The Eastern Basin
The Italian form of lugsail takes us among the modern Greek fishermen, who use it in many of their sponge-boats and other fishing-craft, and in their small traders of the Archipelago. But the Greeks, although they built and fitted out quite a fleet of felucca-rigged privateers in the early wars of the nineteenth century, are not really sailors at heart.
GREEK LUGGER
Our own seamen in times past had a very poor opinion of the seamanship of the pukka Greek, and a naval officer who spent three years of one commission in and about the Aegean, declared that he could never get any information out of a Greek pilot except long lists of omens foreboding bad weather, or of ports to run to when the wind should freshen up.
It must in justice be admitted that navigation under sail in small craft has its drawbacks in a sea where the wind, even in weather of an apparently settled character, is liable to such sudden shifts as is here the case.
BRINDISI LUGSAIL The sheltered anchorage of one hour is a dead lee-shore the next; the greater the apparent protection when the anchor is dropped close in, the more imminent the danger when the wind is blowing a sudden gale right on the rocks.
GREEK COASTER A southerly wind and fine weather may suddenly shift to due north with a heavy squall and confused sea, while six miles to the eastward a distant sail is seen with a fresh easterly wind. *1* Such incidents, frequent as they are in an archipelago of deep soundings and few real harbours where ground-tackle is of service, have had the effect of almost driving the not too daring Greek of the mainland off the sea.
*1* Admiral W. Smyth's Mediterranean.
A large part of the trade and fishing of the Aegean and Levant is carried on by Turks, who, although not perhaps such skilled sailors as the Arabs and the Moors have been, have yet all the courage and pertinacity of their co-religionists at sea.
TURKISH COASTER
A favourite rig, to be seen alike among the islands of the Archipelago and in the Dardanelles, is the single-masted spritsail vessel carrying a square topsail, fore Staysail, and one or more jibs. The mainsail is hauled out along an almost horizontal line to the spreet end.
There is no boom, and the spreet is controlled by vangs. The sail can be hauled into the mast with great rapidity and ease, and it is a quick and simple method of brailing and reefing which commends itself to the cautious Eastern sailor. As a rule it is badly set, being cut to bag in a manner less artistic than serviceable, this mode of cut, dear to the Eastern heart, being more conducive to speed when handled by those who understand it than we generally imagine, especially in heavy-laden craft.
SMYRNA COASTER
The Turkish boat is built long of bow, low in waist, round of bilge, and high of stern. The latter is rounded and generally has the rudder slung outside on the curved stern-post. The low waist is often protected by a duck or canvas strake, which is easily removed in light weather for pulling, as in many of the Greek boats of the Archipelago.
LEVANTINE BRIGANTINE-
POLACRE RIGGED
Simple sprit or low-yarded lateen boats are used for fishing and cargo-carrying in the Bosphorus. They have the same general features of build, and a fore staysail or jib, and are known as mahona. But the most typical craft of Turkish waters, next to the caique -- the long-bowed, wide-sterned rowing boat of the Bosphorus -- is the polacre-rigged trader. This class of vessel was very common at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and although still met with on other coasts, as in the Tuscan bombarda, not quite extinct, it is most popular with Eastern Mediterranean seamen. IN THE BOSPHORUS
As a rule it is what we should term a pole-masted brigantine, but the name can, and used to, be applied to any square-rigged vessel having pole-masts.
FISHING AND CARGO BOATS
As is implied by this description, the yards are lowered right down to just above the foreyard for furling; there are no foot-ropes, the crew standing on the yard below from which they can just reach to furl each sail above. There are no tops, and the mast has a peculiar tapering appearance not unpleasing to the eye.
The mainsail is either a balance-lug or of the fore-and-aft pattern, with very long boom, and the mainmast, in the latter case, is often in two parts, and is fitted with main and main-topmast staysail and jib-headed gaff topsail. It often acquires a tipsy-looking rake forward, while the foremast adopts a somewhat similar drunken rake aft. The crews are inclined to bestow more pains upon the cleanliness of the sails and gear aloft than upon that of their own persons or of their cabins. Yet some of these little brigantines are perfect pictures, and are greatly cared for by their owners.
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