Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 1912. 
VOL. LXXVIIL—No. 2. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
To Honolulu in a Bark 
July 2.S, 1911. 
LL ready, Captain?” asked Skipper Ras¬ 
mussen of the tug Sea Fox, as Captain 
Kelly stepped aboard the bark Andrew 
Welch moored at Mission Rock Wharf, San 
Francisco Bay, prepared for a voyage to Hono¬ 
lulu. The bark over night had undergone do¬ 
mestic troubles of the kind with which house¬ 
keepers are frequently afflicted. The cook had 
taken inboard too much firewater and had re¬ 
fused to work, with the result that he had been 
put ashore, and as the 
cabin boy had followed 
the cook’s bad example, 
the bark was ready for 
sea minus victualer and 
waiter. By scurrying 
around town for several 
hours the captain had 
picked up a Japanese 
cook, but unable to find 
a cabin boy, he had 
shipped an extra sea¬ 
man and turned one of 
the veteran sailors into 
an “inside boy,” and the 
bark at ii a. m. was 
ready for the voyage. 
“Cast off,” said the 
captain to the mates, 
and the Welch swung 
out into the stream 
under the guidance of 
the tug, heading for the 
Golden Gate. As she 
neared this grand gate¬ 
way to the Pacific, as 
yet but slightly marred 
by the hand of man, the romantic deeds of the 
past were impressively recalled to the memory. In 
these very waters Commandante Ayala, in his tiny 
San Carlos had first entered the bay in 1775 
and had been followed by a host of daring 
voyagers, including that finest, swiftest and 
grandest of sail craft, the American clippers 
of ’49-50. And despite the progress of steam, 
sails were still in evidence in the Golden 
Gate. 
During the passage out of the bay there had 
been plenty of action aboard the bark—mates 
and sailors were about the deck getting ready 
to make sail, and as this operation on a square- 
rigger is always a scene of interest, the writer 
will endeavor to tell how the canvas wings are 
set—“the wings that brought the nations to¬ 
gether and scattered them to the ends of the 
By PALMER H. LANGDON 
earth.” When a vessel is under tow on the Pa¬ 
cific Coast, the tug blows one whistle and the 
first command is to run up the staysails and 
jibs. These are what are known as fore and aft 
sails, that is, they run lengthwise of the vessel 
in contradistinction to the square sails which 
are fastened to the yards that swing across the 
masts. The fore and afters were readily hoisted 
up the stays, and then the crew awaited the 
signal from the tug to work on the yards. 
When the bark had been towed out five miles, 
THE BARK ANDREW WELCH—UNDER ALL SAIL. 
almost to the San Francisco lightship, the tug 
gave two blasts and half the sailors sprang up 
the rigging and out on to the yards. The gas¬ 
kets, the ropes which hold the sails to the- yards, 
were unfastened, the clewlines and buntlines 
(ropes for taking in sail) overhauled, and at the 
command from the mate to “sheet home,” the 
lower main topsail began to spread into a big 
canvas blanket, with the other half of the crew 
on deck tugging away at the ropes which pull 
out the sail. “Belay!” shouted the mate to the 
sailors on deck, as the canvas was pulled into 
place and the first square sail was set. 
The braces, the ropes which govern the yards 
of the sail, were next made fast on the sides of 
the ship and the crew went to work at the next 
wing, which was the upper topsail. Here was 
a different problem, for instead of the sail be¬ 
ing drawn down from the yard, the stick itself 
is hoisted up. When all was ready (there still 
being steam in the donkey), the halliard, which 
raises the yard was caught around the winch 
end and raised by power. Otherwise the entire 
crew would have been mustered on the rope, 
the yard and sail being too heavy for a few 
hands. When these two sails had been set on 
the main masts the same canvas on the foremast 
was stretched in place, making four square sails 
which were ready for nature’s breeze. 
Three blasts from the 
tug and we were “by 
ourselves,” as the cap¬ 
tain expressed it, and 
the crew were still busy 
getting up the remain¬ 
ing upper square sails 
on each mast, the fore 
and main, top gallant 
and royals and the 
yards of these lofty sails 
were hoisted up like the 
upper topsails, but on 
the lower sails, the 
yards being fixed, the 
canvas was drawn down. 
When ships have six 
yards on each mast, the 
two lower are fixed, the 
sails coming down from 
them, and the four upper 
yards are run up the 
mast, except when they 
have double top-gallant 
sails, when the lower 
top-gallant yard is fixed. 
The Welch crossed but 
five yards, and being bark-rigged, had no 
cross sticks on her last (mizzen) mast, but in 
place carried two triangular sails, known as a 
spanker and a ring-tail topsail. The spanker 
was run up when the upper and lower topsails 
were in place, and the ring-tail when all of the 
square sails had been set. 
It may be imagined that during this scene of 
action in setting ten square sails and eight fore 
and afters, there was a lively time on the decks 
between the shouting and movement of officers 
and crew, but it is all between the mates and 
the sailors, the captain watching events from 
the poop deck and giving his only orders to 
the man at the wheel. To look at the be¬ 
wildering mass of rigging on a square rigger, 
the wonder is how sailors ever know which 
rope to touch, but on examination, it is seen 
