No modification of the cutter rig in England is so thoroughly Dutch
as the bawley (Fig. 86). Not even the least observant of passengers
on the Margate steamer can have failed to notice these little ships
off the Nore or cruising somewhere up and down the Thames estuary.
Off Southend and Whitstable they are as common as flies in summer,
and bigger children of the same family are to be seen brought up in
the Stour abreast of Harwich. The bawley inherits the Dutch ancient
mainsail, with brails that can speedily shorten canvas, and without
a boom to be kicking about from side to side as the ship rolls in
the trough of the nasty seas that can get up off the entrance to
our great waterway. With their transom stern and easily brailed and
triced mainsail these bawleys are excellent bad-weather boats.
Some of the finest cutters in the country are the Brixham Mumble
Bees, trawlers of about 27 tons. They have their mast stepped
well aft, so that they are able to set an enormous foresail. Here
especially the long bowsprit has survived, and without a bobstay
to support it. The Plymouth hooker, with her mast stepped well
amidships, with her square stern, no boom to her mainsail, and
pole-mast, cannot be said altogether to have escaped Dutch influence,
although it is said that the Devonshire men in Elizabeth’s time
possessed cutters of their own.
The illustration in Plan 1 shows the sail and rigging plan of the
_Gjöa_. The vessel is shown here because in combining much that is
old and new she is one of the most interesting cutters afloat. Her
tonnage is 70, length over all 69 feet, beam 20·66 feet, depth 8·75
feet, draught 7·5 feet. In June 1903 she set out from Christiania,
and three and a half years later she had navigated the North-West
Passage and reached San Francisco. Obviously built for the hard
service of the Arctic regions, her hull is bluff and strong. The
bowsprit is more that of an old-fashioned full-rigged ship than of
a modern cutter, and the squaresail, whose yard and braces will be
noticed, has come back from the times of the old Dutchmen, being,
as already mentioned, of inestimable value for running across vast
expanses of ocean. But in spite of her old-fashioned bow and stern
and rigging she is fitted with a heavy-oil motor, as will be seen
from Plan 2. This was found very useful, giving the ship a speed of 4
knots per hour; and it was the first time a motor-propelled ship had
been so far north. Plan 3 gives an adequate idea of _Gjöa’s_ deck
arrangement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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