that one or more redonda with three masts and two squaresails from wooden masts – stepped so that each
horizontal yards rigged on the ship’s mast on the main. The evolution continues through mast is actually three poles joined together –
and across the ship each carry a squaresail, Mayfower and the ability of shipbuilders to to steel and aluminium made as single tubes
which is not really a square but does have four fasten planks and make bigger wooden frames, that is the major diference.
6 I Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships
Tall Ships
Matthew, a replica 15th century caravel
redonda, was launched in 1996 in Bristol
and is owned by The Matthew of Bristol
Trust; she is seen off Penzance in 1996.
Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships I 7
SHIPS ILLUSTRATED
Rigs
The key to tall ship rigs is the square sail
which is lashed to a horizontal spar, called a
yard. Even without the square sails set, the
yards on a tall ship are the key to its rig:
• If it has three masts or more, and has
squaresails on all masts, then it is ship
rigged, also known as a full(y)-rigged ship; if
it has two masts and square sails on both it
is a brig.
AB•O IfV iEt hA assq utahrree esa mil aass tssh oowrn m oon rCeh, raisntidan s qRuadairceh .
sails on all but the rear (mizzen) mast, it is a
barque.
• If it has three masts or more and square
sails on only the front (fore) mast it is a
barquentine; if it has two masts and square
sails only on the foremast, it is a brigantine.
• If it has two masts or more, and the fore
mast is shorter than the other masts and no
squares, it is a schooner.
• If it is a schooner and seems to have one or
more squaresails on the foremast, it may be
a topsail schooner, but this depends on what
fore and aft sails are set aft of the mainmast.
Dunbrody, replica of a 19th century emigrant
ship, was launched in 2000, and can be seen
in New Ross, Ireland. She is pictured here
under sail off Milford Haven in 2006.
ABOVE Götheborg, replica of a Swedish East Indiaman originally built in Stockholm in 1738.
On modern tall ships, the sails are made from Since almost all of the tall ships fl eet are
modern materials, like Dacron, and the ropes dedicated to sail training, the exact defi nition
may be plastic, although they still look and work of tall ships has been split. The annual tall
the same. The defi nition of a tall ship as ‘any ships races, organised by Sail Training
traditionally-rigged vessel’ is therefore a misnomer. International, consider any vessel over 35ft
Square rig especially has reached a point where involved in sail training as a tall ship. So a tall
the Kevlar sails or carbon fi bre spars of modern ship is a vessel with square rig or one that is
yacht racing are not actually an improvement. used for sail training.
Cutty Sark, one of the most
famous tall ships ever.
8 I Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships
Tall Ships
Rigging halliard which runs from the middle of the
Very few sails are set fl ying, in other words yard up the mast and then down to deck has to
without some control. To set a jib or staysail you be hauled tight and often to take any tension
need to haul on a halliard. To allow this to happen out of the system; while this is being done, the
the downhaul has to be released and the sheets lee brace has to be eased.
have to be tended, so that if the sail is suddenly While all of the bits of rope used so far are
fi lled with wind it does not fl og uncontrollably. to set or furl the sail, the braces change the
For a squaresail you have to release the angle of a squaresail to the wind. They run
buntlines and clewlines that have gathered aft from the end of the yards and either to the
it up under the yard and haul down on the mast behind or down to deck. And so ‘bracing
sheets, which apart from the lowest sail – the stations’ is when you need most of your crew,
course – run down to the outer end of the yard your trainees and all of your watches on deck,
below the sail you are setting, in to the mast many to haul the braces, possibly on the
and down to deck. If it is a hauling yard, and leeward side, and some to let the braces out,
has to be raised to stretch the sail, then the under control, on the other side.
ABOVE Lanyards rigged between deadeyes, tensioning
the shrouds on the 19th century Dunbrody replica,
which was launched in 2000 and is a static museum
ship based in New Ross, Ireland, owned by The
Dunbrody Trust.
Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships I 9
SHIPS ILLUSTRATED
Particularly with sails set, the yards have
to come round together, ‘like a barn door’,
otherwise too much strain may break bits
of the rig, or even pull the clews out of a
squaresail. Tacking, or wearing, on a tall ship
with square sails, which in a yacht involves
some steering and maybe two sheets being
hauled in, is done in sequence and with careful
timing so that parts of the rig push the ship
one way and other parts cause leverage in the
opposite direction.
The ships in this book are selected by
size, from largest to smallest, determined by
extreme or sparred length, which includes
bowsprit and jibboom (the bit attached to
the bowsprit). Whereas most other ships are
defi ned by hull length, extreme length better
expresses the size of the rig carried by tall ships.
Tall Ship races
Since the fi rst tall ships race in 1956, widely
seen as a one off , the desire to bring ships
together and race them has grown, as has the
size of the fl eet that takes part. It has been an
annual race since 1964, typically taking in four
ports in a race-cruise-race series. From 1973
ABOVE Dutch brig, barque and topsail schooner: Europa just ahead of Wylde Swan and well ahead of
until 2003 the races were sponsored by Berry
Morgenster, at the race start, Lerwick, 2011.
Brothers and Rudd through their Cutty Sark
whisky brand.
10 I Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships