mainyards

He would lay his mainyards aback and heave her to.

Mr. Trunnell, Mate of the Ship "Pirate"

Then, as the ships swung down the tide, one sailor after another walked the hatches, climbed the shrouds, stood upon the mainyards to wave his friends a last farewell.

The Common Reader 1925

_Grosvenor_ stood steady, about a mile off, with her mainyards backed; and just as the fellow over the boat's bows caught hold of the swimmer's hair, the ensign was run up on board the ship and dipped three times.

Great Sea Stories Various 1897

A raft was made, and he was very unwillingly persuaded to trust his huge carcass upon it; he was then towed off with about thirty of the natives on the raft, attending him; the largest purchases and blocks were procured to hoist him in, the mainyards doubly secured, and the fall brought to the capstern.

Olla Podrida Frederick Marryat 1820

We had barely got away, however, before I detected light wreaths of smoke curling up between the masts of the distant ship; and at the same moment I observed that although her mainyards were still braced aback she seemed to be no longer hove-to, for, as I watched, her bows fell off until she was nearly before the wind, and she went drifting slowly away to leeward, sometimes heading in one direction and sometimes in another, yawing about all over the place, with a difference of fully four points on either side of the general direction in which she was driving.

A Pirate of the Caribbees Harry Collingwood 1886