Sea Terms and Types of 19th-Century Sailing Vessels

10.1 Sea Terms and Types of 19th-Century Sailing Vessels

This module describes the sailing vessels of the British and American  eetsprimarily used during the 18 th and early 19th centuries, as well as their purposes, and includes illustrations of some of the ships. Also included are commonly used sea terms.

Figure 10.1: Brig

Types of 18 th and Early 19 th Century British or American Sailing Vessels

Barge	A boat of a long, slight and spacious construction.
Barque (Bark)	A sailing vessel with three masts, square-rigged on
	the fore and main and with only fore-and-aft sails
	on her mizzen mast.
Boat	Any small open craft without decking and propelled
	by oars, sometimes assisted by a small lugsail on a
	short mast.

Brig	A two-masted square-rigged vessel, a brigantine.
Clipper	A three-masted vessel used to transport tea, silks
	and spices from the East.  The ships were named
	clippers because their speed could clip the time of
	a formerly long journey.
Cutter	A one-masted vessel rigged with a ga mainsail,
	topsail, headsails and usually a square topsail. The
	name is derived from their fast sailing.
East Indiaman	The name given to the ships of the various East
	India companies.  Ships of these companies were
	highly gilded and decorated with carving and were
	often well furnished.  Always well armed as war-
	ships. The English and Dutch companies built and
	serviced their own ships and maintained them in
	their own private dockyards.
Fireship	Specialized vessel converted or built for the purpose
	of attacking moored or disabled vessels.
Frigate	(1) A large sloopof 16 or 18 guns, or (2) Any small
	cruising warship.
Gig	A light, narrow ship's boat, built for speed.
Hospital Ship	An old warship or merchantman converted to serve
	as a oating hospital, usually to accompany a eet
	or to be moored as a hulk [Not purpose-built during
	this period].
Hoy	A small single-masted sailing cargo vessel used as
	a dockyard craft.
Hulk	A dismasted ship, usually old and past active ser-
	vice, used as a receiving ship, sheer hulk, hospital
	or accommodation ship, or stationary storeship.
Jollyboat	A small ship's boat, used for a variety of purposes.
	It was clinker-built, propelled by oars, and was nor-
	mally hoisted on a davit at the stern of the ship.
Ketch	A vessel tted with two masts (i.e., the main and
	mizzen masts).
Lazarette (or Lazaretto)	A hulk used as accommodation for seamen under-
	going quarantine (to prevent or limit the spread of
	plague and other infectious diseases between ship
	and shore).

Lighter		A large, open, at-bottomed boat, with heavy bear-
		ings, employed to carry goods to and from ships.
Longboat		The largest ship's boat.
Lugger		A small vessel with four-cornered cut sails, set fore-
		and-aft, and may have two or three masts.
Lump		A short, heavy lighter used in Dockyards for car-
		rying anchors, chains and heavy stores to and from
		ships.
Packet		A small vessel usually employed to carry mails be-
		tween ports
Pinnace		A type of ship's boat which was rowed with eight
		oars (later increased in length to take sixteen oars).
Powder hulk		A vessel for storing and issuing gunpowder prefer-
		ably moored at a safe distance from the dockyard
		to which it was attached.
Privateer		An armed merchant ship, licensed by a letter of
		marquee to cruise against enemy ships to her own-
		ers' pro t.
Prize		Name used to describe an enemy vessel captured
		at sea by a ship of war or a privateer. The word is
		also used to describe a contraband cargo taken from
		a merchant vessel and condemned in an Admiralty
		Court.
Schooner		A small vessel rigged with fore-and-aft sails on her
		two or more masts; largely used in the coasting
		trade they required a smaller crew than a square-
		rigged vessel of comparable size.
Sheer hulk		A vessel tted with a pair of sheer legs (two large
		spars formed into an A frame ) to hoist masts in
		and out of vessels; in eect, a oating crane .
Ship		From the Old English scip, the generic name for sea-
		going vessels (as opposed to boats). Originally ships
		were personi ed as masculine but by the sixteenth
		century almost universally expressed as feminine.
		In strict maritime usage, signi ed a vessel square-
		rigged on three masts.

Ship of the line		A line-of-battle ship.
Sloop		A small man-of-war, rigged as a ship, brig or ketch.
Smack		A small fore and aft rigged single masted coastal
		craft.
Snow		A small square-rigged vessel (similar to a brig) with
		a supplementary trysail mast.
Storeship		A ship intended to carry naval stores (spars, tim-
		ber cordage, tar, etc.  all the material needed
		to repair naval warships). In contrast, a transport
		was intended to carry men. Storeshipswere auxil-
		iary vessels with a small defensive armament. Most
		were converted from merchantmen, though in some
		instances they were purpose-built or converted from
		rst-line ghting vessels of dierent types.
Tank vessel		Dockyard craft tted with iron tanks and pumps to
		provide water to ships in harbor.
Tender		A vessel employed to assist or serve another, an
		auxiliary vessel.
Transport		A cargo vessel engaged by the government to con-
		vey troops, convicts, or stores (invariably these
		were chartered merchantmen the Navy owned and
		manned only a small number).
Troopship		A ship converted to carry troops.  It could be a
		regular warship or a converted merchantman.
Whaleboat		The name given to an open boat, pointed at both
		ends so that it was convenient for beaching either
		on the bow end or the stern. Used under oars, and
		had to rudder steered by an oar over the stern.
		The whaling ship, according to its size, carried as
		many as six or eight whaleboats.
Whaler		The name used for the vessel, with its complement
		of whaleboats, which sailed to catch whales with
		hand-thrown harpoons.
Wherry		A light rowing boat used chiey on rivers for the
		carriage of passengers and goods; also a shallow sin-
		gle sail boat indigenous to the Norfolk broads (East
		Anglia).