A Dutch Shallop, an Early Schooner-Tvpe Vessel, Appears in the Foreground of this early view of the 

 capture of Loki, Ceram, by Arnold de Vlamingh van Outshoorn, June 27, 1652. From the Secret Atlas of the 

 East India Company, published about 1670, this view appears as plate 1 18 in Monumenta Cartographica, edited by 

 Dr. F. C. Wieder the Hague, M. Nijhoff, 1925-. 



Banks fisheries. Colonial records indicate that these 

 vessels had very small crews, so they could not have 

 been very large. It is very doubtful that they ever 

 carried a square rig similar to that of the naval bomb 

 ketch, since their crews would have beeii inadequate 

 to handle such rigs; probably they were fore-and-aft 

 rigged, with fore and main gaff sails of approximately 

 equal size and with one or more jibs. This supposition 

 is supported by the fact that, early in the 18th century 

 the ketch or "catch," previously very numerous, sud- 

 denly disappeared almost completely from colonial 

 records, being replaced by large numbers of "scoon- 

 ers." This suggests that there was merely a change 

 of type name rather than that the "scooner" was a 

 new rig or hull-type. It is noticeable that the 

 "scooner" appeared all along the coast within a very 

 short time. 



Sloops were commonly employed in coasting or in 

 the West Indian trade and were usually craft of some 

 size, up to 60 feet length, having one mast, a gaff 

 mainsail, and two or more jibs. The larger sloops 

 were decked and fitted with bulwarks. Large-size 

 sloops, 60 to 65 feet long were being built in the West 



Indies by the last half of the 17th century and the 

 fast sailing "Jamaica sloops"' produced at Jamaica 

 were popular with the buccaneers and piratical 

 gentry in those waters. 



The small craft constructed in the colonies included 

 "boat-canoes," dugouts shaped to resemble ships' 

 boats and usually square sterned, "canoes" being 

 commonly sharp sterned. Except in eastern Maine 

 and in the Canadian Maritime Provinces, the birch- 

 bark Indian canoe was seldom employed on salt 

 water. 



"Skiffs" appear to be merely small rowing craft and 

 were not usually fitted to sail. 



The rigs of colonial boats in the 1 7th century were 

 those employed in England and included the leg-of- 

 mutton, a triangular sail fitted with a boom; the 

 shoulder-of-mutton, which was similar but with a 

 very short gaff, or club, at its head; the spritsail; 

 the gaff-sail with a rather short gaff; the hoy sail, 

 which was a gaff-sail with a long gaff, rarely lowered; 

 and the lateen sail. These rigs and sail forms %verc 

 quite well developed in Britain by the middle of the 

 centiuy when colonial ship and boatbuilding became 



15 



