Posted by Mike Field on April 05, 2007 at 02:59:03 from 203.129.36.64 user mikefield.
In Reply to: Re: posted by David Bamford on April 03, 2007 at 16:21:41:
Dave, Ch 8 of S&A clearly describes Amazon as being bright and having a white sail. It also shows that Swallow's sail was tanned. But I can't find any reference to Swallow's hull colour (although, as with Andrew, I'm sure that somewhere we are told she was painted.)
So looking at your painting (which I'm taking the liberty of linking to here,) I'd have to say that it seems you should be swapping the hull colours.
I'm afraid I missed any discussion there might have been on the halyards, but I'm going to take issue with you about the rigging because I don't think the yards had spans on them. Rigging Swallow is described in Ch 2 thus --
On the yard there was a strop (which is really a loop) that hooked on a hook on one side of an iron ring called the traveller, because it moved up and down the mast. The halyard ran from the traveller up to the top of the mast, through a sheave (which is a hole with a little wheel in it), and then down again. John hooked the strop on the traveller and hauled away on the halyard. Up went the brown sail....
Assuming that Amazon was rigged the same way, I think that what you seem to have shown as rope spans on the yards should therefore be really just strops -- which essentially you wouldn't be able to show at all, as being too small. And also, (unless the sails are reefed,) there should be no halyard showing below the masthead sheaves as the travellers (and strops) would hard up against them, much as in the sketch on Stu Wier's website (linked to in my post "The Boats in the Books" in this thread.)
Here are two other comments intended to be useful as well. First, your present painting doesn't show any reef points on either vessel: but we know that Swallow at least could be reefed, and I have no doubt that Amazon would have been able to have been as well. So I think it would be good to show some reef nettles. Second, my experience with this sort of sail tells me that with any wind at all the booms would not be horizontal but cocked up at the after ends.
I know the boats as painted are pretty small, but since both of them were clinker would it be possible to suggest a few strakes in your painting as well?