Row boat, long boat, tender boat, cock boat, etc...

[Jib]

Most tall ships carried one or more oared boats for shore landings and maintenance. I have heard these boats called many things. What is the proper term(s)?

[Dutchman]

*Soap Box* Please strike tall ship from your vocabulary, its a modern description originally used by event marketers to describe a traditionally rigged or designed vessel, or collection of them for an event, that has made it into main stream terminology. No where have i seen port entry books of the era describing a "tall ship". brigs, galleys, schooners, pinks, sloops, etc..... yes, lots of them!, but no tall ships.

*please pardon the above soap box, now back to our regularly posted discussion, sorry*

hey mate, here is a similar topic already going. https://pyracy.com/index.php?showtopic=10999

A few of us here have long boats and there are pictures floating around, maybe some owners would post new pics. If we get interest going in this tread relevant to the other, expect this topic to merge over.

Wikipedia has a good primer to help explain what you are looking for. Hope this helps.

In the days of sailing ships, a vessel would carry several boats for various uses. One would be a longboat, an open boat to be rowed by eight or ten oarsmen, two per thwart. In other words the longboat was double banked: its rowing benches were designed to accommodate two men.

Other utility boats that might potentially be carried by a sailing ship include:

* Launch

* Gig

* Jolly-boat

* Cutter

* Barge

* Pinnace

* Dinghy

Unlike the dinghy or the cutter, the longboat would have fairly fine lines aft to permit its use in steep waves such as surf or wind against tide where need be. Like other ships' boats, the longboat could be rigged for sailing but was primarily a pulling boat. It had the double-banked arrangement in common with the cutter. This was possible as it had a beam similar to a cutter's but broader than that of a gig, which was single banked.

The longboat was generally more seaworthy than the cutter, which had a fuller stern for such load-carrying work as laying out an anchor and cable. In a seaway or surf therefore, the cutter was more prone to broaching to.

The Oxford English Dictionary notes uses of the word from 1515 to 1867. In later years, particularly in the Royal Navy, the longboat tended to be replaced by the whaler. The cutter was still in use in the 1950s but had been largely replaced by the 32 foot and 25 foot motor cutters.

In some places such as Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn Island, the surf boats are known as longboats, perhaps because the settlers who introduced them were European seamen. The Tristan da Cunha boats are single banked.

The French link is to chaloupe, which in this context is a cutter.

[MarkG]

*Soap Box* Please strike tall ship from your vocabulary, its a modern description originally used by event marketers to describe a traditionally rigged or designed vessel, or collection of them for an event, that has made it into main stream terminology. No where have i seen port entry books of the era describing a "tall ship". brigs, galleys, schooners, pinks, sloops, etc..... yes, lots of them!, but no tall ships.

*please pardon the above soap box, now back to our regularly posted discussion, sorry*

hey mate, here is a similar topic already going. https://pyracy.com/in...showtopic=10999

A few of us here have long boats and there are pictures floating around, maybe some owners would post new pics. If we get interest going in this tread relevant to the other, expect this topic to merge over.

Wikipedia has a good primer to help explain what you are looking for. Hope this helps.

In the days of sailing ships, a vessel would carry several boats for various uses. One would be a longboat, an open boat to be rowed by eight or ten oarsmen, two per thwart. In other words the longboat was double banked: its rowing benches were designed to accommodate two men.

Other utility boats that might potentially be carried by a sailing ship include:

* Launch

* Gig

* Jolly-boat

* Cutter

* Barge

* Pinnace

* Dinghy

Unlike the dinghy or the cutter, the longboat would have fairly fine lines aft to permit its use in steep waves such as surf or wind against tide where need be. Like other ships' boats, the longboat could be rigged for sailing but was primarily a pulling boat. It had the double-banked arrangement in common with the cutter. This was possible as it had a beam similar to a cutter's but broader than that of a gig, which was single banked.

The longboat was generally more seaworthy than the cutter, which had a fuller stern for such load-carrying work as laying out an anchor and cable. In a seaway or surf therefore, the cutter was more prone to broaching to.

The Oxford English Dictionary notes uses of the word from 1515 to 1867. In later years, particularly in the Royal Navy, the longboat tended to be replaced by the whaler. The cutter was still in use in the 1950s but had been largely replaced by the 32 foot and 25 foot motor cutters.

In some places such as Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn Island, the surf boats are known as longboats, perhaps because the settlers who introduced them were European seamen. The Tristan da Cunha boats are single banked.

The French link is to chaloupe, which in this context is a cutter.

The Chaloupe was also known as a shallop in English. These could be rowed or sailed. They were sometimes stored in parts for long voyages. Larger shallops were used as coastal vessels on their own. Sometime they had a half or full deck.

Note - according to William Baker's The Mayflower and Other Colonial Vessels, a pinnace was a smaller ship acting as a supply ship for a larger one so a pinnace would never be carried by another ship. After examining a lot of records, he decided that a pinnace was not a specific type of ship but rather a role that a ship performed.

Mark

[Jib]

Thanks gents! Hey Dutchman what term should be used to describe masted ships? And don't worry about the soap box... I am here to learn and proper terms are part and parcel of the task.

[Daniel]

*Soap Box* Please strike tall ship from your vocabulary, its a modern description originally used by event marketers to describe a traditionally rigged or designed vessel, or collection of them for an event, that has made it into main stream terminology.

I respectfully disagree. The term "tall ship" goes back at least to Hakluyt. In 1589, he wrote that "divers tall ships of London" were trading to the Mediterranean from 1511 to 1534, that la Roche had sailed with "3. tall Ships," that Humphrey Gilbert had suffered "the losse of a tall ship," and so on. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica says that in Elizabethan usage, a "'tall' ship was apparently a vessel carrying topmast with yards and square sails, an important development of the simpler pole-mast rig of earlier times."

The term "tall ship" continued to be used during the Golden Age. In 1657, Francis Vere wrote that he had seen "40 or 50 tall ships" in the mouth of Cádiz Bay. When Argensola's Discovery and Conquest of the Molucco and Philippine Islands was translated into English in 1708, the term "tall ship" was frequently used: "the one was a Tall Ship, the other a Sloop"; "Twenty Thousand fighting men were put aboard tall ships"; "Here the Fleet rendezvous'd, consisting of six Tall Ships, Six Galleys, Three Galliots." John Barnard wrote of encountering a "tall ship, probably a French man-of-war" in 1709. In 1720, Josiah Burchett wrote that Captain Wallpole had seen "nine tall Ships steering to the Westward," that Benbow spotted "seventeen tall Ships" heading for Cuba, and the same admiral at Dunkirk "found not any Ships in the Road, fifteen or sixteen tall ones he saw within."

No doubt the term "tall ship" got a big boost from Masefield's poetry ("all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by") around 1900, but the phrase was already over 300 years old when he wrote it.

Edited May 18, 2010 by Daniel

[Dutchman]

ok, noted. thank you for clarifying that. I still maintain its currently often misused in modern terminology. However, not as in jibs reference. my apologies.

[Dutchman]

double post

[capn'rob]

This double ender, "Key Lime" is the Long Boat to the Privateer Brig "Meka"II, 8 Guns, Beaufort, NC. She has not only proved useful as a shore conveyance for Captain and crew, yet by by speed and stealth has been an able vessel in battle.

[GentlemenScotty]

wonderful lesson lads..thank you SO much for sharin' cause we are all here ta learn and i for one would love ta see more pics as well!!!

[Daniel]

I must admit that I find all the different kinds of ship's boats tremendously confusing. But here are some clues from Falconer's Marine Dictionary

The largest boat that usually accompanies a ship is the long-boat, chaloupe, which is generally furnished with a mast and sails: those which are fitted for ships of war, may be occasionally decked, armed, and equipped, for cruising sort distances against merchant-ships of the enemy, or smugglers, or for impressing seamen, &c.

The barges are next in order, which are longer, slighter, and narrower: they are employed to carry the principal sea-officers, as admirals, and captains of ships of war, and are very unfit for sea. See the article BARGE.

Pinnaces exactly resemble barges, only that they are somewhat smaller, and never row more than eight oars; whereas a barge properly never rows less than ten. These are for the accommodation of the lieutenants, &c.

Cutters of a ship, (bateaux, Fr.) are broader, deeper, and shorter than the barges and pinnaces; they are fitter for sailing, and are commonly employed in carrying stores, provisions, passengers, &c. to and from the ship. In the structure of this sort of boats, the lower edge of every plank in the side over-lays the upper-edge of the plank below, which is called by ship-wrights clinch-work.

Yawls, (canots, Fr.) are something less than cutters, nearly of the same form, and used for similar services, they are generally rowed with fix oars.

The above boats more particularly belong to ships of war; as merchant-ships seldom have more than two, viz. a long-boat and yawl: when they they have a third, it is generally calculated for the countries to which they trade, and varies in it's [sic] construction accordingly.

Note the use of "clinch-work" rather than "clinker-built" as we would say today, and a vessel that moves under its own crew's oars without towing being called a "barge."

OK so far as it goes, but what about "dories," "cockboats," "gigs," "jolly-boats," "dinghies," "launches," and all that? You will search Falconer in vain for any of these. My Merriam-Webster has a few definitions that aren't much help:

dory . . . [Miskito dóri dugout] (1709): a flat-bottomed boat with high flaring sides, sharp bow, and deep V-shaped transom

cockboat . . . (15c): a small boat; esp: one used as a tender to a larger boat

gig . . . a long light ship's boat . . .a rowboat designed for speed rather than work

jolly boat . . .(ca. 1741): a ship's boat of medium size used for general-purpose work

launch . . . (1697) 1 : a large boat that operates from a ship

In short, if there even is a difference among all these boats, it needs someone saltier than a lexicographer to define it.

The term "dinghy" may be post-Golden Age: Merriam-Webster says it's first seen in print in 1810, and is of East Indian origin.

[gunner Gordon]

If you can find a copy of it ,Chappell's book "early north american small boats" or something like that is a great source of construction and rig types from the time period and slightly after.

[Poopdeck Pappy]

Thanks gents! Hey Dutchman what term should be used to describe masted ships? And don't worry about the soap box... I am here to learn and proper terms are part and parcel of the task.

Tall Ship is not a incorrect term, but a lubber term. Square-rig sailors, which I am one, talk about ships based on there rigs ie: Brig, Bark, Top Sail Schooner etc..

[MarkG]

Here's an original from 1691 - Queen Mary's Shallop from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.