Yawl sternpost, and could usually be raised to allow the boat to be beached. Yawl A yawl is a two-masted sailing craft whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast (or aft-mast). Compared to a similar sized ketch, a yawl's mizzen mast is set further aft and its mizzen sail is smaller. Historically, the yawl was a commercial working vessel, but today, the yawl is a fore-and-aft rigged pleasure yacht. In Europe yawls are much less common than the more popular ketch. The yawl was originally developed as a rowboat with two small masts to assist the oarsmen. (When adding a
Jack Ketch for a Popish Contagion." In 1679, there appears from another pamphlet purporting to be written by Ketch himself, and entitled "The Man of Destiny's Hard Fortune", that the hangman was confined for a time in the Marshalsea prison, "whereby his hopeful harvest was like to have been blasted." A short entry in the autobiography of Anthony à Wood for 31 August 1681 describes how Stephen College was hanged in the Castle Yard, Oxford, "and when he had hanged about half an hour, was cut down by Catch or Ketch, and quartered under the gallows, his entrails were burnt in a