Model of a Topsail

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-1112

Model of a topsail attached to a yard. The sail has fourteen cloths at the head and twenty at the foot, crosspatches and three reefs, two buntline slings, bowline bridles and clews that are reinforced with leather. The starboard clew is a single eye with a thimble, the port clew consists of a ring holding together the ends of the bolt ropes, which both have eyes and thimbles. The reef points have been replaced by one rope going over the reef lining and stitched to the sail at the eyelet holes. Toggles that are attached to a metal rod on the yard, are tied through this rope when reefing.

This kind of reefing was introduced in the Dutch Navy around 1860.

F.A.A. Gregory, ‘Beschrijving van een marszeil met rifleiders in plaats van rifijzings’, Verhandelingen en berigten betrekkelijk het zeewezen (1851), no. 1, pp. 49-60 and pl.; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1112

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Model of a Topsail, Netherlands, 1861', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.244926