Naval 30ft gig – the RN’s fastest service boat under sail in 1937
These pages describing the Navy’s small sailing craft and how to sail them come from the Admiralty’s Manual of Seamanship, dated 1937. Many of them will be familiar to ex-Naval personnel, and to those who worked in boat and ship building in years gone by.
There’s some fascinating stuff here, including the information that the lugger was the fastest small sailing boat that the Navy had in those days – and that its rig was pretty well identical to Cornish luggers from up to 100 years before. There’s also some sail dimension information that people who work with traditional boats might find useful and interesting today, and instructions on sailing that still seem relevant, at least to me.
There are other chapters on the construction and the naming of parts of small boats, so if this post proves popular, I’ll put that material up at some point.
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For more pages: Continue reading “The Royal Navy’s small sailing craft of 1937”
