Question about pirate/pirate hunting ships circa 1721

[Daniel]

Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail describes a snow as simply a variant of the brig, with a gaff mainsail set on a snow mast, which is a try-mast just abaft the mainmast. I don't see any snow mast on that model of the "18-gun snow" on Wikipedia.

I confess error regarding the schooner.

[Bos'n Cross]

This be a snow, the trimast mentioned above is on the rear mast of the ship(mizzen mast) it doesnt go all the way up though.....not sure if you could really call a snow 3 masted because of that.......i dont think they were all too popular.....not even sure that we have any recreations of one today........

[Daniel]

At the risk of fouling up again, I'd say that the try-mast on that snow is attached to the mainmast, because it's taller than the foremast. The mast holding up the try-mast would only be the mizzenmast if it were shorter than the mast in front.

All brigs and brigantines that I know of have a mainmast and a foremast, the mainmast being rearmost. Vessels rigged with a mainmast in front and a shorter mizzenmast to the rear are called ketches, per Falconer.

[Daniel]

Here's an odd note: Falconer says that a schooner is "a small vessel with two masts, whose main and fore-sail are suspended from gaffs." Is it possible that schooners of more than two masts were a 19th-century innovation? If so, I feel less bad about screwing up.

[Mission]

I find it hard to believe that I, as willingly ignorant as I am about ships, started all this. It seems to me we've lost sight of the original question entirely though. Why not just write Cordingly and ask him?

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/contact/

Or let's just have Ed go over there and ask him face-to-face. Surely he lives right next door to the museum.

[Bos'n Cross]

i believe the original question was answered, now were just enjoying ourselves/ learnin...lol and daniel now i concede that you are right about the rear on the snow being the main lolol now im not thinking things all the way through , iv gotten way to used to having a mizzenmast around lolololol.....indeed maybe 3 or more masted schooners were a 19th century thing, hhumm i dont even recall anything above a 2 masted schooner during the war of 1812......ill have to look around...

[Mission]

You're right, Cross. We did sort of answer the primary question about what sort of ship a pirate would use. We didn't answer the secondary question of why the figures in Cordingly's book don't add up. Now we're splitting hairs over what exactly Cordingly meant by Ship which is a tertiary question. But answering this won't answer the original secondary question. It was just a suggestion I had for why the figures might not add up.

[Fox]

A good friend of mine used to say that the difference between an Englishman and an American is that an Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way, but an American thinks a hundred years is a long time...

I live about 250 miles from the NMM at Greenwich and about 80 from the NMM at Falmouth, but in any case I don't think Cordingly's worked for the NMM for several years (though I might be wrong). (And, ahem, without wishing to slight Cordingly professionally or personally, UTBF is 15 years old now and there's been a great deal of more detailed research done in that time.)

One of the problems that comes with researching ships of this period is that by the end of the eighteenth century ship types had been fairly well classified, but in the middle of the seventeenth the name given to a type of vessel could depend as much on the purpose it was put to, or even where it was built, as much as its rig and hull shape. In the GAoP, although they were well on their way to classifying vessels, it was still something of a transitional period between the two practices, so what they meant when they wrote schooner, sloop, shallop or skiff was not necessarily what we would mean.

FWIW, I believe schooners with more than 2 masts are indeed a nineteenth-centuryism.

[Daniel]

Since Cordingly apparently isn't at the NMM anymore, I have just now attempted to contact him through his agent. I'll let you all know if I get an answer.

[Daniel]

Hi, fellows. Cordingly wrote me back and said that, although he cannot find his oriignal calculations, his notes say that the proportions were misidentified as percentages in the published draft. That is, it should have said that out of 120 reported pirate attacks where the vessel type was identified, 55 were sloops, 45 ships, 10 brigs or brigantines, 5 schooners, 3 open boats, and 2 snows. He says I am the first person ever to catch this out of several copyeditors, which I found inordinately pleasing.

[Mission]

It's nice that he got back to you so quickly.

[Tartan Jack]

Foxe,

What is the link to that list?

I'd like to see it.

[Fox]

It was on the forum at www.piratesinfo.com but I believe it got wiped in a forum clean-up.

[Mission]

It was on the forum at www.piratesinfo.com but I believe it got wiped in a forum clean-up.

I don't remember them bothering to wipe anything out at piratesinfo, but a glance at the history forum (where we would have probably put it) shows that they have really messed up that forum. The search function doesn't even work any more. What a disaster...

Hee hee...I found a topic on ship's surgeons in there that I didn't even respond to at the time because I wasn't interested. It was all you, Daniel, jess & mary read talking...

[Tartan Jack]

It was on the forum at www.piratesinfo.com but I believe it got wiped in a forum clean-up.

Too bad. I'd have loved to have seen it. I'm more than a bit interested in ships and boats of that period.

If anyone saved a copy, I'd love one.

[Billy Leech]

Actually, I do have one more follow-up question, specifically with regards to a frigate. For a single gun-deck frigate, would all the cannon be in the same space, or would there be multiple sections of the gun deck separated by walls, each with its own supply of powder and shot? (This is important to how a key plot-point develops)

Thanks!

[Tartan Jack]

Warships had as open a gundeck as possible. Ones that started as such had what was called a "flush" gun deck.

In theory, a merchantman could have a permanent bulkhead that was structurally integral. On the ones that pirates captured then "converted," one of the main changes was to make the "gun deck" as flush as possible by the removal of non-integral (structural) bulkheads. I do know that merchantmen made use of temporary bulkheads to better secure cargo and prevent shifting of bulk cargo while at sea.

As a frigate was designed as flush deck, it wouldn't have one.

[Fox]

I don't remember them bothering to wipe anything out at piratesinfo, but a glance at the history forum (where we would have probably put it) shows that they have really messed up that forum. The search function doesn't even work any more. What a disaster...

Well, I don't know if it was wiped, but I certainly couldn't find it when I looked a while back, and I do know that there were some 'clean-ups' done of threads that had been inactive for more than six minutes...

Perhaps we should just start over in Twill.

[Mission]

I suspect it is still in there, although I didn't see it. The format is so screwed up that you can hardly read some of the post titles, though. (That and I don't know the actual title of the thread - again, that's a topic that didn't interest me enough to read it very often.)

You could start it here, although no one picked up on the Pirate Nationalities (Origins) thread when I re-posted that here, which led me to suspect they were more interested in clothing and character details than historical occurrences (except by way of proof of clothing and character details). Although there has been a spate of historical discussions lately... maybe now is the time. You can but try...

You know the drill for creating lists - you have to prime the pump with a list of info in a well-named thread and let the cognocienti add to it. I think it is sort of fun for those who know what they're talking about. (Which, for this topic, isn't me. )

[MarkG]

Actually, I do have one more follow-up question, specifically with regards to a frigate. For a single gun-deck frigate, would all the cannon be in the same space, or would there be multiple sections of the gun deck separated by walls, each with its own supply of powder and shot? (This is important to how a key plot-point develops)

Thanks!

This is decades later but the original Constellation was a frigate with an opening on the main deck down to the gun deck. When they tried to convert the current Constellation from a Sloop of War into a Frigate, they put this in. Later they realized that they were two separate ships - one decommissioned and a new one built in the same shipyard rather than the original being refit. Even later they realized that the sloop gained a lot of its strength from the main deck planks stretching the entire length of the ship. Between the big hole they cut in the middle and other places where they replaced rotted pieces of wood, the ship lost structural integrity and started to hog (the ends drooped down). They ended up preserving it by building a new hull around the original one to give it strength. That's what you see today.

Mark

[Tartan Jack]

One more thing to add . . .

We oft think of a "sloop" as a Burmuda or Jamaican Sloop. As the term would soon (1750s) be used for much larger 2 and 3 masted boats, the term itself is probably in a transition from meaning a small single masted, fast closed deck boat to more "fast boat, but not a full ship" and used for one smaller than a "real" ship and smaller than a frigate.

That would include brigs, snows, and most 3-masted rigs.

To add a touch more . . .

I am starting to think that the main indicator of a sloop was in regards to primary vs. secondary sails. All larger boats and ships used fore-aft and square rigging in the Western world. Most "ships" were primarily square and would "add-in" fore-aft where they would fit. Smaller "cutter"-types were fore-aft w/o significant square rigging. "Sloops" were a rigging hybrid w/ primarily fore-aft (jib/gaff-rigged) but still with a large square main-sail and top sail, originally single-masted.

In the 17-teens the term looks to have been expanded to include single, double, and even triple masted larger ocean-going closed boats, that were fore-aft rigged (primarily?) AND square-rigged.

But, they were still too small to be full-fledged "ships." Sloops, unlike bulk-merchant boats, were built for speed and maneuverability, rather than cargo capacity.

-At this time, "ship" was a specific term for large 3-masted, square-rigged sea-vessels, NOT a general term for all large sea-going vessels.

Edited March 29, 2010 by Tartan Jack

[Tartan Jack]

Well . . .

Rereading sections of books on ships of the period . . .

I noticed something . . .

Several boats are referenced such as:

"Ship rigged sloop"

"Brig rigged sloop"

"Snow rigged sloop"

So . . .

Obviously the term sloop has LESS to do w/ the rigging than the hull shape design. Therefore, my post above is incorrect.

It is a term used for a specific shape concept for the hull, much like fluytes were 3 masted, shallow draft, flat bottom, rounded bow, "fat" beam and high stern. A sloop hull was sharp and designed for speed. As such, it could have been a "class" of large boat that included multiple rigs.