What's a sloop?

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	Humber Keel & Sloop Preservation Society


	Sloops

Developing from keels in the eighteenth century, the Humber sloop was designed to sail the river’s shoal-ridden open estuarial waters, and to make occasional coastal passages.
With heavily built clinker hulls constructed first in timber, later in iron, sloops carried a gaff and boom rig with triangular main and head sails.This fore and aft rigging worked well on the Humber tideway, where much work was beating to windward and close hauled sailing, and it was efficient enough to allow regular trade passages to the Wash ports, to Bridlington and to the Thames.

Tiller steered, the sloop lines followed the traditional pattern of bluff bows with a sharp turning run aft to keep cargo to a maximum.
The mast, stepped in a lutchet and lowered by a roller set against the head ledge, was set forward to suit the hull. The twelve-foot pitch pine or oak lee boards were similarly hung well forward of amidships to balance the ship under sail, and worked by vertical rollers on the after rails.
Sloops’ sails were raised and lowered by halyard or “crab” rollers on the port and starboard coamings. The sails were tanned with preservatives, which coloured them ochre.
The high coamings over the hold were covered by wooden hatches, weatherproofed by tarpaulins. Accommodation was in a skipper’s cabin under the afterdeck and a crew cabin under the fore deck

Primarily working in open waters, sloops’ dimensions were not constrained by inland waterways and so tended to be large. A typical nineteen hundred sloop measured sixty eight feet by sixteen and carried 130 tons.
Sloops mainly handled bulk cargoes between the Humber ports, carrying farm produce from Lincolnshire, coal from the West Riding, bricks and tiles between both sides, cement and chalk stone from Barton and South Ferriby to Hull and transhipping phosphates back to the fertiliser works.
With the advent of motorised vessels, trade under sail declined steadily through the middle of the twentieth century. Most sloops were converted to motor barges or lighters: the last sailing sloop was unrigged in 1950.
In 1981, the restored HKSPS ship Amy Howson became the first sloop to sail the Humber in over thirty years. She still sails today.

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