The mast of a sailing vessel is a tall spar, or arrangement of spars, erected more or less vertically on the centre-line of a ship or boat. Its purposes include carrying sails, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a navigation light, look-out position, signal yard, control position, radio aerial or signal lamp. Large ships have several masts, with the size and configuration depending on the style of ship. Nearly all sailing masts are guyed.Until the mid-19th century all vessels' masts were made of wood formed from a single or several pieces of timber which typically consisted of the trunk of a conifer tree. From the 16th century, vessels were often built of a size requiring masts taller and thicker than could be made from single tree trunks. On these larger vessels, to achieve the required height, the masts were built from up to four sections (also called masts), known in order of rising height above the decks as the lower, top, topgallant and royal masts. Giving the lower sections sufficient thickness necessitated building them up from separate pieces of wood. Such a section was known as a made mast, as opposed to sections formed from single pieces of timber, which were known as pole masts.
Those who specialised in making masts were known as mastmakers.
Nomenclature
For square-sail carrying ship, the masts, given their standard names in bow to stern (front to back) order, are:
Sprit topmast: a small mast set on the end of the bowsprit (discontinued after the early 18th century); not usually counted as a mast, however, when identifying a ship as "two masted" or "three masted"
Fore-mast: the mast nearest the bow, or the mast forward of the main-mastSections: fore-mast lower—fore topmast—fore topgallant mast
Main-mast: the tallest mast, usually located near the center of the ship
Sections: main-mast lower—main topmast—main topgallant mast—royal mast (if fitted)
Mizzen-mast: the aft-most mast.
