How it began
The rig is thought to have begun with fore-and-aft rigged boats built in Bermuda by a Dutch-born boat builder in the 17th century. Captain John Smith reported that Nathaniel Butler, governor of Bermuda from 1619 to 1622, employed Jacob Jacobsen, a crewman from a Dutch frigate wrecked on the islands. Jacobsen reportedly built and sold more than a hundred boats in three years. He brought knowledge of the Dutch bezaan rig, itself an adaptation of the Mediterranean lateen. A 1671 poem described Bermuda's boats as floating with triple-cornered sails.
Before it existed
Dutch builders had adapted the lateen rig by stepping the yard directly in the boat so that it became a raked mast, a sail known in English as the leg-of-mutton. In Bermuda the islands lie in line with the prevailing wind, so local boats needed strong performance to windward. Elsewhere the gaff rig remained standard, and it had the practical advantage that sail could be reduced in high winds by taking down the topmast and topsail.
How it works
The Bermuda sail is a triangular mainsail set fore and aft on a tall mast. Early Bermudian boats had no boom or jib, and the mainsail was attached only to the mast and deck. Bermudian builders later added booms, jibs, long bowsprits and high raked masts, though the dates are not recorded. A boat with one mast, a Bermuda mainsail and a single jib is called a Bermuda sloop or Marconi sloop.
How it spread
In 1675 Samuel Fortrey wrote to Samuel Pepys proposing improvements to the rig. Scottish yachtsmen were the first in Britain to experiment with it, and a club yearbook for 1839 showed two yachts with a "Mudian" rig. For a long time it was considered suitable only for small vessels because it needs a tall mast. Continuous masts with a track for sail slides allowed the sail to be hoisted all the way up, and British 6-Metre yachts were using tracks and Bermudan sails before World War I.
What changed first
Bermuda's light cedar vessels became prized for agility and speed, especially upwind. When Bermudians began racing boats in the early 1800s, the naval officer H. G. Hunt concluded in the 1820s that a single-masted sloop would beat a schooner, and his yacht proved it. Single-masted sloops with hollow masts then became the norm in Bermudian racing.
Where it stands today
In the 1900s the rig was adopted almost universally on small sailing craft. The modern form is much less extreme than traditional Bermudian designs, with lower vertical masts, shorter booms, no bowsprit and less sail area. It needs fewer crew to hoist the mainsail than a gaff rig.
