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From: (no name) (no email)
Date: Thu Oct 02 2003 - 11:00:22 EDT
<<Early fishing boats using power also handled the loads close to amidships.
In the Chesapeake where inshore fishing was common, the Cat boat design
came
to the fore to shift the mast for'ard out of the way of valuable cargo space
in
the middle where the boat could carry the most. weight.>>
Not quite. The pilothouse forward configuration on trawlers has little
catboat ancestry. In fact, because of the mast and sail configuration on a catboat,
the logical control station is at the rear.
The catboat was not a Chesapeake type craft but rather belongs to New
England. The name "catboat" is a corruption of the term "cat headed boat" or "cat
masted boat." Dutch and English sailing ships in the 17th and 18th century
featured a heavy beam lying athwart the bow called the "cat head" which supported
the butt end of the bowsprit and carried purchases for stowing the anchor. Small
fishing vessels and coastal vessels on both sides of the English Channel in
the 18th century carried fore and aft single masted rigs using either a dipping
lug or spritsail. The mast was set as far forward as possible through a hole
in the cathead to leave the midships open for cargo. The rig was used in pilot
boats and was favored by bands of English and French smugglers who did not
see why goverments would want to regulate trade. In Europe, the cat head masted
boat was evolved by the Dutch into the gaff rigged fishing smack and by the
English into the spritsail or gaff rigged sailing wherry. English shipwrights
brought the basic idea of a fore and aft forward masted gaff rig boat with them
when they emigrated to the New World. The English influence on the 19th
century American Catboat is apparent when one compares drawings of late 18th century
Dutch and English catboats with their more sophisticated American
counterparts. The Crosby Cat was marvelously suited to the waters of New England with
greater beam and shallower draft than its European counterpart but it is
essentially a derivative of an earlier design.
In 1950 I had a college seminar with Prof. Samuel Eliot Morison, the eminent
naval historian, who taught us marine neophytes that a catboat was a sailboat
with a single mast in or near the cathead. Prof. Morison, I recall, owned a
catboat and sailed out of Marblehead harbor.
References:
Anderson, R. and Anderson, R. C. (1926). "The Sailing Ship: Six thousand
years of history." London: Harrap
Brophy, P. (1974). "Sailing Ships". New York: Galahad Books
Clowes, G. S. L. (1932-52). "Sailing Ships (vols. 1 - 11). London: Science
Museum.
Leather, J. (1979) "Spritsails and Lugsails". New York: Granada Publishing Co.
P.S. Sorry to use the forbidden word "sail" so many times in this explanation
but it is hard to avoid when talking about nautical history.
Larry Z
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