But as everybody now knows, it was fit only for fair-weather sailing, with an anarchic crew and no lifeboat.
The wind built to near gale force, diagonal rain overwhelmed the wipers, and driving felt like heavy-weather sailing as we ran through the long, centerless sprawl of Lincoln City, an out-of-focus blur of tossing stoplights, where Julia spotted a flag blazoned with the face of Jesus Christ and the message "PERHAPS TODAY," like a tsunami warning.
In addition, sails are often grouped according to their function, usually as cruising sails for ordinary weather, summer sails for tropical weather, storm sails for extremely heavy weather, and racing sails.
This would have been an immensely difficult task, involving the need to make up convincing descriptions of weather and sailing conditions in a different part of the world, as well as complex reverse navigation.
There was no ship's surgeon aboard but the vessel was periodically visited by Chief Surgeon John White, who was rowed out to her from Sirius when weather and sailing conditions permitted.
In mid-June 1804, Linois departed Île de France with Marengo and the frigates Atalante under Captain Camille-Charles-Alexis Gaudin-Beauchène and Sémillante under Captain Léonard-Bernard Motard, cruising off Madagascar in stormy weather before sailing to the coast of Ceylon.
Primary sails are those that supply the chief propelling force in ordinary weather; secondary sails are those that aid the primary sails either by helping to balance the ship or by providing additional driving power.
If it's decent weather we sail.
I see myself sitting alone on the floor of her living room one sunstruck morning listening to that unearthly voice singing Campion's "Never Weather Beaten Sail" and feeling my scalp tingle and my palms go damp from the effect of such ease, such purity, such transcendent beauty.
Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore… A new Benjamin Black novel, A Death in Summer, is published by Mantle on 1 July.
