Sailing with the CHARLES W. MORGAN Authenticity in rig makes the 1841 bark a vision of the past by Tom Jackson Almost any mast against a skyline can inspire a poet or painter, but it takes authenticity, the ring of truth, to take the breath away from even the most jaded professional mariner. That such a ship—ready for sea with a crisp and ​ ​ purposeful air—should also be the oldest surviving American square-rigged ​ ​ merchantman only makes the sight more compelling. Such was the CHARLES W. MORGAN in the summer of 2014 during her first venture to sea in more than 90 years. Mystic Seaport Museum, the ship’s owner since 1941, called it the ​ ​ 38th Voyage, a coda to her 80-year working life of 37 whaling voyages worldwide, starting in 1841. In the recent season, she left her homeport of Mystic, Connecticut, for neighboring New London, then on to Massachusetts, stopping at Newport, Martha’s Vineyard, New Bedford, the ​ ​ Cape Cod Canal, Provincetown, Stellwagen Bank, and Boston before returning home in early August. During the years of her most recent hull restoration, which assured her structural integrity below the waterline (see WB No. 226), the focus was largely on timber: sawn live oak frames and shaped longleaf pine and white oak planks. She was relaunched in July 2013. But during the summer of 2014, whenever she stood quayside in any of those Massachusetts and Connecticut ports of call, all eyes went first to her masts and rigging. I was not immune. Like many people, I have seen the CHARLES W. MORGAN many times in my life, starting from a tender age. Driving slowly down Academy Avenue to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in early July 2014 to catch up with her as one of some 79 chosen “38th Voyagers” ​ ​ ​ who joined for a day of sailing, I saw her for the first time completely on her own, as a ship ready for sea, her rigging looking more complete than ever, her crisp white sails neatly furled. It was no accident that the sails showed stark white against the sky. They cotton duck was custom-woven for the sails, which were made by Nat Wilson and his crew in East Boothbay, Maine. The shrouds looked right because they were right: galvanized wire parceled, wormed, and served, well tarred at each appropriate stage, with hemp lanyards reeving through her deadeyes. The running rigging all consisted of high-grade manila, specially fabricated in the Philippines. The rigging work had proceeded relatively quietly as the shipwrights rebuilt the lower hull. Upstairs in the rigging loft of the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard and down in the basement of the Rossie Mill building on the museum grounds, hundreds of specific lines were planned, cut to length, finished, and organized. It all came together in a frenzy of work leading to the June 2014 deadline for departure. Rigging The rigging project provided a fresh opportunity to analyze historical records to inform the work, just as had been done with the hull reconstruction. Unlike the hull, however, nothing of the original rigging remained. The CHARLES W. MORGAN was originally a full-rigged ship, with square sails on all three masts. Following fashions and economics of her times, she was converted to a bark in the 1870s—meaning she no longer flew ​ ​ square sails on the mizzen. In addition, the large single topsails on the mainmast and foremast were divided in two, making lower and upper topsails of more manageable size. Photography was rare early in the ship’s ​ ​ life, so the best evidence of her rig and alterations to her deck structures come from late in her life, when photography was in widespread use. Experts facing the question of what part of her career to restore her to chose a span of years: 1900 to 1911. “That’s great for the hull, but not so great for me,” said Matt Otto, the ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ shipyard’s lead rigger. “Every voyage is different. Every chief mate has a ​ ​ ​ ​ different idea of how the rig should work.” So within a decade, or even ​ ​ within the same year, photos can show variations. “But I had really good ​ ​ pictures from a large-format camera, taken in 1906—a starboard quarter and ​ ​ a port bow—taken about 15 minutes apart, which you can tell by where the ​ ​ gear is hanging in these two photos. We were trying to use those two photos to do as much of the rig as possible. It was just a snapshot of that day, early in the morning. Once we established that was what we wanted to do, that’s ​ ​ what we ran with.” ​ Right away, Otto noticed that the blocks in the photo were very different from those in use on the ship in more recent times. After the Danish-built iron-hulled training ship JOSEPH CONRAD came to Mystic Seaport in 1947, he believes, some “cross-pollination” began to occur, and ​ ​ ​ ​ some European-shaped blocks, which are oval but squared-off at one end, slipped into use on the MORGAN. “The American type, like those made by ​ ​ Boston & Lockport Block and Tackle Company, are more of a true oval. As I was looking through the photo evidence, I saw that pretty much all of our blocks needed to be replaced with a better shape.” Museum volunteers built ​ ​ all-new, ash-bodied blocks for the ship. Some existing rigging was reused, most notably the wire shrouds and stays. At her 1841 launching, the whaler undoubtedly used hemp for her standing rigging, since wire rigging came later. “We use the Brooklyn Bridge ​ ​ as the benchmark for commercial wire,” Otto said. Engineer John Roebling ​ ​ developed wire cables for the famous New York suspension bridge, opened in 1869. His first innovations with wire rope date to 1841, the same year the MORGAN was launched, but the stunning Brooklyn Bridge solidified its reputation. “When the Roebling Company figured out how to make it cheap, ​ ​ commercial wire really took off at that point,” Otto said. When the MORGAN ​ ​ was converted to a bark, the mizzen lower shrouds were the first to be converted to wire. “Every chance they got, they replaced every set of ​ ​ shrouds and backstays from hemp to wire, finally with the main lower shrouds in 1915.” The existing wire shrouds and stays were inspected, ​ ​ refreshed with paint-on galvanizing, and given new worming, parceling, and serving. Both hemp and manila rope were used for her cordage. The hemp rope came from Lippmann German Ropes in Hamburg. “They still have a ​ ​ long ropewalk, and they made all of our bigger cordage on the long walk, and regular marline and all of our other hemp for us,” Otto said. “From the ​ ​ ​ ​ day I started looking to having it on hand was 18 months. This is the best we’ve had in 15 years or so, and it’s really nice to work with.” Manila, which ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ is made not of hemp but of abaca from the Pacific region, came by special order for a very high-quality rope from the Philippines via T.W. Evans Cordage Co. of Cranston, Rhode Island. “Hemp and manila are used in different ways,” Otto said. “Hemp is a ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ very strong fiber, used for block strops and other structural things, like [deadeye] lanyards and tiller rope. It holds tar very well, and the tar stabilizes the hemp so water can’t get into it and cause rot. Manila doesn’t ​ ​ ​ ​ hold tar as well, and the fibers are shorter than hemp, so it doesn’t have ​ ​ quite the strength. But it’s a wonderful fiber—very pliable, flexible, very good ​ ​ ​ ​ for running rigging.” ​ Sails While Otto worked on endless rigging preparations, Nat Wilson and his crew spent 19 weeks in the winter of 2013–14 making a full suit of 19 sails. U.S. ​ ​ government standards—which are still on the books—and period treatises ​ ​ ​ ​ gave him the specifications for thread-count and the 24” panel width for ​ ​ 3,800 yards of cotton sailcloth, which was custom-woven in India, via the industrial fabrics division of the C.R. Daniels Company in Maryland. Before use, the canvas was given a nontoxic finish to protect against moisture and mildew damage. Given that the MORGAN wouldn’t be sailing around Cape Horn, ​ ​ Wilson specified lighter-than-usual sailcloth: No. 4 for the courses and upper and lower topsails, No. 6 for topgallants and jibs, and No. 8 for the flying jib, gaff topsail, and main royal sail. “Compared to other materials, cotton is very forgiving, very soft, a lot ​ easier on the body to use,” he said. Because the loft had long experience in ​ ​ sails of a full array of materials, the project posed no unique problems. “It ​ ​ was standard fare, since we have been doing it pretty constantly right along. What was unusual was the focus for a good period of time. To have no other ​ ​ project for 19 weeks was a delight, knowing that you’re coming in every day ​ ​ and you always had a sail to work on. “We had an estimated number of man-hours to do the job. We had ​ made 16 and had three left to do, and we had surplus hours. So we said, ‘Let’s ​ ​ ​ ​ hand-seam the last three sails.’” And so the sailmakers working under ​ ​ Wilson—Sam Upton, Mike Bartles, and Adam Yanchunis—each made a ​ ​ ​ ​ lower staysail fully by hand. “They were extremely careful,” he said. “They ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ wanted to be sure they knew what each step was. They are also thinkers, too; they could solve problems as they came up.