In the latter half of the 18th century the lateen.sail, which had been carried on the mizen mast up to that time, was superseded by the gaff sail. One century later it became common to carry smaller gaff sails on the main and foremasts, as well as the large gaff sail on the mizen mast. Many ships were completely gaff-tigged, for example the schooners, and also cutters and yachts in some areas, the only square sails they carried being topsails.
    The cloths of the gaff sails ran parallel to the leech -as is the case with all fore-and-aft sails. The gaff sails carried at least one row of reef points, and often two or three, occasionally as many as four . The gaff sail was bent to the gaff with robands but there was a large number of different systems for attaching it to the mast. These various methods of bending the gaff sail to the mast are - once again - rarely indicated on any plan, and as they are also difficult to find in reference books, I have drawn them on the right-hand page in fairly full detail. Methods 1 to 5 were used in the 18th century. The trucks were ihtended to prevent the rope chafing on the mast. Methods 4 and 5 were used principally on smaller ships, and found favour until the beginning
of this century , especially in Holland. Around 1800 rope hoops were introduced, although it took until about 1820 for these to oust the older types. Around 1820/1830 wood (ash) hoops came into use, either located in cringles (7), or with rope seizings through eyelets in the sail itself (8), to be supplanted soon after by metal hoops.
    In the middle of the 19th century jackstays were introduced, as has already beep mentioned. At first a rope was used abaft the mizen mast as the jackstay, and later a metal rod, to which the gaff sail was bent either with metal hanks (9) or with robands (10).