Brigantine Making Sail

by James Williamson

Original - Sold

Price

$895

Dimensions

15.000 x 11.000 inches

Title

Brigantine Making Sail

Artist

James Williamson

Medium

Painting - Watercolor

Description

The calling of the sea, out from mooring, dock and slip, out from the harbor she glides, steering for the open blue, where the salty air blows.
Brigantine Making Sail watercolor painting by James Williamson

Artist James Williamson ASMA,
Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists

A typical brigantine making sail. A man is aloft losing off the topgallant sail, while the rest of the hands hoist her mainsail.
Brigantine two-masted sailing-ship with square rigging on the foremast and fore-and-aft rigging on the mainmast. The term originated with the two-masted ships, also powered by oars, on which pirates, or sea brigands, terrorized the Mediterranean in the 16th century. In northern European waters the brigantine became purely a sailing ship. Its gaff-rigged mainsail distinguished it from the completely square-rigged brig, though the two terms came to be used interchangeably. For example, brigantines with square topsails above the gaffed mainsail were called true brigantines, whereas those with no square sails at all on the mainmast were called hermaphrodite brigs or brig-schooners.
Origins of the term Originally the brigantine was a small ship carrying both oars and sails. It was a favorite of Mediterranean pirates, and its name comes from the Italian word brigantino, meaning brigand, and applied by extension to his ship. By the 17th century the term meant a two-masted ship. In the late 17th century, the Royal Navy used the term brigantine to refer to small two-masted vessels designed to be rowed as well as sailed, rigged with square rigs on the foremast and fore-and-aft rigging on the mainmast.
By the first half of the 18th century the word had evolved to refer not to a ship type name, but rather to a particular type of rigging: square-rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft rigged on the mainmast. The word "brig" is an 18th century shortening of the word brigantine, which came to mean a vessel square-rigged on both masts. The early Oxford English Dictionary (with citations from 1720 to 1854) still defined brig as being either identical to a brigantine, or alternatively, a vessel of similar sail plan to a modern brig. By the middle of the 19th century modern meanings had more or less stabilized, although purists continue to debate the exact differences, or lack of them, between brig, brigantine and hermaphrodite brig in both English and American usage.
Modern brigantine rig in modern parlance, a brigantine is a principally fore-and-aft rig with a square-rigged foremast, as opposed to a brig which is square rigged on both masts. American usage sometimes uses hermaphrodite brig as a synonym for brigantine.
General description of a colonial ship type named a "brigantine", often used as a privateer.
Brigantine The brigantine was the second most popular type of ship built in the American colonies before 1775. (The most popular ship type was a "sloop.") A brigantine is a vessel swifter and more easily maneuvered than a sloop or schooner, and hence employed for purposes of piracy, espionage, and reconnoitering, and as an outlying attendant upon larger ships for protecting the larger ship, or for supply or landing purposes in a fleet of ships.
The brigantine was generally larger than a sloop or schooner. However, the brigantine was a vessel that could be of various sizes, ranging from 30 to 150 tons burden.
Generally, in the 1700's a brigantine was a two-masted sailing ship, having on the main mast both (1) a fore-and-aft main sail (a triangular type of sail) and also (2) a square main topsail. The fore-and-aft main sail has an advantage over a square sail of being able to be better maneuvered and to allow better sailing of the ship.) But after 1720 the main [square] topsail was omitted in most brigantines in favor of a large main sail.
The 1780 Universal Dictionary of the Marine by William Falconer further defined a brigantine as: Brigantine . . . Among English seamen, this vessel is distinguished by having her [fore-and-aft] main-sail set nearly in the plane of her keel; whereas the main-sails of larger ships are hung athwart, or at right angles with the ships length, and fastened to a yard which hangs parallel to the deck: but in a brig, the foremost edge of the main-sail is fastened in different places to hoops which encircle the main-mast, and slide up and down it as the sail is hoisted or lowered: it is extended by a gaff above, and by a boom below.

Uploaded

July 12th, 2012

Statistics

Viewed 3,186 Times  -  Last Visitor from Beverly Hills, CA on 04/11/2024 at 2:00 AM

Colors

Embed

Share

Sales Sheet

Tags