Photographs of the brig, The Lady Washington

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There are other pictures of the Lady Washington in the Life on Board section.  If you like looking at little details then you will appreciate the redundancy.  Compare these pictures to the ones of the Endeavour, in it's own section.  Notice that on the Lady Washington and the Endeavour there seem to be lines running everywhere, while on museum ships there aren't as many.   This is because museum ships don't have all the running rigging required for working sail, since they have no sails.  There is probably three times more rigging on a working vessel than a non working one.

     The brig, Lady Washington, is a replica of a typical late 18th century trading vessel.  She is the Washington state tall ship and was built in 1989.  She weighs 170 tons, is registered at 99.9 tons, is 110' over all length, draws 11', caries 11 sails and is a really wonderful vessel to sail.   She can tack on a dime. (I did say tack )  The Canadian flag is flying on the foremast because she was sailing in Canadian waters at the time.

   Here we are sailing along in the ocean under all square sail on a port tack; the fore-course tack is boarded on the port side.  The clump of furled canvas is the mainsail brailed up, which was usually done in the 18th century rather than lowering the gaff.  

     Approaching land we have the fore-course reefed for better visibility.  That pill shaped plastic thing hanging from the catharpins is a radar reflector.  Wood and canvas don't reflect radar very well and if the freighters can see you at night they usually attempt not to run over you.

     There's not much wind and we have everything set, even the spritsail, which is seldom ever useful.

    The main-topsail full and drawing.

     The head gear is a rather complex collection of things that changed drastically during the beginning of the 19th century.  One handy feature is that the jib-boom can be retracted. The unhandy feature is that there is nothing under the jib-boom to hold it down, even though the topgallant and royal stays are attached to the end of it.  In the right hand picture you can see some white lines running from the end of the jib-boom and through  bullseyes on the spritsail yard.  These lines are the jib-boom-guys.  When you are going to weather and need some support for the royal stays, you cockbill the spritsail yard and bowse down on the jib-boom-guys which act as a truss.  By the beginning years of the 19th century the dolphin-striker and martingale were invented, which provided a permanent truss but interfered with the spritsail, which became obsolete.

     Here you can see the jib-boom retracted, which makes the encounter with docks a bit easier.  The course yards are cockbilled to avoid pilings.  Notice the nice furl on the fore-top, fore-topgallant and the main-topgallant.  The main-top isn't quite as good.  The furl is supposed to set high on the yard and have the bulk of the canvas in a hump in the center with as little canvas as possible on the outer parts of the yard.  It is also supposed to have a smooth skin on the outside to repel water.  You will notice that all the furls in the Antique Print section are excellent; old-time sailors took great pride in good furls.

     Don't try this at home, folks.  This is the view from the topgallant yard-arm looking across a very bad furl.  If an 18th century sailor did this and came down on deck, something terrible would have happened to him.  The Lady Washington has an active volunteer program, which means that people are learning as fast as they can and things are not always perfect.

     The view from aloft.  Even though this is a fairly small vessel it seems quite tall when you are up there.  The furls are quite embarrassing, but this was at the beginning of a tour and we didn't have it down yet.  Eventually we developed a rivalry to see who's furl had collected the least water after a rain.  This is important to people standing on deck when the gaskets are cast loose.

     This photo, taken by someone who was sitting on the gaff,  gives a good view of the helmsman and tiller.  One would think that a 170 ton vessel could have lots of force on the rudder and one would be correct.   Controlling the tiller would be impossible at times if it weren't for the relieving tackle, which you can see running athwart ships across the tiller.  One part of the tackle runs through a lever brake on top of the tiller.  One person can handle the tiller under most circumstances, however I once needed five people on the tiller when I brought the Lady Washington across the Columbia River Bar. 

    All sail set, full and by.

     Ensigns of this period were very big, but the real point is all the nice rigging.

     The fore-top.  If you come on board looking for the boatswain, just look up.  He's up there puttering with something; everything has to work and maybe with a little more puttering it can work even better.

     Modern sailboats have about 5 lines and if you go to a marina on a windy day all of the lines on all of the boats are clattering.   This little brig has over 100 lines that belay on deck and lots that belay aloft; several miles worth.  On a windy day the vessel is silent; nothing clatters, and nothing is allowed to chafe against anything.   On a extremely windy day the rigging sings; the wind vibrates everything like the strings on a violin.  Very cool.

     This great detail is the mouse on the main stay and the main jumper stay.  The stay takes a half turn around the main mast and the eye in the end of the stay fetches up against the mouse.  The stay is wormed, parceled and served.

     Looking aft at the main mast.  Notice the boom jaws with parrel and parrel beads setting on the mast collar.  The chimney is from the diesel stove in the galley.

     At dock.  So you got this 170 ton floating object with a single screw, tiller steering, lots of windage and no brakes, which  you need to get stopped at the dock.  It takes practice and is the most fun thing the captain gets to do, since all the sail commands are done by the first mate.  

     When you get to the dock a crew member needs to get on the dock as soon as possible to handle lines.  If you wait until the vessel is close enough to the dock so that someone can hop down, then it could be too late for the line handling.   So we used a new invention in the square-rigger world: the splatline.   A stout piece of rope is attached to the fore course yard arm and the jumper stands in the chains with the end.  When the time is perfect he is supposed to swing gracefully to the dock and land. However the jumper in the left hand picture has his timing a little off and may not have made that jump, which means that he is then dangling about 8' from the side of the vessel over the water on the end of a rope .  This is a potentially dangerous situation because everyone on board is laughing so hard that it is difficult to hear the rest of the commands regarding docking.

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