Posted by Alex Forbes on December 29, 2007 at 16:05:10 from 4.242.120.147 user Pitsligo.
In Reply to: Re: WDMTGTS questions, one fairly esoteric/nautical posted by Laurence Monkhouse on December 29, 2007 at 08:36:07:
Thank you, one and all.
The means of achieving purchase on the halyard with a whip, for a vessel without a halyard winch, makes perfect sense. I suppose I would have expected the arrangement to be completed with a sway hook on deck, turning the lead back up the mast to a pin or cleat somewhere around the gooseneck, otherwise with the headboard at the masthead sheave, the whip block would be too close to the deck to sweat it in.
Anyway, thanks for the info that yes, halyards were/are led that way.
As for the whip block visible in the later illustration being the topping lift: plausible, but it seems rather taut for a slacked lift, and I would have thought a lift block, commonly left to swing on a slack whip, would have been more aggressively confined --I say this having lost a lot of varnish to just such a lift whip that got loose from its lizard. The halyard whip would not need to be so confined as it is always either set up hard, when the sail is set, or at the masthead, without enough slack to get loose and do damage, when the sail is down.
Borderline heresy, but could AR have drawn in the line incorrectly, or changed its lead in the name of artistic license?