Yard (sailing)
sail-carrying part of the rigging of a sailing ship
A yard is a spar on a mast from which sails are set. It may be constructed of timber or steel or from more modern materials such as aluminium or carbon fibre. Although some types of fore and aft rigs have yards, the term is usually used to describe the horizontal spars used on square rigged sails. In addition, for some decades after square sails were generally dispensed with, some yards were retained for deploying wireless (radio) aerials and signal flags.
Parts of the yard
Bunt
The short section of the yard between the slings that attach it to the mast.
Quarters
The port and starboard quarters form the bulk of the yard, extending from the slings to the fittings for the lifts and braces.
Yardarms
The outermost tips of the yard: outboard from the attachments for the lifts.
Note that these terms refer to stretches of the same spar, not to separate component parts.
Controlling the yard
The yard can rotate around the mast to allow the direction of the vessel to be changed relative to the wind. When running directly downwind the yards are 'squared' (pointing perpendicular to the ship's centre line and to the mast).
“Yard (sailing)” enters the record as sail-carrying part of the rigging of a sailing ship. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yard, sailing and sail-carrying can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q663616. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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