Jury rig

Encyclopedia : J : JU : JUR : Jury rig

---

Jury rigging (or jerry rigging) refers to makeshift repairs or substitutes, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand.

Nautical use

On sailing ships, the jury rig is a replacement mast and yards improvised in case of loss of the original mast.

There are these theories about the origin of the term "jury" in this sense:-

• A Latin and Old French root meaning "aid" or "succour".
• "jury-mast" derived from "injury-mast".
• From French du jour = "of the day", thus `temporary'.

While ships typically carried a number of spare spars such as topmasts, the lower masts, at up to one meter in diameter, were too large to carry spares. So a jury mast could be various things. Contemporary drawings and paintings show a wide variety of jury rigs, attesting to the creativity of sailors faced with the need to save their ships. Examples are:-

• A spare topmast.
• The main boom of a brig.
• To replace the foremast with the mizzenmast: mentioned in W. Brady's The Kedge Anchor (1852),
• The bowsprit set upright and tied to the stump of the real mast.

Ships always carried a variety of spare sails, so rigging the jury mast once erected was mostly a matter of selecting appropriately sized spares.

Although ships were observed to perform reasonably well under jury rig, the rig was quite a bit weaker than the original, and the ship's first priority was normally to steer for the nearest friendly port and get replacement masts.

Other forms

Sometimes the phrase is pronounced "jerry-rig", which is often (although incorrectly) thought to be derived from the slur "Jerry" or "Gerry", a derogative reference to Germans that gained notoriety during World War II. In fact, "jerry-rig" derives from the phrase "jerry-built", which has the same meaning and predates the use of "Jerry" as a slur. ["'jerry-built'/'jury-rigged'"]. alt.usage.english Word Origins FAQ. Accessed 25 May 2006. "Jimmy-rig" has also been used.

References

• John Harland, Seamanship in the Age of Sail (Naval Institute Press, 1984)

See also

• Sailing ship accidents

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?