“It is an unforeseen circumstance. No one trains to have a giant mast break on a schooner. Everyone acted with professionalism. Everyone was doing the best they could with the gifts that they had.”

It is deceptively easy to get bogged down in the dominant paradigm of Traditional Sail that is centered on the archaeology and history of square rigged ships and fore and aft rigged work boats. This is, admittedly, a broad generalisation, but it is also one that I would defend.