Pirate type boats

[Guardian]

Hey guys I am new here but I hae built a few (a dozen or so)boats in my time, mostly long boats, a couple of small dory's and a odd looking dinghy :D , thank fully I have sold them all, but I wanted to build something a bit larger, are there any pirate-type boats out there, you know the good 'ol 3 masters, 2 main, and a smaller on the aftdeck, are there plans, or pics of any boats like that would be great, man I am going to love this site ;)

Thanks,
Mike

[Wiley Baggins]

Guardian,

Odd name for a pirate. ;) What sort of size are you looking at? There have been a couple (at least one) fully rigged ships built to scale. If I remember correctly, they were less than 20' long, but fully functional. Someone else here may have more information.

[mmd]

Contact Bob Rosborough at Rosborough Boats in Halifax, NS and ask him if building plans are available for his father's 50-ft "Aquarius" design. It's a three-masted brig with enough salt in her looks to pickle your eyeballs by merely looking at her.

[Gresham CA]

Welcome aboard Mike. William Gardens designs have some of that look to my eye.

[Donn]

..enough salt in her looks to pickle your eyeballs by merely looking at her. http://media5.hypernet.com/ubb/icons/icon14.gif :D

[ahp]

Sorry mmd, there is no such thing as a three masted brig.

[Dave Fleming]

Something like this?
Our own Gary Bergmans' vessel in San Francisco Bay. Hmmm, better e-mail him and find out how the cannons worked on the 4th.!

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid68/p138a0099a5fa3041d0c16a4e26abbc4f/fbbc87f8.jpg

[Donn]

Originally posted by ahp:
Sorry mmd, there is no such thing as a three masted brig.There are several on Google.

http://www.mygenerations.net/images/alexr.jpg

"The Alexander weighed in at 452 tons, three-masted brig, 114 feet long, and 31 feet at the beam. She was built in Hull in 1783. For this voyage to Australia, she was chartered from William Walton & Co, and captained by Master Duncan Sinclair. The crew strength is thought to have been about 40, with additional marines, along with officials for the colony. There were 195 male convicts. The Alexander remained in Sydney Harbour until July 14, 1788, when she sailed for China under Lieutenant John Shortland."

[mmd]

ahp is a discerning sailing-ship junkie. A pure brig does indeed have only two masts; the foremast is square rigged and the mainmast carries both square-rigged sails and a fore-and-aft gaff sail called a brig sail or spanker. There is, however, a variation of the rig where the spanker is carried on a third mast aft of the main called a snow mast, and the rig is more properly called a snow brig.

I should have known better than to be imprecise here. redface.gif

[John E Hardiman]

Originally posted by ahp:
Sorry mmd, there is no such thing as a three masted brig.It is unfortunate that much of our marine history was never fully written down, similar to what is presently happening in the computer world; it is just changing too fast and the jargon changes meaning while using the same words.

I think aph, that if you look very carefully into period documents, you will find that the differences between ships, barks, and brigs had more to do with the location of the courses and the lead of the braces than with the number of masts. So you could have a "3 masted brig", or a "ship rigged brig", or a "brig rigged ship". Even more confusing is the relatively recent introduction of the terms barkentine and brigantine. And we won't even get into the topsail schooner issue smile.gif .

As to wether the vessel refered to by mmd is a "three masted brig" I will leave to the true scholars to argue out.

[mmd]

True enough, John. For those readers who are fortunate enough to have a copy of Chapelle's "The Search for Speed Under Sail", compare the photos of the models of the brig "Badger" on pp.92 and the brigantine "Swift" on pp.104, and try to discern the differences between the two. At first glance they seem almost identical, but close inspection will reveal telling differences, especially in how the mainmast is rigged.

(edited for mis-spelling)

[ 07-07-2003, 04:25 PM: Message edited by: mmd ]

[ahp]

Donn,

The picture you posted illustrates a ship.

Now my son went to Tabor Academy, and they had a former Dutch Pilot Vessel they called a "Schooner", the TABOR BOY. It was an iron vessel about 95 LOA which once had belonged to Hermann Goering. He of the sticky fingers.

I had a sail on it one afternoon. It was like nothing else I had ever seen.

The main (aft) mast carried a triangular mainsail, leg-o- mutton, if you please. The fore mast was double. One mast was stepped about two feet or less aft of the other. The forewardmost carried a square course, and above that a trangular topsail whose foot was secured to each end of the course yard. These may be called "raffees".

The aftermost of the twin masts carried a gaff sail, with boom, but with no topsail. There was a bowsprit and several headsails.

Not exactly a schooner, but what was it?

[John E Hardiman]

Originally posted by ahp:
Donn,

The picture you posted illustrates a ship.

Not wanting to hijack the thread, but.... :rolleyes:

No mizzen topgallant mast; therefor not "ship rigged"; therefor not a ship. One of those seemingly trival finer points. Of course from the picture, she could have her t'gallant mast sent down.

Back to our pirate thread....

[Guardian]

Wiley 20' thats just big enough for my G.I. Joes :D ,MMD
Does Bob Rosborough have a web site i can check out ? Charles does William gardens have a web site , i am hoping for a LOA of about 125-150,

Thanks for the help and history lesson guys,

Mike

[TomRobb]

The Scholastic philosophers had nothing on you guys :rolleyes:

[Sam F]

The "standard" pirate boat was surprisingly small as in this illustration by Howard Pyle:
http://www.tfaoi.com/am/19am/19am22.jpg

Piracy of the Spanish Main (the sort we usually think of when piracy is mentioned) grew out of the extreme poverty of various social and economic outcasts along the edges of Spain's American empire. Because they were poor, a start up piracy venture seldom had the resources to fund or equip large vessels so they made do with small craft and often even canoes!
Of course once captured, larger craft would be pressed into service, but pirates seemed to have wrecked or lost large vessels with remarkable alacrity.
Anyone wishing to read a contemporary 17th century account may want to read “The Buccaneers of America” by John Esquemeling. He was a former indentured (and abused) servant who served as a surgeon with Henry Morgan. There’s nothing like an eyewitness account to put one in the picture!

[ahp]

John, I always thought that if a vessel had three or more masts and carried square sails on all (not just topsails) she was a ship. I am willing to be argued with however.

Terminology does change with time. The Mayflower is usually refered to as a ship, but she carried only a lateen on the mizzen. Larger ships of her era sometimes had a second lateen rigged mast aft, the "Bonaventure".

Probably no rig name underwent as many changes of meaning as the "Ketch". Centuries ago a ketch was a two masted vessel, with the foreward mast, topmast, plus topgallant, if she had one, being the larger. She would carry a square main course, topsail and topgallant foreward. The mizzen would have a square topsail, and perhaps topgallent, and a gaff spanker. These were common in the Baltic as lumber carriers.

As the centuries past, the ketch gradually lost it's square sails, first on the mizzen, then on the main, the square main topsail was the last to go, and she became fore-and-aft rigged vessel.

In one of the Horatio Hornblower books there is a good description of a bomb ketch. At that time a British Navy bomb ketch looked like a threemasted ship with the foremast removed. In the now generous fore deck, there were on or two morters, sunk into a well or cockpit below maindeck level. They fired the "Bomb" a hollow shell filled with powder and having its own fuze.

[ahp]

Now getting back to "Pirate Type Vessels". Earlier this year on WBF there was posted a picture, which I cannot find, of "Baby". She is a ship about 20 ft LOA and is being sailed by one person, that I can see.

The problem with subscale reproductions of square riggers is that one cannot climb the mast, not enough stability, and the small or solitary crew needs more arms than an octopus to handle it. Start counting the number of lines needed to control just one square sail. It will surprise you.

[mmd]

Guardian, Rosborough Boats does indeed have a website - http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/bobrosborough/ - but I don't think that you will find the info your are looking for there. After the near-demise of wooden yacht construction in the '70's, founder Jim Rosborough retired and his son Bob took over the business and switched to building small fibreglass motorcruisers based on the Cape Islander hull form, which remains the focus of the company today. I was suggesting that Bob might have control of the plans that his father drew in the sixties and seventies.

[John E Hardiman]

Originally posted by ahp:
John, I always thought that if a vessel had three or more masts and carried square sails on all (not just topsails) she was a ship. I am willing to be argued with however.
As I understand it, for "ships" post say 1660, there are three additional requirements: they must have t'gallant masts on all masts (some later sources say royal masts also), they must have tops which implies the sails are reefed aloft, and the next to last mast braces must be lead aft to the quarter vice forward. These requirements give rise to the differences that can be seen in regional 3 masted vessels prior to 1815 like the bilander, the buss, the polacre, the Norwegian cat, and the bark and the brig (a major difference between the two being the lead of the braces). After 1815, Britian had effectively swept everything off the face of the seas, and when the merchant fleets were rebuilt, they were rebuilt in one fashion almost standardized in rig. This trend progressed as the century went on until 1900, when all "ships" were standadized to the point that most all rigging was reeved the same to pin racks that were identical ship to ship.

As to the pirate question, it all depends what time. Yes the vessels used were smaller than most merchant vessels. But save for the vessels built for Letters of Marque most were captured merchant ships pressed into service. The "classic" pirate ship would most likely be represented as an English built galleass or pinnace or a Dutch "frigate-built" flute or a Hispo-Moorish xebec or tartane. There were very different vessels used by the English Sea Dogs 1580-1603 in the Channel or Irish Sea, or the Dutch Freebooters 1590-1640 in the North Sea and Baltic, or the French Buccaneers 1640-1720 on the Spanish Main, or the pirates of Madagascar, or the China pirates, right up the Wreckers of Cornwall and Devon in their luggers at the beginning of the last century and the the Malay pirates with their speedboats in the Cebu Sea of today.

[Gresham CA]

Mike,

This is the best I could find for a web page on William Garden.

http://www.wholeboat.net./gboats/gboat.html

[Guardian]

Thanks for the site Charles, MMD Thanks also for the site and a little history, I will send him out an e-mail tonight,

Mike

( I didn'y kow I would start a large chat like this, cool smile.gif )

[SailBoatDude]

Try Jay Benford's designs. His 30 series as a brigantine, gaff schooner, or sq. topsail ketch. Sunrise or Dawn, 42 - 43 series or one of his larger designs.

These aren't ships, but have such an air and salt about them that it wouldn't matter. More to the point they're reasonable in scope, without a fund raiser every other month, or selling several thousand tee shirts with a rough line drawing and logo on them.

There are also examples of them around and the 30 was and may still be available in kit form. The 42' topsail schooner is a sweet thing for a pirate to be caught on, preferably by bikini clad boarders.

Think doable man . . .

[Wiley Baggins]

Originally posted by Guardian:
Wiley 20' thats just big enough for my G.I. Joes :D

... i am hoping for a LOA of about 125-150,


MikeAt 125-150' it looks like your planning for your entire neighborhood's (county's?) G.I. Joes! ;)

Good luck.

Edit: P.S. If I were a madman such as you are, ;) I would consider one of those raffish bisquines...

Images here (http://www.dmh-photo.co.uk/travel/PIXLIST/images/general/maritime/)

[ 07-08-2003, 04:19 PM: Message edited by: Wiley Baggins ]

[High C]

Originally posted by Guardian:
...i am hoping for a LOA of about 125-150,

Thanks for the help and history lesson guys,

MikeWhoa baby! You got a couple million $$$ to put into this project? :eek:

[ahp]

John,

What would you call Captain Cook's "Endevor"? According to my painting of the modern "Endevor" reproduction, she has top gallant masts and sails on main and foremast, but not the mizzen. Although I have been on board her I cannot confirm this detail.

According to one of the guides she was refered to as Bark. How she was originally rigged as a collier I am not certain. I seem to remember that she was three masted with square sails on two or three masts, and these were pole masts. She was called locally as a "Whitby Cat".

When HM Navy bought her they sold her original rig for 50L and rerigged her navy style.

[Guardian]

well i don't have a few million, but this is going to be a long endeavour ( yeah i can spell big word,correctly :D ) maybe 10 or so years, from rough draft to chrisening,
I have a friend who has an area of land by the bay, where I have built my little project boats, the boat is for me, please the gi joes are not worthy of such a large craft :D

Mike

p.s my home pc is being worked on, so pm if you have any questions on my project

[thering]

Actually, HM Bark Endeavour (at least as currently rigged) does cross a topgallant on the mizzen. If you are looking at a painting, you may notice that the Mz Tg looks very low down - and that the lowest spar on the Mz has no sail bent. This spar is the crossjack and is used to provide a proper angle for the main topsail braces. So, she does cross a topgallant, has a square Mz topsail, but has no square Mz course. Ship rigged? Well, definitely not rigged as a barque, i.e. with the Mz entirely fore and aft rigged with a gaff topsail...

"Bark" in this case I believe is a diminutive to avoid calling her a "Ship" which had definite connotations in naval use (witness ship-rigged "Sloops of War" at 70-100' feet on deck).

The mizzen top on HMB Endeavour is only something like 30' off the deck, but looks awfully high at night while one is still seasick... But well worth the experience if you ever have the opportunity to crew.

Long-time lurker unmasked,

Trent Hering

[johnw]

If memory serves, there used to be a 27-foot hard-chined hermaphordite brig (or brigantine, but definitely not a snow or ship) on San Francisco Bay. Does anybody remember the boat and who designed it?

[John E Hardiman]

Originally posted by ahp:
John,

What would you call Captain Cook's "Endevor"? According to my painting of the modern "Endevor" reproduction, she has top gallant masts and sails on main and foremast, but not the mizzen. Although I have been on board her I cannot confirm this detail.

According to one of the guides she was refered to as Bark. How she was originally rigged as a collier I am not certain. I seem to remember that she was three masted with square sails on two or three masts, and these were pole masts. She was called locally as a "Whitby Cat".

When HM Navy bought her they sold her original rig for 50L and rerigged her navy style.{...got to write words before posting...thump/thump/.. redface.gif }

thering beat me to the punch, and he agrees with what I was able to dredge up on short notice. Endevor was orginaly a "cat", which implies 2 or 3 masts and pole topmasts, which was re-rigged as a "ship", which implies 3 masts with t'gallant masts, for service with His Majesties fleet. Now I haven't got a good look at the mizzen t'gallant top yet. It could just be a double with a cap or a pole with a crossed t'gallant yard...thering? It was very common to re-rig merchant vessels taken in hand to "Navy standards" with respect to mast and yard proportions, the USN even converted a couple of brigs (2 masts) to ship rigged sloops of war (3 masts).

As thering pointed out about Endevor and if you look at most US whaling barks, you will find a pole top mast but a cro'jack yard also. I believe this yard was to "yard and stay" the boats stored on the wheelhouse coachroof off, and to assist in the flensing of the whale; not ever a yard with a sail bent on. These things appear to be very subtle and sometimes whimiscal when we try to apply a hard and fast rule to the type of rig.

[ 07-09-2003, 09:37 PM: Message edited by: John E Hardiman ]

[T Eagle]

A small but applicable detour on the Pirate Theme ...

Is there an authorative (single) source on the web for descriptions of different rigs etc, (i.e. a lookup table) with rig names - number and location of masts, sailplan etc ...

While I'm relatively comfortable with the more common nautical terms and rigs, (i.e. yawl, mizzen, main ...), every now and then, a new-bie (or old-bie depending on your point of view) creeps into the forum.

Regards,

[mmd]

Oh, boy! Are you gonna like this one!

http://www.infa.abo.fi/~fredrik/sships/

Have fun ... the test is next Tuesday. ;)

[Roseknight]

Gonna point to one source for the main question of the thread and to a later question

For those of you that think Phil Bolger only does "square boats" prepare to be shocked....
he designed a replica (that was built) of the HMS Rose (I may be useing the wrong term as it was not a compleate reprodution but done to modern saftey standards)
And his 103 boat rigs covers as the title says 103 rigs including brig etc.

unfortunatly he doesnt have a web-site... people keep trying to convince him but I suppose there is only so much open-mindedness anyone person can have.. smile.gif

[T Eagle]

mmd,

arhmm, :eek: thanks for that ... I think I'm sick next tuesday!

[Guardian]

I'm with T Eagle , I don't feel so good,I think sit and work on my design for a little while :D Thanks for posting the link MMD, it helped me at least, I think ;)

Mike

[ahp]

Thanks everyone.

[thering]

Ok, I lurk for years and years, I finally find one thing of substance that I could add, and I screw it up...

Not that anyone is probably worried, but HM Bark Endeavour does *not* ship a mizzen topgallant mast nor yard. Glancing at the picture at my desk seemed to say so, but what I saw was the Mz topsail optically divided by the main yard. So what does that make the rig? Anyone?

In the interest of providing information of substance, here's what H. I. Chapelle says in "The History of American Sailing Ships:"

"Barks were square-sterned carriers, usually flush-decked, and like the pinks had no special rig. The name was not then [the colonial period] applied to a rig, but was a shipbuilder's name for a hull type. The name is very loosely applied in colonial records, and is often used in place of "ship" or "vessel." Most of the colonial barks seem to have been brigantines, though some were rigged as ships or ketches."

...

"Before leaving these rigs it is worthwhile to mention the brig and snow. These gradually came into use in American vessels during the early part of the eighteenth century. They were two-masted vessels square-rigged on both masts. The brig set a gaff spanker on her main mast, schooner-fashion. Above this were the usual square sails. Because of the interference of the gaff-jaws it was difficult to set a square mainsail, and so in a brig this was omitted. A snow set her spanker on a "trysail mast" set on deck, a foot or so abaft the mainmast, and secured aloft to the trestletrees of that mast. This enabled the snow to set a square main course and was the only difference in the two rigs." He goes on to mention that the trysail mast was later known as a "spencer mast."

There, lurkmode back on.

Trent

[Kermit]

http://www.georgebuehler.com/

Click on Drawings and Photos, then PogoPogo. George says he'd like to build it square-rigged someday. Add a coupole of swivel guns, and bob's-yer-uncle, and on the cheap.

[Pete Dorr]

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Ss/0325980/03_976.jpg

[Alan D. Hyde]

Here's Buehler's Pogo Pogo:

http://www.georgebuehler.com/georgeimages/Pogo.jpeg

Alan

[johnw]

If you look at the rigs of some later brigs, you'll see that they pretty much all had trymasts. The snow rig didn't disappear, it just started getting called a brig. Words change meaning over time.

[John E Hardiman]

Guardian;

Ran across this web site;

No Quarter web page (http://www.noquartergiven.net/ships.htm)

Might be a good place to start "looking for a ship" ;)

[ 07-11-2003, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: John E Hardiman ]

[Guardian]

Sweet site thanks John

Mike

[Guardian]

*bump* Are there any computer programs out there that let you render your boat design in 3-D ? I just saw Pirates of the Caribbean last night awesome movie, one of Johnny Depp's best performances yet :D

Mike

[Bow Chaser]

Pirates used just about anything that could float. If you include Pivateers in "pirate" (see Mr. Hogg's comments in Master and Commander) then that means just about anything from a fifth rate to a whaleboat.

For "counter-piracy" the US Revenue Cutter Service (today the Coast Guard) used a lot of single mast, Gaff rig cutters. Off Louisiana and FL, they saw more action over the years than the Navy.

So, just about anything with a traditional rig would seem to do.

Jim

[boatlover]

Back up the thread a bit, johnw asked about a "27 foot, hard-chined brigantine" in the SF Bay area.

She was the "ANNA MARIA." Designed by William and/or John Atkin. I have the impression she was built in the SF area.

When her orginal custodian got to the point where he could not use her, he gave her to his son, who lived in Southern California. SAIL magazine did an article on her, and on the voyage from SF to So Cal.

The son was initially not as familiar with handling a square rigger (as he became later - I hope) and did not use the square sails at first. On the later legs of the voyage, they were running downwind with a vigorous following sea, having a "spot of bother" with the steering. ANNA MARIA kept wanting to jibe.

They hoisted the square foresail, and it made all things come right. ANNA MARIA got into her groove and the steering/jibeing difficulties just disappeared. I guess the center of effort moved forward a bit.

The article had a full page spar/rigging/hull profile spread.

Not too long - well, maybe a couple of years - ago, I saw a for-sale ad for her in WB.

Regards,

Ed R