FORE AND AFT.*
IN his Sailing Ships and their Story Mr. Chatterton gave us the results of some admirable research, prosecuted in the right spirit and in the right direction by one who is himself a competent seaman. He follows this with Fore and Aft, an equally good history of the rig which is familiar to every one who has ever seen coasting vessels, fishing smacks, yachts, or even model yachts. In the fore-and-aft rig the sails are of course set in line with the keel, not across the line as in vessels with square sails. The square sail was the earliest sail invented, and naturally so, for the men who first had the heart of "triple brass" necessary to accept the unknown risks of sailing thought of nothing more ingenious than of running before the wind. When the wind was not favourable they rowed. So far as the important navigation of the Nile was concerned there was little incentive to make a better science of sailing. The wind generally blew from north to south, so that the boats could use the wind against the stream and their crews did not mind using their oars down stream. Yet, even so, it was discovered in due course that when the long, narrow, rectangular sail was peaked up aft and hauled down forward the boat would sail comparatively close to the wind, provided, of course, that she had enough grip of the water to overcome the tendency to make leeway. Mr. Chatterton reproduces a Dutch print of the year 1598 which shows just such sails as the Phoenician experimenters must have used when they made shift to sail close-hanled with the rectangular canvas. By the way, Mr. Chatterton refers to this print as Fig. I, whereas it is marked in our copy Fig. VIII.
The scheme of the fore-and-after came in embryo from Egypt. In Northern Europe it was developed wonderfully, the ideas of the English and Dutch acting and reacting upon one another in a fruitful rivalry. Mr. Chatterton cannot find any evidence of fore-and-afters being in existence in Northern
• (1) Fore and Aft: The Sten; of the Fors and Aft Rig from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By E. gable Chatterton. Loudon : Seeley, Service and Co. r160. net.)—(2) A Yachtswoman's Cruisos, and Some Steamer Voyages. Be Mande Speed. London: Longman and Co. [6a net.)
Europe, however, before 1475. That date, we may say, is earlier than any writer has hitherto claimed for fore-and-aft vessels. Ships designed to make long passages in broad waters could do best with square sails, and it was not till the seventeenth century that English builders turned seriously to fore-and-afters. With square sails there is no question of gybing, and that is a very important point in ocean work. But when it came to navigating winding estuaries in the coasting trade the unhandiness of square-sailed vessels was painfully obvious compared with fore-and-afters, which are not only vastly quicker in stays and generally more manageable, but sail appreciably nearer to the wind. The shallow and narrow waters of Holland were the mother of constant invention. One of the chief delights of this book is the fascinating series of old Dutch prints which show the fore-and-after at every stage of her evolution. Mr. Chatterton has cruised about the Dutch waterways collecting material, an important proportion of which could not have been got in any other way ; and his comments are those of a man versed in seamanship whose eye flies straight to what is essential. He had lightly supposed, he tells us, that the short gaffs which are familiar in small Dutch vessels were a mere accident of design or the result of some vague prejudice. But when be sailed through canals in company with vessels thus rigged he soon understood the value of catching the rather steadier breeze over the tops of houses by means of the tall narrow sail (for the same reason the topsail of a Thames barge is her most useful sail), and understood, too, the greater handiness for their purpose of vessels which are not subject to having a sail with a powerful head filled with a sudden squall when entering locks or approaching bridges. We give this only as an illustration of the satisfying explanations which Mr. Chatterton brings to his subject through being himself a seaman.
Mr. Chatterton points out the mistake of supposing that the schooner was a development of the cutter ; this is an inversion of the true order. The most important improve- ments of the schooner have come from America, and it was only in the natural order of things that the America' should run away from every English yacht in the 'fifties of last esetury. True, her success was due to the design of her hull rather than to her sail-plan, but that the Americans are still greatly our superiors in schooner building was proved by the successes of the Windward' in 1910. The first English yacht, properly so called, was the Dutch-built Mary' belong- ing to Charles II. There is no existing picture of her, but her lines are well enough known from contemporary craft of her type, and the frontispiece of this volume is a gallant fancy picture of what she must have looked like. There is much of the Dutch influence of that time remain- ing in the Bawleys which are so popular with fishermen in the mouth of the Thames. It is an extraordinary thing, yet a likeable trait too, how obstinately fisher- men cling to a type of vessel when once it has been adopted in their locality. There is no logical reason why the fishermen of Leigh, near Southend, should prefer Bawleys with their boomless mainsails, while the smacksmen of the neigh- bouring Blackwater and Colne could hardly be induced to go to sea without a boom. At Harwich, only twenty miles away from the mouths of the Colne and Blackwater, and still in the estuary of the Thames, the Bewley reappears. The Sussex men keep to their luggers, so also do Cornishmen, Scotsmen, and Manxmen. But elsewhere on the South and West coasts and on the East coast the cutter or ketch is preferred. Perhaps the best description in the book is that of the Bristol Channel pilot cutters, written with a touch of affectionate admiration and with proper understanding. The square-sailed vessel diminishes in numbers, but the fore-and-after is ever increasing. Steam seemed to threaten the existence of the latter at one time, even as it has almost killed the former, but now petrol comes to her rescue. With an auxiliary motor to help her against a foul wind and tide or to work through a calm the fore-and-after can aspire to a regularity in her voyages which was undreamed of a few years ago. Mr. Chatterton, we are glad to see, takes the sensible view that the new " enemy " of sail is really likely to be its salvation.
The second book before us is much 1 I.ss important. It relates some experiences of the writer and her husband when cruising in small yachts, and, in the second part of the book some voyages in nassenger steamers. These two evidently have a soul for any adventure. Moreover, Mr. Speed is manifestly a capable skipper, and Mrs. Speed, we should judge, a capital deck hand and steward. Together they have been through some dirty weather, and they have no professional help. We thoroughly agree with Mrs. Speed when she says that sailing must be learned in youth. The perfect touch on the tiller is like having light bands on a horse and cannot be acquired late in life. We found ourselves wishing that the skipper had written some of the book and given us more precise information from his log. Still, it is all written with such enthusiasm and good temper that the yachting reader cannot but be pleased. We notice a few misprints—" Primes " for "Primus," and "Ower's" Lightship for "Owers." "Gimbles," although there are some precedents for it, is an unjustifi- able spelling of "gimbals" (or "gimbals "). " Tous savoir, c'est tons pardonner," moreover, is not only wrong as a quota- tion, but is bad French.
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