When one has been accustomed to the heavy, rigid main-sails of yachts, a ship’s canvas in comparison (bar the spencer) appears to be, and really is, singularly thin and limp. Even a brand-new foresail or main-sail of a square-rigger cannot at all approach in thickness or rigidity a yacht’s canvas; and it could not for a moment withstand the strain to which the latter’s main-sail is subjected while being stretched on the boom and gaff, not to mention the “sweating” up of the sails with the jigs. As for a ship’s upper canvas, it has always seemed to me too light, and I shall never forget my first acquaintance with square-sails at close quarters. It was at Nassau. Walking one day through a sponge-yard, I saw stretched on the ground great squares of smoky, hempen canvas; and on feeling the various pieces, which were the topsails of a vessel that had struck and gone to pieces on Memory Rock, one hundred and fifty miles northwest of New Providence, I remember thinking that it wasn’t at all surprising that the sails of ships blew away if this was what they were made of. At any rate, I put this vessel down as an old worn-out lumberman, fit for nothing but carrying railway ties from Brunswick or Pensacola to New York. As a matter of truth, these sails belonged to a fine British ship, the “Blair Drummond”; and experience has since shown that her canvas was neither better nor worse than the average, though hempen sails never feel as thick or stout as those made of cotton-duck, which our ships use. The advantages claimed for hemp are that it lasts longer, and that sails made thereof are easier to handle than if made of cotton-duck, but they do not present nearly so fine an appearance even when new. If a ship’s canvas were made entirely of No. 0, or even of No. 1, duck, it would be next to impossible to furl them in a hard blow. As it is, with the soft, pliable duck and hemp, the blood often starts from the men’s finger-ends from trying to gather in the bunt of the sail, which bellies out like sheet-iron when the halliards have been let go. It was only this morning that the mate told me that once, about thirty years ago, when a foremast hand in the North Atlantic trade, he was one of thirty men on the maintop-sail-yard (single) of the ship “Southampton,” trying to put the third reef in the sail during a January gale. “And, sir,” said he, “we could _not_ have tied the reef in that sail if the ship had been sinkin’ under us, and that with a man for every reef-point.” It is also surprising how neatly and compactly this thin canvas can be furled on a yard. From the deck hardly anything at all can be seen on the royal- and sky-sail-yards; while even the upper topsails when in the gaskets are not anything like as bulky or hummocky as the most fastidiously furled yacht’s main-sail.