Research Note

On Topgallant Shrouds

John Harland

IMO this is a fairly easy decision for the shipmodeler. Just take the topgallant shroud through the hole in the cross tree and secure to futtock stave. Complicating matters further is just an invitation for trouble. However, this is asking a perfectly fair question ......what was the story in the full-sized prototype?

TG Masts were regularly sent up and down and had to be rigged to facilitate this. When sending down the mast, after unfidding, the masthead was slipped out of the loop formed collectively by TG shrouds, backstays and forestay, and the rigging secured to the topmast cap (See illustration p. 117 Seamanship in the Age of Sail. In theory this can be managed without any method of tightening up the TG shrouds. It is true that the TG mast has to be slightly raised to remove the fid, but the amount of slack needed is minimal and various types of patent fid were devised to make this easier. See p. 115 in SiAoS. (BTW, the 'Sir R shipping fid' referred to should be 'The Sir R Seppings fid'.)

However, some method of keeping the TG shrouds taut would seem to be preferable. R C Anderson's book on 17th-18th C rigging suggests they were fitted with deadeyes, and this is illustrated on page 93 of Karl-Heinz Marquardt's book 18th C Rigs and Rigging. Marquardt also shows a method using thimbles and a laniard just above the crosstrees. Lees Masting Rigging says that deadeyes were done away with after 1719. After that they were taken round the futtock stave and then secured to the upper deadeye of the topmast rigging. This seems to agree with Steel's description and neither of them mention taking the shroud to the opposite side of the top. Steel's words do not rule this out, and the 'crossing method' is illustrated and its merits described on page 46 of Darcy Lever's Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor:

"Sometimes the TG shrouds are led across like Fig 277. They are set up to thimbles in the opposite futtock plates; this is a great ease to the futtock staves and topmast rigging; and the lee rigging by these means is kept taut, as they act like Bentinck shrouds."

There is an excellent sketch by Joseph Higgins of this method on Plate 3 of Murphy and Jeffers Spars and Rigging. From Nautical Routine, 1849. [This Dover reprint of a chapter from Nautical Routine costs less than $13, and there are in addition great illustrations by Higgins.]

Pieter LeCompte's Prakticale Zeevaartkunde (Practical Seafaring) (1842), s. 111 and Plate LX, Fig. 403, 404, describes the 'Steel method', and illustrates two methods of using a laniard was used to secure the thimble in the lower end of the shroud to one turned into a strop secured uder the upper dead eye in the top. He says this was tightened up with a tackle or Spanish windlass. The illustration and English translation of the text is found at p. 138-9 in NRJ. Vol 24. No 3.
{John Harland}

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