discussing, the Dutchman uses the same shaped headsail for his big ships, the spritsail underneath the bowsprit still remaining. In course of the first half of the eighteenth century this innovation spread to France and to England. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, also, besides the fore staysails, main and foretopmast staysails and main topmast studding sails were in use in our ships. The cables were each 100 fathoms long, made of 21-inch hemp, and the bower anchors weighed 74 cwts. for a first-rate. The length of the longboats was 36 feet, the pinnaces 33 feet, and the skiff 27 feet. The heaviest guns were 42-pounders.[105] By the middle of the eighteenth century the staysails and triangular headsails had become quite common, and two instead of one spritsail are found under the bowsprit. The sprit topmast disappears, but the jackstaff is used in its place to fly the Union Jack when at anchor, being taken in when under way, otherwise it would hinder the working of the triangular headsails. An important change now takes place in the mizzen. The reader will recollect that for several hundred years it had been used in its Mediterranean triangular shape on European ships. Instead of the yard coming quite low down, as in Fig. 63 of Charles II.’s ship, the angle the yard makes with the mizzen mast is nearer to a right angle. Thus, instead of the sail being triangular it is rectangular, having four sides instead of three. The next stage is to cut off that part of this sail which projects forward of the mast, though the yard itself is still allowed to extend ahead of the mast without having any canvas on its forward end. The luff of the sail is laced to the mast, hoops not being used. Finally, by at least 1768, the portion of the yard still found without any canvas is lopped off, and the vangs which had been used all the time for the mainsail of the sloops are seen coming down from the peak to the stern. Also, following the example of the contemporary Dutch fore-and-afters, there is no boom. If the reader will now look at the mizzen of the corvette model in Fig. 69 he will see this penultimate stage clearly shown. The final stage comes later when a boom is added, and that, too, may be traced for its origin to the Dutch fore-and-afters, which, discarding the sprit extending diagonally across the mainsail, added a tiny gaff and a much longer boom, the sail being loose-footed. Instead of the long bowsprit of the early Stuarts, the middle of the eighteenth century saw this mast-like projection cut into two pieces, so as to make bowsprit and jib-boom. Topgallants now become far more frequently used.