Morning Mike,
On Master Hand as in all sailing trawlers of the 1900's the foresail ran on a 38mm diameter iron horse that ran across the deck from bulwark to bulwark just in front of the main mast and as you can see from the photo, it was quite a prominant feature of the foredeck.
My model is at 1/16th scale so I want to be able to have all rigging as close to original as possible as I want to depict the original, nails, ring bolts and all, on the model this feature will be 2.4mm diameter.
As you can see in the photo the foresail bullseye and tackle run freely on the horse. The foresail sheet is running along the deck down the starboard side of the winch to the tack of the foresail which is collapsed over the bowsprit and the stem head.
The standing end of the foresail sheet was fixed to a becket on the single sheave horse block, and ran through the single block at the tack of the fore sail and back through the horse block and back up to the foresail.
The block at the foresail had a long hook fixed to it which hooked through the cringle at the tack of the foresail, and the running end of the sheet was belayed around its self at the hook. This way to adjust the sail a crew member only needed stand at the foresail tack and loosen the running end of the sheet a little allowing it to slip until he got the sail setting required and then belay it again as before.
In the above photo, the foresail is held 'aweather' by a rope tackle to the port rail and you can see how the foresail sheet is belayed to itself. In the fore ground the crew are hauling the trawl with the guy at the steam winch is hauling the trawl warpe, they had proper ropes in them days!
I agree it would be simple to just run the sheet on the model through a hole below the centre of the horse but at 1/16 scale I think it would be glaringly wrong
, if all else fails though this is how I will do things but I'm hoping I can make Tobyker's suggestion to work as it will be as close as humanly possible to the original but still allow me to control the sail via a winch below decks.
I have to confess I've spent hours pouring over this and all the other photos of these ships to the point of obsession
, this model has been bubbling on the back burner of my mind for years and I want to get it just right
I was lucky enough to be able to explore the "William McCann" which is the last of large sailing trawlers at 84 feet stem to stern. She was built for Hull fishing fleet and when she sailed into Bridlington harbour about 10 years ago.
On learning my intentions the skipper kindly allowed me to crawl all over the ship taking notes, sketches and photos and I'm afraid I was hooked!