What a jib is
A jib is a triangular sail set on a stay forward of the foremost mast, with its lower front corner usually fixed near the bow or on a bowsprit. “Headsail” is the wider term for any sail set ahead of the mast, and it includes the jib, the staysail, the genoa and the large flying sails used on some modern yachts. The details differ from boat to boat, but the idea is the same: a sail at the front that works with the sails behind it.
The origin of the word “jib” is not firmly established, and sources offer several possible explanations. It is safer to describe the sail than to guess at the word.
Before the headsail
Ancient and medieval vessels had square sails, and some Mediterranean craft carried lateen sails. Square sails are efficient when the wind is behind, but a ship under square sail on its own generally could not sail close to the wind. The earliest ships also had little means of adjusting how the vessel balanced under sail, so helmsmen leaned on the steering oar or rudder to hold a course.
Sails at the very bow were not unknown. Some late medieval and Renaissance ships carried a small square sail under the bowsprit, often called a spritsail, which helped to turn the ship away from the wind. This sail was set across the ship, not along it, and it is a different thing from the fore-and-aft triangle that later became the jib.
Staysails and the arrival of the jib
The great change came in northern Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shipbuilders, particularly in the Netherlands, began to fit triangular fore-and-aft sails on stays, the ropes that support a mast. Many historians credit Dutch ships and small craft with popularising these staysails, though the precise sequence is hard to date and others contributed.
By the later seventeenth century, headsails were being set from bowsprits on a growing range of vessels. The Dutch jacht, a nimble small ship, used such fore-and-aft sails as part of its sail plan. English and French sailors adopted similar arrangements, and by the eighteenth century a jib was a normal part of the rig on sloops, cutters and many larger ships. A square-rigged ship of the line in the age of sail carried several headsails between the foremast and the bowsprit end, which were useful for steering as well as for pulling the ship forward.
What the jib improved
A fore-and-aft headsail did several practical things.
- Windward sailing. A fore-and-aft sail can be set along the length of the boat, so the vessel can head closer to the wind than a square-rigged ship. Even a square-rigger gained from added staysails, though it could not match a sloop or cutter.
- Balance. Placing a sail well forward of the mast helped counter the tendency of a boat with only a mainsail to turn into the wind, which reduced strain on the helm.
- Tacking. Backing a headsail by holding its sheet on the wrong side can help push the bow across the wind, which makes turning through the wind easier for a short-handed crew.
- Flexibility. Several sizes of headsail allowed a vessel to carry sail suited to the wind strength without taking in the mainsail.
On later yachts, the interplay between the headsail and the mainsail became a subject of its own. In the twentieth century, designers and aerodynamicists studied the slot between the two sails and how a well-shaped jib can improve the flow over the mainsail. That understanding grew mainly after the age of working sail, so it is a modern explanation of what earlier sailors had learned by experience.
Headsails on working rigs
On working craft, jibs varied with the rig. Cutters carried a staysail and a jib, often with the jib set on a long bowsprit that could be drawn in when not needed. Sloops usually carried one headsail, though bigger vessels added more. Schooners often had several headsails: a jib, a flying jib and a staysail between the masts. Ketches and yawls generally resembled sloops or cutters in the front half of the boat, because the mizzen at the back did not change the headsail’s role.
Bowsprits, which carried the stays, could be long and fragile. Many working boats had bowsprits that could be run in or “reefed” when the weather was poor, a good example of how rigs developed around local conditions.
The genoa and later developments
Through the nineteenth century, yacht racing encouraged ever larger jibs, because there was an advantage in being able to carry more sail area. Rules and tonnage measurement often did not restrict headsail size very strictly, so racing yachts used large jibs and balloon sails for light winds.
In the twentieth century, an overlapping jib that extends behind the mast became widely known as the genoa. It is traditionally linked to a Swedish sailor, Sven Salén, who is reported to have used such a sail at a regatta in Genoa in the late 1920s, though accounts of the origin differ in detail. The overlapping headsail grew popular because it increased the area of a sail set at the front without adding a new mast.
Several other changes followed in the second half of the century:
- Synthetic cloth such as polyester, introduced for sails in the mid twentieth century, held its shape better than cotton.
- Furling gear let a crew roll up a headsail around its own stay, rather than take it down and replace it.
- Modern racing yachts carry specialised light-weather headsails that echo older balloon jibs.
Why it matters
The jib is a small-looking change that had large results. It helped make fore-and-aft vessels competitive upwind, and it lies behind the sail plans of the cutter, the sloop and the schooner. When you look at an eighteenth-century painting of a ship, the cluster of triangular sails at the bow is not decoration; it is a deliberate answer to the problem of making a heavy vessel steer well and sail closer to the wind.