The provisional drawing of the sail plan of the steam clipper. I see that I have missed a bit of rigging off the two t'gallants and royals, but it is no problem to add these later.
The sparseness of rigging on the back of the two single topsails is not an omission. The ship was fitted with Cunningham's self-reefing topsails. As the topsail yards were lowered, they rotated backwards and the topsail was rolled onto the yard itself.
All very well in theory, but it never really caught on, as they had a lot of problems with the rotating mechanism jamming in icy weather. Consequently, self-reefing topsails were quickly superseded by double topsails where the sail was fitted in two halves, with an extra yard added between the lower yard and the topsail yard.
All in all, a very attractive ship –