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Fighting It Out
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It is inevitable, when vessels with a reputation for speed found themselves in sailing company, that the spirit of rivalry would come to the fore. Caution and comfort would be thrown to the wind and a race would be on. For a short while the 'Rhoda Mary' and the 'Result' were similarly rigged. Each had a reputation for fast passages and when similarly loaded they were well matched, although legend has it that the 'Rhoda Mary' was the fastest schooner in the West.
What finer subject I thought, than a race between these two vessels in conditions known as "pea green and feather white", produced by heavy weather and overcast skies, briefly illuminated by a shaft of dazzling sunlight.
In the foreground the 'Result', hard pressed under jib, reefed forestays'l, tops'l and single reefed fore, main and mizzen. Astern, the 'Rhoda Mary' equally pressed, bent on overhauling her. Both vessels are loaded and beating southwards in the Irish Sea against a south easterly gale.
'Result' has just burst through a sea at a fine speed and pitched giddily down into the base of an even bigger one. The decks of a hard driven loaded vessel in these conditions, beating to wind'd, will never be free of water for long, for in all probability the base of a sea and the crest will both put water on board.
The angle from which the scene is viewed illustrates well the interaction between sea and vessel. These seas with a vertical height from trough to crest of between 18 to 20 feet are probably advancing at a speed of 20mph and although the actual water molecules merely rise and fall, the motion of a vessel trying to make headway against them will be wild and at times unpredictable.
Three or four relatively stable waves will allow a vessel to ride them easily and gather speed. Then suddenly she meets with a couple of steep ones. She is going too fast and out of her stride. She will plunge and rear at the first and take the second so awkwardly that probably tons of water will come aboard and fill her decks. The way is completely knocked off her and in consequence her motion will ease and the whole sequence will start again.
In the painting 'Result' has been riding easily and is going at a cracking pace as she plunges into the trough of a big one.
Seas of this size will often have an area on their lee face actually protected from the wind, so that sometimes, parts of this face are smooth and glassy as in the picture. The mass of white water on the surface of the sea just abaft her beam on either side is the residue of the water she thrust aside as she burst through the last crest and although her wash is scarcely detectable amongst these big seas, it has played havoc colliding with the wave crest on her weather quarter.
The crest of the swell in the foreground is becoming unstable and will probably break over 'Result' as she rears up to meet it.
'Result's bold sheer made her one of the prettiest vessels I have ever seen, but it also made her deep waisted and she was seldom without water on her deck when loaded.
I have shown 'Result' in her original rig according to Chapel, with the deep tops'l and flying t'gallant. I personally do not accept the term t'gallant, when so rigged, for to me it is a Pollacca rigged upper tops'l. It does not seem to me, that the mere hounds for the lower tops'l lifts should alone grant the mast above it the status of t'gallant mast. Furthermore since the Pollacca parrel on the upper yard enabled the yard to be lowered below this hounds, it relinquishes in my view, all claim to being a t'gallant sail.
'Result' was built in 1893, twenty hears after 'Rhoda Mary' and was still going strong as an auxiliary ketch when I was in the coastal trade. She did not in fact stop working until 1967 when her skipper owner Peter Welch died. She is now owned by the Ulster Folk Museum. I also remember well the final years of 'Rhoda Mary', still with mast and spars but then used as a yacht. I remember too her final years as a rotting hulk in the Ho Creek on the Medway.
John Chancellor
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