The Mariner's Mirror The International Quarterly Journal of The Society for Nautical Research ISSN: 0025-3359 (Print) 2049-680X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmir20 BRITISH SHIPS THROUGH DUTCH SPECTACLES R. Morton Nance To cite this article: R. Morton Nance (1919) BRITISH SHIPS THROUGH DUTCH SPECTACLES, The Mariner's Mirror, 5:1, 3-9, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.1919.10654841 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1919.10654841 Published online: 22 Mar 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 13 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmir20 Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 29 June 2016, At: 13:09 BRITISH SHIPS THROUGH DUTCH SPECTACLES. BY R. MoRTON NANCE. LIVING with shipping of some sort always before their eyes, and having a natural bent for realistic detail, it is small wonder that Dutchmen, and especially 17th century Dutchmen, led the world as ship draughtsmen. Van der Meulen was no exception to this rule, and, in spite of one or two little mannerisms that seem to imply that his knowledge of ships was not acquired at sea, he left behind him, in the form of prints, a fairly full and true account of the state of Dutch shipping and craft at the end of the 17th century : but what makes him remarkable amongst his fellow artists is the fact that, not content with portraying Dutch ships, he tried his hand at foreign vessels, too. In doing this, I am afraid that it must be admitted that he sometimes got beyond his depth, and at others might be said to have had only one foot on the bottom-one grotesque nonde­ script he has patched up with fragments picked alternately from a galley and a Dutch dogger, and, having put both square and lateen sails together on its main mast and topped all with a Turkish flag, helightly christens it Een Italianse Felouck, while his Turkse Galay, with crosstrees and ratlines aloft and curious distortions below, though based on some sort of copy, is little better. Bold inventions like these show that Van der Meulen would not be likely to refuse his publishers a plate of any sort of ship­ ping that their clients might be expected to demand; but the utter badness of these " fakes" at least has the advantage of making it appear probable that the artist was better acquainted with the British craft, of which he has given us some very much Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 13:09 29 June 2016 more convincing examples. Italian feluccas and Turkish galleys he might draw as he would without fear; but these British vessels might, any day, tie up to the bollard by his doorstep to convict him if he should utter such fantastic libels about them, and it is, everyway, probable that he took some trouble to make sure of his facts before committing himself. A first glance at our pictures of the British vessels (Figs. I, 2, 4, 5, 6) certainly shows us bluff bows and round stems that, 3 4 BRITISH SHIPS THROUGH DUTCH SPECTACLES. to-day, look Dutch enough; but it must not be forgotten that, at sea as well as on shore, in round hulls as well as in brick-built architecture, this was a time of Dutch fashions. We had scarcely at that time began the development of our small craft away from the types that Holland had made popular through the whole of North Europe; and, more than ever under King William's influence, our hoys, pinks, yachts, ketches and hookers were all " upsy Dutch " in the years about 1700. The Dutch look of these vessels is not, then, necessarily to be taken as a danger signal, although we may be wiser, perhaps to allow for a certain amount of Dutch bias in the rendering of small details, especially of decoration, in which English ships differed from their Dutch models ; and, failing better evidence from our own side of the North Sea, we may study VanderMeulen with some profit. Figure I is what he calls an Engelse Fluyt met een gaffel, getaak­ led als een Barkenteyn-An English flight with a gaff, rigged like a brigantine-not a barquentine, in spite of the spelling. "Barquentine," in the modern sense, being a name coined for one of the newest of rigs, its early appearance, as " barkenteen," in English (quoted in N. E. D. for 1693) is probably, like this spelling of Van der Meulen's, the result of connecting the first syllable of " brigantine " with the word " bark." Showing the same mistaken idea, it may be, we have in Italian the form bergantino, and in Portuguese bragamtim, bergantim, and even bargani'im. The compiler of a Portuguese dictionary of 1836, at all events, makes this mistake, for which Jal corrects him, of deriving bergantim from bare a. In describing this " brigantine flight " an Englishman would probably have said that she was "a pink" (or perhaps " a fly boat ") " with a wing-sail on the mainmast " ; for it is this " wing sail" that makes her resemble a brigantine of her time with an added mizen mast. The "wingsail," however, Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 13:09 29 June 2016 being boomless, is not very much like the gaff mainsail that the French still call a brigantin. Unlike that, too, it is brailed up and not lowered. It is very much more like a hoy's mainsail, although, as a trysail auxiliary to the square mainsail and crowded in between the main mast and the mizen, it is necessarily narrower and higher peaked. (See "M. M.", Vol. IV., p. 94., Ans. 40). Beyond this "wing-sail," there is nothing very remarkable about the appearance of the " flight." She has a " pink " or " lute " stern (to which, for an English vessel, I think the Dutch artist may have given too little projection aft) and she is, of course, BRITISH SHIPS THROUGH DUTCH SPECTACLES. 5 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 13:09 29 June 2016 6 BRITISH SHIPS THROUGH DUTCH SPECTACLES. somewhat more lightly rigged than the contemporary full-rigged ship. From the absence of ratlines to her mizen shrouds, it seems unlikely that she would, for instance ever carry a mizen topsail, while her mainmast alone is given a round top. Vander Meulen's " English " flags with their saltires are not convincing. It may be that he had seen the Scottish flags, ensign and union flag, that are illustrated in A General Treatise of the Dominion of the Sea, etc., 1707 (Fig. 3) or he may simply have been wonder­ fully unobservant in the matter of flags-witness his crescent flag on an " Italian ' ship. This makes it all the more improbable that he was right in giving this Engelse jluyt the little peak flag­ staff that ornaments the gaff of her wing-sail. In his little sketch of the same vessel under sail (Fig. 2) this is left out and the inference is that in the larger picture the peak, to a Dutch­ man used to these little gaff flags, looked bare-and, accordingly, in it went. Figure 4 shows an Engelse Kits. An English, or any other, ketch, however, it certainly cannot be; even Van der Meulen, though we find him tripping at times, cou'd hardly have been so careless as to add an unwarranted foremast to his model. It seems more likely, by far, that he had confused the similar word " cat ' with " ketch " or " catch," applied to different English vessels, and that he took the Dutch kits as being the equivalent of either or both. Here we have a vessel a little smaller than the "flight," or pink, with a pole foremast. a main mast that has cross trees only, and having no topsails on either fore or mizen masts. A fore-topsail might, no doubt, be set flying, but at the moment of the sketch it is safelystowed on deck. In spite of the simplicity of her foremast, however, she carries a spritsail-topmast at her bowsprit-end. Her hull is very similar to that of the "flight." She is shown without skids and without rails to her waist and poop; but, unless her gun­ room ports are for light only, the number of her guns is the same. Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 13:09 29 June 2016 She sports again the saltire flag that the artist seems to have believed to be English, and, as an Engelse kits, is contrasted with the Schotse kool ketsen of another print, but one cannot help doubting whether, properly speaking, she, too, is not a pink, rather than a cat of any kind. Figures 5 and 6 show these " Scottish coal cats." It is perhaps possible that these were actually from Scotland, and not from the nearer and greater coal-ports of England, and that on such vessels Van der Meulen had seen his saltire flags; but one may be excused for doubting it. The "Geordie's'' BRITI!;H SHIPS THROUGH DUTCH SPECTACLES. 7 dialect would sound, perhaps, enough unlike the Londoner's to make a Dutchman, hearing both from sailors, take the North Country speech for Scottish; but, in any case, from their entirely different types these ships seem likely to have come from different ports. One, Fig. 5, without a mizen, might well show us a very early stage in the development of the collier brig ; but she still has over her round stern the narrow Dutch-fashion taferel seen in the previous ships, Figs.