David Weber: How firm a foundation

The seas were trying to push her stern around to the east, and he was forced to carry more canvas and more weather helm than he would have preferred to hold her up. It was officially a storm now, with wind speeds hitting better than fifty-five miles per hour, and not a mere gale or even a strong gale, and he suspected it was going to get even nastier before it was over. He didn’t like showing that much of the forecourse, but he needed that lift forward. Despite which he’d have to take in both the topsail and the course and go to storm staysails alone, if the wind got much worse. He needed to get as far east as he could, though, and reducing sail would reduce his speed, as well. Deciding when to make that change-and making it before he endangered his ship-was going to be as much a matter of instinct as anything else, and he wondered why the possibility of being driven under and drowned caused him so much less concern than the possibility of losing legs or arms to enemy round shot.

The thought made him chuckle, and while none of the helmsmen could have heard him through the shrieking tumult and the waterfall beating of icy rain, they saw his fleeting smile and looked at one another with smiles of their own.

He didn’t notice as he turned and peered into the murk to the northwest. By his best estimate, they’d made roughly twenty-five miles, possibly thirty, since the visibility closed in. If so, Destiny was now about two hundred miles southeast of Ahna’s Point and four hundred and sixty miles southeast of Silk Town. It also put him only about a hundred and twenty miles south of Garfish Bank, however, and his smile disappeared as he pictured distances and bearings from the chart in his mind. He’d made enough easting to avoid being driven into Silkiah Bay-probably-if the wind did back, but he needed at least another two hundred and fifty miles-preferably more like three hundred-before he’d have Tabard Reach under his lee, and he didn’t like to think about how many ships had come to grief on Garfish Bank or in Scrabble Sound behind it.

But that’s not going to happen to my ship, he told himself, and tried to ignore the prayerful note in his own thought.

“Hands aloft to reduce sail!”

The order was barely audible through the howl of wind and the continuous drumroll of thunder, but the grim-faced topmen didn’t have to hear the command. They knew exactly what they faced… and exactly what it was going to be like up there on the yards, and they looked at one another with forced smiles.

“Up you go, lads!”

In the teeth of such a wind, the lee shrouds would have been a death trap, and the topmen swarmed up even the weather shrouds with more than usual care. They gathered in the tops, keeping well inside the topmast rigging, while men on deck tailed onto the braces.

A seventeen-mile-per-hour wind put one pound of pressure per square inch on a sail. At thirty-two miles per hour, the pressure didn’t simply double; it quadrupled, and the wind was blowing far harder than that now. At the moment, Destiny ’s forecourse was double-reefed, shortening its normal hoist of thirty-six feet to only twenty-four. Unlike a trapezoidal topsail, the course was truly square, equally wide at both head and foot, which meant its sixty-two-foot width was unaffected by the decrease in height. Its effective sail area had thus been reduced from over twenty-two hundred square feet to just under fifteen hundred, but the fifty-five-plus-mile-per-hour wind was still exerting over seventeen hundred tons of pressure on that straining piece of canvas. The slightest accident could turn all that energy loose to wreak havoc on the ship’s rigging, with potentially deadly consequences under the current weather conditions.

“Brace up the forecourse!”

“Weather brace, haul! Tend the lee braces!”

The ship’s course had been adjusted to bring the wind on to her larboard quarter. Now the foreyard swung as the larboard brace, leading aft to its sheave on the maintop and from there to deck level, hauled that end-the weather end-of the yard aft. The force of the wind itself helped the maneuver, pushing the starboard end of the yard around to leeward, and as the yard swung, the sail shifted from perpendicular to the wind’s direction to almost parallel. The shrouds supporting the mast got in the way and prevented the yard from being trimmed as close to fore-and-aft as Destiny might have wished-that was the main reason no squarerigger could come as close to the wind as a schooner could-but it still eased the pressure on the forecourse immensely.

“Clew up! Spilling lines, haul!”

The clewlines ran from the lower corners of the course to the ends of the yards, then through blocks near the yard’s center and down to deck level, while the buntlines ran from the yard to the foot of the sail. As the men on deck hauled away, the clewlines and buntlines raised the sail, aided by the spilling lines-special lines which had been rigged for precisely this heavy-weather necessity. They were simply ropes which had been run down from the yard then looped up around the sail, almost like another set of buntlines, and their function was exactly what their name implied: when they were hauled up, the lower edge of the sail was gathered in a bight, spilling wind out of the canvas so it could be drawn up to the yard without quite so much of a struggle.

“Ease halliards!”

The topmen in the foretop waited until the canvas had been fully gathered in and the yard had been trimmed back to its original squared position before they were allowed out onto it. Squaring the yard once more made it far easier-and safer-for them to transfer from the top to the spar. Under calmer conditions, many of those men would have scampered cheerfully out along the yard itself with blithe confidence in their sense of balance. Under these conditions, use of the foot rope rigged under the yard was mandatory.

They spread themselves along the seventy-five-foot-long spar, seventy feet above the reeling, plunging deck-almost ninety feet above the white, seething fury of the water in those fleeting moments when the deck was actually level-and began fisting the canvas into final submission while wind and rain shrieked around them.

One by one the gaskets went around the gathered sail and its yard, securing it firmly, and then it was the main topsail’s turn.

“Keep her as close to northeast-by-east as you can, Waigan!” Sir Dunkyn Yairley shouted in his senior helmsman’s ear.

Waigan, a grizzled veteran if ever there was one, looked up at the storm staysails-the triangular, triple-thickness staysails set between the mizzen and the main and between the main and the fore-which, along with her storm forestaysail, were all the canvas Destiny could show now.

“Nor’east-by-east, aye, Sir!” he shouted back while rainwater and spray ran from his iron-gray beard. “Close as we can, Sir!” he promised, and Yairley nodded and slapped him on the shoulder in satisfaction.

No sailing ship could possibly maintain a set course, especially under these conditions. Indeed, it took all four of the men on the wheel to hold any course. The best they could do was keep the ship on roughly the designated heading, and the senior helmsman wasn’t even going to be looking at the compass card. His attention was going to be locked like iron to those staysails, being certain they were drawing properly, lending the ship the power and the stability she needed to survive the maelstrom. The senior of his assistants would watch the compass and alert him if they started to stray too far from the desired heading.

Yairley gave the canvas one more look, then swiped water from his own eyes and beckoned to Garaith Symkee, Destiny ’s second lieutenant.

“Aye, Sir?” Lieutenant Symkee shouted, leaning close enough to Yairley to be heard through the tumult.