The Bermuda sloop is a historical type of fore-and-aft rigged single-masted sailing vessel developed on the islands of Bermuda in the 17th century. Such vessels originally had gaff rigs with quadrilateral sails, but evolved to use the Bermuda rig with triangular sails. Although the Bermuda sloop is often described as a development of the narrower-beamed Jamaica sloop, which dates from the 1670s, the high, raked masts and triangular sails of the Bermuda rig are rooted in a tradition of Bermudian boat design dating from the earliest decades of the 17th century. It is distinguished from other vessels with the triangular Bermuda rig, which may have multiple masts or may not have evolved in hull form from the traditional designs.

History

thumb|Bermuda rigged sloop at Convict Bay ca 1879

thumb|right|A 19th-century Bermudian working boat in Bermuda

Jamaica was the locus of building fast single-masted vessels that became the model for small cruisers of the Royal Navy. Building of this type of vessel had become more active in Bermuda by the start of 18th century. They carried gaff rig, whereas in modern usage, a Bermuda sloop excludes any gaff rig. Jamaican sloops were built usually out of cedar trees, for much the same reasons that Bermudian shipwrights favoured Bermuda cedar: these were very resistant to rot, grew very fast and tall, and had a taste displeasing to marine borers. Cedar was favoured over oak as the latter would rot in about 10 years, while cedar would last for nigh on 30 years and was considerably lighter than oak.

The colony's lightweight Bermuda cedar vessels were widely prized for their agility and speed, especially upwind. The high, raked masts and long bowsprits and booms favoured in Bermuda allowed its vessels of all sizes to carry vast areas of sail when running down-wind with spinnakers and multiple jibs, allowing great speeds to be reached. Bermudian work boats, mostly small sloops, were ubiquitous on the archipelago's waters in the 19th century, moving freight, people, and everything else about. The rig was eventually adopted almost universally on small sailing craft in the 20th Century, although as seen on most modern vessels it is very much less extreme than on traditional Bermudian designs, with lower, vertical masts, shorter booms, omitted bowsprits, and much less area of canvas.

Bermudians, largely slaves, built roughly a thousand ships during the 18th century. Although many of these were sold abroad, the colony maintained its own large merchant fleet which, thanks partly to the domination of trade in many American seaboard ports by branches of wealthy Bermudian families and partly to the suitability and availability of Bermudian vessels, carried much of the produce exported from the American south to Bermuda and to the West Indies aboard Bermudian mostly slave-manned vessels sailed southwest (more-or-less upwind) to the Turk Islands, where salt was harvested. This salt was carried to North American ports and sold at high profits. Bermudian vessels also developed a trade in moving goods such as grain, cocoa, brandy, wine and more from the Atlantic seaboard colonies to the West Indies.

The threat of piracy and privateering was a large problem for mariners of all nations during the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was also as widely popular an enterprise. During wartime, much of Bermuda's merchant fleet turned to more lucrative labors: privateering. The evasive capabilities highly prized by merchantmen also made Bermuda sloops the ship of choice for the pirates themselves, earlier in the 18th century, as well as for smugglers. They often carried sufficient crew out to return with several prizes, and these extra crew were useful both as movable ballast and in handling the labor-intensive sloops. The shape of the ship enabled Bermudian mariners to excel. The same abilities allowed Bermuda sloops to escape from better-armed privateers and even larger man-of-war British naval ships which, with their square rigs, could not sail as closely to windward. The ability of the sloop rig in general to sail upwind meant a Bermuda sloop could outrun most other sailing ships by simply turning upwind and leaving its pursuers floundering in its wake.

Due to the large number of white Bermudian men who were away at sea at any one time (and possibly due as much to fear of the larger number of enslaved black Bermudian men left behind) it was mandated that blacks must make up a percentage of the crew of every Bermudian vessel. By the American War of Independence, the use of many able black slaves as sailors added considerably to the power of the Bermudian merchant fleet due to their highly needed skill set, and these included the crews of Bermudian privateers. When the Americans captured the Bermudian privateer Regulator, they discovered that virtually all of her crew were black slaves. Authorities in Boston offered these men their freedom, but nearly all of the 70 captives elected to be treated as prisoners of war, claiming slavery was all they knew and out of fear for their families who were still in Bermuda. Sent to New York on the sloop Duxbury, those who were left seized the vessel and sailed it back to Bermuda. Although such small sloops are rare today, the design was further scaled down to produce the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy, a class of racing vessel used in traditional competition between Bermudian yacht clubs. The term Bermuda sloop has come to be used outside Bermuda, today, to describe any single masted, Bermuda rigged boat, also known as Marconi sloops, although most are far less extreme in their design than was once the norm in Bermuda, with bowsprits omitted, masts vertical and shortened, and booms similarly shortened. Spinnaker booms and multiple jibs are rarely seen. The reduced sail area makes modern boats much more manageable, especially for small or inexperienced crews.

References

Further reading

  • Sailing in Bermuda: Sail Racing in the Nineteenth Century, by J. C. Arnell, 1982. Published by the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club. Printed by the University of Toronto Press.
  • The Andrew and the Onions: The Story of the Royal Navy in Bermuda, 1795–1975, by Lt.-Cmdr. Ian Strannack, RN (Ret'd), Bermuda Maritime Museum Press.
  • Bermuda From Sail To Steam, 1784–1901, by Henry Wilkinson. Oxford University Press.
  • The Naval War of 1812, Edited by Robert Gardiner. Caxton Pictorial Histories (Chatham Publishing), in association with The National Maritime Museum. .
  • Bermuda Sloop Foundation official website
  • Rootsweb: Excerpt of Tidewater Triumph, by Geoffrey Footner. Describing development of the Baltimore clipper (large chapter on Bermuda sloops and role of Bermudian boatbuilders).
  • POTSI: American War of 1812.
  • Partial list of Bermudian-built Royal Naval vessels. From The Andrew and the Onions, by Lt. Cmdr. I. Strannack.
  • Rootsweb. Comprehensive list of Ships of Bermuda.
  • Bermuda Gazette Admiralty publishes invitation for tenders for first two (extended to three) Bermuda sloops-of-war, 1795.