jackass brig

• Format: Manuscript
• Language: English
• Published: 1961
• Subjects: English language > Dialects > Newfoundland and Labrador; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/elrcdne/id/37870

jackass n The 'jackass' brig Sir: - Your columnist in "Off- beat History", issure of May 8th, states that when, in local practice of a hundred years ago, upper square sails would be temporarily placed for ice- hunting on the mainmast of a brigantine, the vessel would then be known as a "jackass brig," which is probably a local term. That is not perhaps correct, as a brigantine was a vessel in which all the regular upper sails on her mainmast were square (but whose sole lower sail on that mast was not square, but fore-and-aft). The type of two-masted craft on whose mainmast up- per square sails would be fit- ted temporarily, to make a jackass brig, was the vessel that regularly was all square- rigged on the foreast and all fore-and-aft rigged on the mainmast. The correct, and charac- terizing, name for her is "hermaphrodite brig." They were numerous in the Newfoundland trade, but-just as we call in Newfoundland a lake a pond-so it appears to me that we got into the habit, perhaps from about 1850 on- wards, of miscalling them by the name of brigantine. I have seen at least one contem- poorary picture, about 1880, of a fish carrier so miscalled in the title, which was no doubt supplied to the artist by her captain. There is in the Newfound- land Museum a picture of one of these vessels, named the "Lady Norman," which is very probably a uniqueu speci- men of that class of art, con- taining as it does insets of sacred verse, of perhaps loval composition, done in tiny hand-lettering so regular as to be mistaken for print. The artist was the locally cele- brated "Schoolmaster You den", of Brigus, and the name of Lorenzo Norman in the pic- ture may be that of her owner or captain. Yours sincerely, N. C. CREWE, St. John's May 19, 1961. PRINTED ITEM DNE-cit G.M.Story May 1961 Used I and Sup Used I and Sup 1 Used I Article accompanying J_13460