Posted by John Wilson on June 18, 2007 at 14:55:44 from 202.154.138.160 user hugo.
In Reply to: Re: Ships, boats and submarines posted by Owen Roberts on June 15, 2007 at 20:56:22:
“A Dictionary of British Ships and Seamen” by Grant Uden & Richard
Cooper (1980, Allen Lane) defines a Boat as:
"Boat: small vessel, usually without a deck and propelled by oars or sails; but the name is also applied to engined craft such as fishing vessels and passenger steamers”.
While a Ship is:
"Ship: despite the great variety of vessels that the word now covers, and the even greater variety of words derived or associated with it, ‘ship’ to be technically accurate, means a sea-going vessel with three or more square-rigged masts; and that is also the definition of the term ‘ship-rigged’."
But this these definitions only apply to sailing vessels, and also means that a three-masted ship may well be much smaller than a four or five-masted barque (eg the five-masted barques France or Potosi).
And while “first-rate’ is popularly taken to refer to quality, originally the rating refered only to quantity, and a swift-sailing frigate (fifth or sixth rate) “could well be a better-quality ship than a lumbering first-rater”.