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SEA HISTORY for kids -.
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RIGGING In the Age of Sail, square-rigged ships and schooners were the workhorses of both international trade and coastal transportation, as well as the world's navies. This was before there were engines to power them across the oceans. Instead, these ships' "engines" were sails and their fuel was the wind. Sails don't just float out there all by themselves. Ships need spars (masts, booms, gaffs, yards, and bowsprits) to extend them aloft and outwards. The rigging supports the masts and is used to control the spars and sails. A large sailing ship's rig might use miles of rope. Before the late 1800s, all the rope would have been fiber rope, usually from hemp or manila. Later, ships began using wire rope for standing rigging and even parts of the running rigging.
Standing? Running? What do they have to do with sailing? The standing rigging supports the masts with shrouds and stays, and once it is set up, it pretty much stays in place and is rarely adjusted by the crew underway. The running rigging, just like is sounds, is regularly moving. The crew uses the running rigging to set or strike sails or adjust, or "trim ," the sails to best make use of the wind's strength and direction. On square dggers, sails are trimmed by adjusting the angles of the yards with lines called braces and lifts. On fore-and-aft-rigged vessels-schooners, sloops, yawls, and ketches-the crew adjusts the sail trim by pulling in or easing the sheets. During the Age of Sail, just about everyone employed in a ship's crew would know the basics of how to make and maintain the rigging and sails. On larger vessels that carried specialists in their crews, a rigger would be in charge of takin~care of the standing and running rigging, and the sailmaker would be in charge of maintaining and making sails. Many ships could take care of all their rigging needs with their own crew. In port towns and cities, riggers and sailmakers could make a good living by setting up a business ashore in buildings with big open spaces where they could work called "lofts." ,!, (left) Sails and rigging aloft on USS Constitution. When the Constitution is fully rigged, she carries more than 8 miles of rope in her rrigging and can set more than 42,000 sq~uare feet of sail-thats nearly a full acrre of canvas-on 3 masts. SEA HIISTORY 142, SPRING 2013