Freedom of the Sea
by James Williamson
Title
Freedom of the Sea
Artist
James Williamson
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
Freedom of the Sea, I must go down to the sea again to the vagrant gypsy life. The beauty, adventure and romance of sailing.
Oil On Canvas painting by artist James Williamson.
Artist James Williamson, ASMA
Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists
"To desire nothing beyond what you have is surely happiness. Aboard a boat, it is frequently possible to achieve just that. That is why sailing is a way of life, one of the finest of lives." ―Carleton Mitchell
“How inappropriate it is to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is planet Sea.” —Arthur C. Clarke
"There are good ships and woods ships, ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships, may they always be!" — Irish Proverb
Schooner Jamming the Wind
The business of operating a large sailboat requires long hours of hard work but who would trade this job for anything?
A lovely lady of uncertain origin, fast and easy to handle, the schooner has won the hearts of seafarers plying rock bound coasts and braving he banks. Sails abaft the masts let these vessels lie close to the wind and tack quickly through narrow waters.
The basic two-masted schooner rig may be described as a purely fore and aft rig having a single headsail, gaff foresail (usually with a boom), and a gaff and boom mainsail wide in the foot and generally taller than the foresail. Other sails may be set: a jib or jibs; jib topsail; gaff topsails; a topmast staysail; and square fore topsails; without altering the type of name of schooner. More masts may be added, three being common in Europe and between four and five in America, where six or seven masters were also built. Schooners were built for cargo carrying, fishing, pilot services, as minor warships, privateersmen, for surveying, smuggling and slave carrying.
The commonly quoted reference to the origin of the schooner is that it was devised at Glouster, Massachusetts, about 1713 by Andrew Robinson in a vessel at whose launch a spectator cried ‘Oh, how she schoons’ and of course Captain Robinson instantly replied, ‘A schooner let her be!’ There is no word ‘schoon’ in English and as the account was written on oral evidence in 1790 it seems quite improbable. It may be true, but extremely doubtful, that Robinson built the first schooner-rigged craft in North America, but she was certainly antedated by vast numbers of English and Dutch craft which were not then named schooners but had previously developed the rig, which was probably taken to America by colonists from those countries.
Uploaded
June 29th, 2022
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