Pinass ship
The pinass ship , originally called Pinas , was originally a three-masted type of ship from the Netherlands of the 17th century, which was mainly used as a heavily armed merchant ship in the East India or triangular voyages in America. Since the pinass ships were also often used for trading in South and Southeast Asian waters, the pinass ship is one of the older types of ship that are grouped under the collective term East Indiaman . Since pinass ships were very fast, agile sailors with a shallow draft and had a cannon deck, this type of ship was also used for military purposes and used by pirates or privateers.
Spread and use
With the increasing growth of overseas trade in the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, the need for economic, but at the same time well-fortified and suitable for the warm equatorial waters, merchant ships grew. The European voyage was dominated by the Fleute as the most effective and most widespread merchant ship. However, this type of ship was less suitable for use in the warm equatorial zones due to the strongly curved hull and the round gatta. With the pinass ship, the technical advantages of the flute were adapted to this need. Constructed as a fast, heavily armed transport and trading ship that is able to defend itself against smaller warships, privateers and pirates , the Pinass ships became the preferred trading ship in the overseas general cargo and slave trade. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) initially used yacht-like pinasses. These smaller but ocean-going ships were used as escorts, for courier services and for transport trips also in overseas areas. This type of ship was gradually enlarged and further developed, so that over time large pinass ships, the forerunners of the mirror return ships, emerged. The pinass ships were mainly built and used in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Netherlands , England and France , but also by the seafaring nations on the North and Baltic Sea coasts .
Development and characteristics
As an overseas merchant ship, the Pinass ship was built according to economic considerations. To a large extent, the construction is based on the structure of a flute, the most successful type of ship of the time. For this reason, the pinass ship, depending on the point of view, is also listed as a subclassification of the Fleute. When adapting this design to the needs of overseas trade, however, the designers also used features of the English galleon. This type of ship has a transom that extends below the waterline and a significantly less concave hull towards the superstructure. For this reason, the pinass ship is often confused with a younger type of galleon. The fact that the pinass ship is not a further development of the galleon can be seen most clearly in the cross-section of the ship, which is almost round up to the point where the concave side walls of the superstructure begin. Like the flute, the Pinass ship had a shallow draft adapted to the shallow Dutch ports. Nevertheless, this type of ship had unusually high masts in relation to its overall size. The yards were shorter compared to a Galleon and the sails so noticeably narrower and higher. The pinass ship carried two square sails on the two foremast , a square and a latin sail on the aft mast and a blind one on the bowsprit . Later the pinass ship got a third square sail and the bowsprit a top blind.
In contrast to Fleute the pinnace had a continuous main and gun deck with gun ports . The armament consisted of 18 to 36 guns. Executed as warships or pirate hunters, they had an additional battery deck under the main deck. However, the Pinass ships were often not fully armed on the merchant voyage in favor of the cargo. This meant that an attacker only knew how heavy the armament of the pinass ship actually was when the gun ports were opened.
The deck rose towards the stern, as was common with many types of ships at the time. The pinass ship was completed with a stern superstructure, which was provided with a decorative mirror wall with a stern gallery up to below the waterline . Aft, the pinass ships usually had an additional half deck. In terms of construction, however, the superstructures were much more strongly integrated into the hull structure than the block-like forts of the caravels or galleons. Compared to the Fleute, however, the decks were less tapered inward and therefore wider. The ratio of length over all : width for a pinass ship, like the flute, was about 4.6: 1, while it was about 4.0: 1 for a galleon and only 3.0: 1 for a carrack . In fact, it was a very slim ship for its time. This impression is likely to have been reinforced by the tall masts and narrow sails.
The length of a pinass ship was usually between 22 and 48 m and the tonnage 50 to 1,200 tons. Depending on their armament, they had a crew of 20 to 250 men.
Well-known ships of this type
- The Kalmar Nyckel (also Calmare Nyckel ) was an armed merchant ship built in Holland in 1625, which brought mainly Swedish settlers to the " New World ". See also Kalmar Nyckel
- The English ship Whydah [ˈwɪdɑ] was built in 1716 as a slave transporter and carried the greatest known pirate treasure of all time under the pirate Sam Bellamy. See also Whydah (ship)
- The French ship La Concorde was built in 1709 as a privateer ship, later used as a slave ship. It gained worldwide fame under the name Queen Anne's Revenge as the flagship of the pirate Blackbeard .
- The Berlin was built in 1674 in Seeland (Netherlands) for Benjamin Raule and sent to Elector Friedrich Wilhelm v. Brandenburg, the Great Elector, chartered a pinass ship that served as a warship. The ship is often falsely listed as a frigate.
literature
- Wolfgang Althof u. a .: BI pocket dictionary. Shipbuilding / shipping . 2nd Edition. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1982.
- Rainer Däbritz, Wolfgang Quinger: From the frigate to the full ship. "Hedewig Eleonora" and "Alt Mecklenburg" . License issue. Delius Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld 1987, ISBN 3-7688-0592-1 .
- Clas Broder Hansen, Peter Knuth: Lexicon of the sailing ship types . Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing 1987, ISBN 3-924896-10-0 .
- From J. Hoving: Nicolaes Witsens Scheeps-bouw-konst open gestelt , Franeker 1994. ISBN 90-5194-109-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Scheeptypen van de VOC (Jacht en / of Pinas & Spiegelretourschip)
- ↑ Hagedorn, Bernhard, The Development of the Most Important Ship Types up to the 19th Century, Publications of the Association for Hamburg History. Volume, Berlin: Curtius, 1914, page 102