mast, a vertical
spar which carries the sails of a sailing ship, though the
schooner America started a temporary vogue, when she appeared in English waters in 1851, for
yacht masts to have a pronounced
rake. Also, it is not necessarily a vertical spar in modern powered vessels when it usually serves to carry such essentials as radio aerials,
radar arrays, etc. The mast of a powered vessel also carries the compulsory
steaming lights which a powered vessel has to display when under way at night, and flag signals are hoisted on the mast's
halyards, or to a
yard across it.
In some sailing vessels, particularly
junks, the masts are stepped in
tabernacles so that they can be lowered if it is necessary to
navigate rivers and waterways with bridges. However, they are normally stepped through holes in the deck and their
heels, which are squared off, fitted into
steps in the ship's
keelson, hence the phrase ‘to step a mast’ means to set a mast up. In larger wooden sailing vessels they were held firm in the deck holes with wedges and the area around them strengthened by
partners. Except those vessels with an
unstayed rig, masts are secured in place by its standing
rigging. In
square-rigged ships the masts are crossed by the
yards, on which the sails are set. In
fore-and-aft-rigged vessels the sails are set on the masts themselves.
Bipod masts were a feature on the ships of some early civilizations and the Greeks used multiple masts, though this died out in the Mediterranean after the collapse of the Roman Empire and was not reintroduced until
Marco Polo reported their use in China in the 13th century. Two-masted vessels go back to this time in Europe, but the vessel of 1350, which could only run before the wind with its one or two square sails, quite quickly became the three-masted
caravel of the 15th century. This, with its use of the
lateen sail, first on all masts and then on the
mizzen alone, made possible the voyages organized by
Henry the Navigator and later the
exploration by sea by such
navigators as
Columbus,
Vasco da Gama, and
Cabot. However, something which did not spread beyond China was the system of staggering the masts of its 15th century
treasure ships in
port,
amidships, and
starboard positions, raking them at different angles, and stepping them in tabernacles, mostly without giving them standing rigging.
Before the growth in size of ships in the western world which occurred during the 17th century, ships' masts were single pole, or solid, spars, cut from the trunk of a fir tree. However, as the size of sailing ships increased, so did the number of sails and of upper masts.
Pole masts were not strong enough or tall enough to carry the larger yards and extra sails, so masts had to be made of several pieces of timber to acquire the required strength, circumference, and height, and these were called
made masts. In most ships of the 17th century and later, the lower masts were all made masts,
topmast and
topgallant masts being pole masts.
Very few, if any, sailing vessels in European and North American waters have solid wooden masts nowadays; and the lighter, hollow, wooden ones made up from spruce, and
scarfed and glued, that replaced them in
yachts must now be almost as rare. All modern sailing vessels have metal masts, and racing yachts have carbon composite ones laminated in moulds for a higher strength–weight ratio.
See also
mast ship.
