I am a little confused about this thread. The common usage of the term "Jack Stay " is, as has been described in several responses, a rope, and later an iron rod, run through eye bolts spaced along the top of a yard to attach the head of the sail to, and/or used to reef the sail to rather than around the yard itself. I think that is a reasonable definition of the term "jack stay" (there may be others).The quickest way to resolve this difficulty would be to address the question to Ben Lankford himself.
However, it is hard to relate this definition of a jack stay to the Constitution, since jack stays, as described above, did not come into use until at least 1830 or so, which was somewhat after the Constitution's active sailing career, thus I cannot fathom how Ben Lankford is using the term in his plans/instructions. Can you add anything as to how he used the term? I ask this because Ben rarely misses a beat and thus I am curious.
{Neb Kehoe}
However, Neb raises an interesting point, namely the date of introduction of yard jackstays. According to James Lees, Masting and Rigging, this occurred in 1811. He may have relied on an Admiralty Order for this, but does not give the citation. Yard Jackstays are not shown in the 1809 edition of Lever's Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor, but are described and illustrated in the 1819 edition, it being noted that have been in use 'for some years'. There would be every reason to imagine that they would have been retrofitted to the yards of CONSTITUTION.
Rather surprisingly they are not described in Karl-Heinz Marquardt's 18th Century Rigs and Rigging. The omission is puzzling, but could be defended since they did not come into use until the early 19th C. The English edition of Marquardt's book lacks an Index, but the original German version is fully indexed, and so far as I can see 'Jackstay' is used to describe the jackstay for a middle staysail (See Lever page 61, Fig. H), and for a rope 'horse' used instead of a snow-mast.
Lever alludes to the usefulness of the rope jackstay as a handhold, commenting
that prior to their introduction, it was common to leave the ends of the rope
robbands long, so they could be grasped by the men on the yard. In some ships
the ends were knotted together to serve as a lifeline.
{John H Harland}
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