SOMETHING ABOUT SHIPS.
Reading edition
Sailing vessels carry either square-sails or fore-and-aft sails. A square-sail is one the head of which is "bent" or made fast to the jack-stay—an iron rod on a yard. Fore-and-aft sails, instead of being bent to yards, are mostly supplied with a boom or gaff, or both. The lower corners of square-sails are called clews. The fore-sail and mainsail are often called the courses. Sail is seldom carried on the cross-jack (pronounced krojik) yard, the lowest yard on the mizzenmast.
The courses, when "set," are kept down by means of ropes leading from the clews fore and aft, called tacks and sheets. Above the courses come the topsails; above the topsails, the top-gallant-sails; and next above, the royals. Some very large ships carry still loftier sails, called sky-sails.
Most merchant ships carry double topsails, one above the other, for greater ease in handling; but on men-of-war, having large crews, single topsails are the rule.
The head-sails are those which the bowsprit and the booms it supports carry forward. These are the foretopmast stay-sail, the jib, and flying-jib. Large vessels carry even more head-sails. The spanker, or driver, as our merchantmen sometimes call it, is a fore-and-aft sail, and is the aftersail of a ship or bark.
A compass being divided into thirty-two points, sailors consider the horizon at sea as having an equal number of divisions, and speak of a ship as sailing within five or six points of the direction the wind is blowing from.
When the sails of a ship are filled with wind, they are said to be drawing or full. A good sailor is never so happy as when with a whole-sail breeze he sees all his canvas spread and drawing, and feels himself "off before it."