Jury rig

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Jury rigging (or jerry rigging) refers to makeshift repairs or substitutes, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand.

Contents 1 Nautical use 1.1 Etymology 1.2 Rigging 2 Similar forms 3 References 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] Nautical use

On sailing ships, the jury rig is a replacement mast and yards improvised in case of loss of the original mast.

[edit] Etymology

There are these theories about the origin of the term "jury" in this sense:

• A Latin and Old French root meaning "aid" or "succour".
• "jury-mast" derived from "injury-mast".
• From French du jour = "of the day", thus `temporary'.

[edit] Rigging

While ships typically carried a number of spare parts such as topmasts, the lower masts, at up to one meter in diameter, were too large to carry spares. So a jury mast could be various things. Contemporary drawings and paintings show a wide variety of jury rigs, attesting to the creativity of sailors faced with the need to save their ships. Examples are

• A spare topmast.
• The main boom of a brig.
• To replace the foremast with the mizzenmast: mentioned in W. Brady's The Kedge Anchor (1852),
• The bowsprit set upright and tied to the stump of the real mast.

The Jury mast knot is often mentioned as a method to provide the anchor points for securing makeshift stays and shrouds to the new mast. However, there is a lack of hard evidence regarding its actual historical use.^[1] Ships always carried a variety of spare sails, so rigging the jury mast once erected was mostly a matter of selecting appropriately sized spares.

Although ships were observed to perform reasonably well under jury rig, the rig was quite a bit weaker than the original, and the ship's first priority was normally to steer for the nearest friendly port and get replacement masts.

[edit] Similar forms

The term "jerry-rigged" is a relatively recent mingling (or perhaps garbling) of "jury rig" with "jerry-built".^[2] The latter implies shoddy workmanship.^[3] The term "Jimmy-rig" has also been used to denote an improvised repair.

[edit] References

• John Harland, Seamanship in the Age of Sail (Naval Institute Press, 1984)

[edit] See also

• Sailing ship accidents
• MacGyverisms
• Robinsonade

[edit] External links

• Jury Rig Blog