The defining feature
A yawl is a two-masted fore-and-aft rig with a tall main mast and a much smaller mizzen mast placed behind the rudder post, close to or over the stern. The conventional rule is simple. If the second mast stands in front of the rudder post, the boat is a ketch. If it stands behind, it is a yawl. A second guide is the size of the mizzen: on a yawl it is usually small, often a fraction of the mainsail, while a ketch’s mizzen is larger and does more of the work of driving the boat.
These are conventions, not laws, and sailors do not always apply them strictly. Some use the position of the rudder stock, the rudder’s pivot, instead of the post, and boats with the second mast very near the boundary can be described either way. Others point out that the labels also reflect how the mizzen is used. A mizzen that is mostly a balancing device is called a yawl’s, while one that adds substantial drive suggests a ketch. The sloop and cutter, by contrast, are single-masted rigs.
What the small mizzen does
Because the mizzen stands so far aft, its role differs from the mainmast. Sailors have traditionally pointed to several uses.
- Balance. Hoisted with a reduced mainsail in a rising wind, it can help keep a boat’s helm easy.
- Steering and heaving to. Pulling the mizzen in tight while backing a headsail can help a boat lie steady.
- Anchoring. A mizzen set tight on the centreline helps a boat to lie head to the wind when at anchor, reducing sheering about.
- Light-air sail. In suitable conditions, a mizzen staysail between the masts adds area.
The yawl’s mizzen adds little to upwind performance, because it sits in the disturbed air behind the mainsail. Its supporters have valued it for convenience and balance rather than speed.
The word
The origin of the word “yawl” is not settled. It is usually connected with Dutch and Low German words for small boats, such as the Dutch “jol” and the German “jolle”, which gave English words like “jolly boat” and “yawl”. The English word appears from the seventeenth century at the latest, and early on it often meant a ship’s boat, a small craft carried by a larger vessel. Over time, it was applied in different places to various small boats, and only later did it become attached to the particular rig.
That history helps to explain why “yawl” can be confusing in old documents. A yawl in a seventeenth-century or eighteenth-century source might be a ship’s boat, a rowing boat, or a small fishing craft, with no particular connection to a mizzen mast.
Working yawls
Several kinds of working boat carried the name before the rig became closely associated with yachts.
- Norfolk and Yarmouth beach yawls. On the east coast of England, the long, open boats used by beachmen, who launched from the shore to go to the aid of ships or to carry pilots and supplies out to vessels, were often called yawls. These were large clinker-built boats with lugsails on two masts. The beachmen of Great Yarmouth and Caister had a well-known tradition of rescue and salvage.
- Deal and Kent boats. Boatmen working off Deal and the Downs used similar large open craft for similar duties, though some of these were called luggers rather than yawls.
- Fishing yawls. In some districts, local fishing boats with a small second mast were called yawls.
The word’s use for those craft did not always mean that the mizzen was behind the rudder post. In many of them, the aftermost mast was stepped very far aft and the sails were lugsails, rather than the gaff and Bermuda sails of later yachts. The exact usage varied from one place to another.
The yawl as a yacht
As yachting developed in the nineteenth century, the yawl became a recognised yacht rig, especially in Britain and the United States. In the twentieth century, a number of well-known ocean-racing yachts were yawls, helped by the way the rating rules of the time treated the mizzen. Later rule changes and developments in rigs and sail handling made the rig less common in racing, and most modern yachts are single-masted.
Why the distinction still matters
The yawl-ketch distinction can seem pedantic, but it records something real about how the second mast is used. In the ketch the mizzen is a working sail, and in the yawl it is an assistant. The difference is a good reminder that the names of rigs developed from practical habits, and that the boundaries between them were drawn by usage more than by any rule.