Unidentified Sail Plan

[SeventhWave]

The attached scanned image originated behind an old painting belonging to a friend of my partents. I have no indication of the date or location. Clearly the sail plan for these vessels is unusual, and I am trying to identify it.

Has anyone come across this plan? I am not convinced that what appear to be stay-sails aren't in fact a temporary canopy, but at least five of the vessels have the main-mast well aft, and what appears to be a heavily forward-raked fore-mast with a long bow-sprit. Is it just an extreme development of a schooner rig?

Sorry about the quality of the scanned image; I can get a higher resolution if anyone is interested.

Murray

[Stephen Ditmore]

Looks a little like the boat in post #64 at http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14193&page=5

[Kaa]

Well, the staysails have lazyjacks, so I don't think it's a canopy :-)

These could be a pair of xebecs (aka chebecs or zebecs), re-rigged for gaff. Xebecs have their fore mast sharply raked forward, so that fits, but they traditionally used lateen sails and, besides, usually had a small mizzen.

In the back there are some square-rigged ships and from the scan it's hard to tell which masts belong to which ships.

Kaa

[khasmoth]

Nice looking sailboats. But it looks to me the picture came from 1900's LOL

But I think this is Thomas Yost kayak if I'm not mistaken.

[Stephen Ditmore]

You're right that I attached a photo of a Thomas Yost BIF-16 kayak to post #61 at http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14193&page=5, but the photo I'm referring to is the one attached to post #64, the fourth down, by Vega.