Sailor Mouth Saturday: Mid/Middle

We've talked about midshipmen before here at Triple P, but there are a few other reference points for the words mid and middle at sea. None are particularly surprising, but they are interesting.

The word middle, perhaps curiously, comes from the Anglo-Saxon into Middle English words middel and middle. According to our old friend Webster they both indicate the halfway point between two others. That's fairly straight forward at least.

At sea, this general application of the word applies often but not always. A middle band is the central band on any sail, one of the many that is sewn to the canvas to give it extra strength. Middling a sail, on the other hand, is the act of arranging the sail for attaching it to the yard. A middle-topsail is one usually particular to schooners and sloops. This type of sail was - and still is - set on such vessels between the top and the cap of their topmasts.

Midrib is an old word for a slender or narrow canal. Mid-channel is the center, or halfway point from one shore to the other of a river, channel or smaller lake.

When a ship's position is determined by converting departure/arrival in difference of longitude, the type of navigation used is said to be middle latitude sailing. In such cases the middle latitude is used as a point of reference rather than the meridion.

Middle-timber reference the planking amidships and to the stern. Middle-wales are the strakes or outer planking along each side of a three decked vessel between the lower and middle deck ports.

The middle watch on naval ships was counted between midnight and 4:00 AM. A middle-watcher is no a member of that watch but a light, usually hand-held meal (such as a biscuit or sandwich) which officers of the middle watch might be able to, as Admiral Smyth puts it, "snatch" at about five bells or 2:30 AM. Fortifying oneself is always a good idea in the middle of the night, after all.

To return to where we started, midshipmen were often referred to, particularly as a group, as mids. Either affectionately or derogatorily they may also be referred to as "middies." I suppose it would depend on the individual young gentleman whether or not he appreciated such a moniker.

A happy Saturday to all the Brethren, then. Fair winds, following seas, and a little sunshine is my wish for you.

Header: Lake Superior by Walter Shirlaw via American Gallery ~ an example of a lake more like a small sea and far too large to have a mid-channel

Seafaring Sunday: Aboard the Alerte

There was a high wind from the north-west and a great swell. We were now on a lee shore, and a very dangerous one too; so all was got ready for slipping the anchor and running to the open sea in a moment, should it be necessary to do so. We gave the yacht all her starboard chain - sixty fathoms. We got up the end of the chain, and made it fast to the mainmast in such a way that we could let it go at once. One end of a stout thirty-fathom hawser was attached to the chain, just below the hawse-pipe, and to the other end of a breaker and a small bamboo raft. In order to get under way we should now merely have to throw the buoy overboard and cast off the end of the chain from the mast. We could then sail away and leave our moorings behind us.

~ E.F. Knight aboard the cutter Alerte off the Island of Trinidad, November 24, 1889 from The Cruise of the Alerte at Project Gutenberg

Header: Cutter Alerte from the Project Gutenberg frontispiece

History: The Crafty Spy

With the celebratory goings on over the bicentennial of the War of 1812 here in the U.S., I’m feeling the itch to get back to my roots and talk a little bit about the contributions made by a certain pirate ancestor.  Since the war was initially about insults at sea and fought on wave to a large degree, it only makes sense that Renato Beluche would want to get in on the action, so to say.

Beluche, who was at the time of his birth the oldest son of “Big” Rene and Rose Laporte Beluche, took to the sea at an early age.  His father died sometime after Renato’s eighth birthday leaving a pregnant wife and a mound of debts.  The young man went where he could get work, down to the docks, and by the age of 16 owned and captained his own vessel.  By the time the U.S. declared war on Great Britain in June of 1812, Beluche was a seasoned privateer and a lieutenant in Bolivar’s Cartagenan navy.

Probably close to half of the ships that cruised under an American flag during the war were privately owned and holding a letter of marque from the U.S. government.  According to Dr. Jane Lucas de Grummond, who published the definitive biography on Renato Beluche in 1983, six of those commissions were issued out of New Orleans in August of 1812.  One of these went to a schooner named Spy.

Spy was nominally owned by a New Orleans merchant named Stephen Debon, according to the commission.  Debon turned command, and the letter of marque, over to Beluche.  This is perhaps a less curious turn of events than it may appear.  Throughout his career, Renato Beluche owned one or more privateers, sometimes captaining them himself and sometimes turning command over to others among the loose-knit band of pirates and privateers who called Barataria their home port.  Ships were then and still are vulnerable things and, in a pinch, it was always better to sail for someone else than not to sail at all.

Beluche had recently lost his own brig, L’Intrepide, along with a prize to a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.  Doubtless Debon’s offer of a ship and a commission was too good to refuse.  Therein, however, may lay the conundrum of the business relationship between Monsieur Debon and Captain Beluche.

In November of 1812, Stephen Debon brought suit against Renato Beluche in a New Orleans court.  The complaint claimed that Debon, as owner of Spy, had been cheated out of his share of prize money by Beluche.  This had occurred, said the complaint, because Beluche had taken more than one prize into Barataria rather than bringing them into New Orleans as specifically outlined in Spy’s U.S. letter of marque.

On the face of it, Debon appears to be in the right. In order to lawfully libel a prize, the captain of the privateer must bring said prize into the port from which he (or she if you will) received his commission.  Unfortunately for Monsieur Debon, he was dealing with a man who had learned his craft well and whose close friends and associates, the Laffite brothers, had connections in court.

Beluche engaged one of those connections, former New Orleans District Attorney John Randolph Grymes, who went to work rebutting Debon’s complaint immediately.  Grymes argued that of course Beluche had taken prizes into Barataria, no one was disputing that.  Those prizes were Spanish merchants, however, taken under Beluche’s commission from Cartagena.  Should Spy capture a British vessel under the auspices of the U.S. letter of marque, he would bring it to New Orleans for legal libel and Debon would promptly be paid his share.

Another Laffite sympathizer, Judge Dominique Hall, saw things the way Grymes outlined them.  He dismissed Debon’s complaint and, probably in the same pen-stroke, authorized the libel of a British merchant, Jane, recently brought into New Orleans as prize by none other than Beluche aboard Spy.  Perhaps his share of her cargo of mahogany and logwood, which the Louisiana Gazette estimated at “35 to 40$ per ton”, was enough to make Debon realize he needn’t trouble himself further.

The legal wrangling, which only went on until February 1, 1813 when Judge Hall announced his decision, is an excellent example of the crafty use of letters of marque by the men who sailed out of Barataria.  As William C. Davis notes in The Pirates Laffite, international law forbade the holding of more than one country’s letter of marque at any given time.  With this in mind, Debon’s argument was legally valid. 

But, as my dear Uncle Renato clearly knew better than Monsieur Debon, nothing gets shit done like having powerful friends who have friends in high places.

Header: Ship at Sea by Marcia Woodbury via American Gallery

Literature: Musings on Fore and Aft Rigging

The fore-and-aft rigging in its simplicity and the beauty of its aspect under every angle of vision is, I believe, unapproachable. A schooner, yawl, or cutter in charge of a capable man seems to handle herself as if endowed with the power of reasoning and the gife of swift execution.

~ Joseph Conrad

Header: Two Sailing Boats by Iwan J. Azis

Ships: Commodore Patterson's Own

Today is officially the end of NOLA Navy Week, but the celebration of the U.S.’s victory in the War of 1812 will continue until January of 2015. To commemorate the end of a week of ships and sailors down on the bayou, I’d like to offer a brief overview of the two American ships that helped General Jackson defeat the British on Chalmette plain.


Both Louisiana, a purpose-built sloop of war rated for 16 guns, and Carolina, a schooner of 14 guns, were under-manned when Daniel Tod Patterson, then Commodore of the New Orleans Naval Station, took over their command in 1814. Carolina was largely crewed by New Englanders fresh from merchant service, none of who had much if any experience working artillery. Louisiana, on the other hand, was a ghost ship. Thanks to the raid on the Laffite brothers’ Baratarian strong hold in September, both ships were full to bursting with guns, ordinance and black powder. What they had in might, however, they lacked in men.

This was, in large part, due to Andrew Jackson’s reluctance to include those “hellish banditti” from Barataria among his forces. The sailors and artillerists from Grande Terre were either imprisoned along with Dominique Youx, who was bent under heavy chains in the Calabozo, or in hiding for fear of joining their brethren. The Laffites themselves were far to the north in Donaldsonville. Renato Beluche, one of the luckier of the privateers, had managed to get his ship La Popa away from those captured by Patterson as they cruised toward the Balize.

By November there was no question that the British were on their way to New Orleans with their battle cry for the attack being “beauty and booty.” Even the Ursuline sisters in their sheltered convent knew what that was about. Patterson could not reasonable find capable men to crew Louisiana and work Carolina’s guns on such short notice; all the merchant ships who could had left the area taking the local sailors with them. He was shrewd enough to know not to cut off his own nose to spite his face, however – even if Jackson wasn’t – and we can reasonable imagine that it was the Commodore who began the dialogue about using the Baratarians to crew the American ships.

If Patterson did start the dialogue it probably wasn’t with General Jackson, at least at first. He would have been swatted away like a fly at that point. Knowing that, it’s probable that Patterson instead approached Louisiana Governor William C. C. Claiborne and Jackson’s aid, personal friend and long-time resident of NOLA, attorney Edward Livingston. Somehow these men managed to change Old Hickory’s mind. The Baratarians were released from prison and their warrants set aside, provided they agreed to serve either aboard ship or by land. Legend even speaks of a covert meeting between Jackson and the Laffite brothers. This initial meeting was, if it ever happened, so secretive in fact that we have no reasonable historical record of where or even when it took place.

Regardless, Patterson had the seasoned men he needed and just in time. As the British hunkered down on Villere plantation, Carolina and Louisiana slipped down the Mississippi, dropped their anchors and began a near constant bombardment of the enemy. British soldiers, already soaked through by the cold, December rains, were made even more miserable by the constant cannon fire. The threat of death or dismemberment from the persistent guns made it impossible for the British even to build fires to cook over or keep warm by.

Eventually, the British got lucky. Their own guns were trained on the ships, using shot heated before being placed in the cannons, and they hit Carolina’s powder magazine. She literally blew up and sank where she sat. Surprisingly, only one man was lost.

Louisiana kept up the bombardment, which assisted the work of the artillerists on Rodriguez Canal. Toward the end of the high-pitched battle on January 8, 1815, the British managed to cross the river and head up the west bank bent on taking Louisiana and turning her guns on Jackson’s line. Louisiana packed on her sails but found herself in an unfortunate and ill-timed dead calm. Patterson, an able and seasoned seaman, did not let a lack of wind deter him. Within minutes he had men in boats literally rowing Louisiana out of harm’s way via her cables. Moments later the British forces surrendered to Jackson.

Louisiana continued in the service until 1821, when she was broken up and some of her timbers used on other ships.

Both the schooner Carolina and the sloop Louisiana, under Patterson’s capable command, figured prominently in the U.S. victory at the Battle of New Orleans. And their crews, whose names are largely forgotten today, came not just from Yankee shores but from the ranks of those “hellish banditti” whom New Orleans always embraced.

Header: U.S. schooner Alligator, whose lines and sails were similar to those of her contemporary, Carolina

Ships: The Pirate's Choice

In 1713 the shipyard of Andrew Robinson at Gloucester, Massachusetts launched a completely new type of ship. She was light, no more than 100 tons in her true form, shallow of draft at a sleek five feet, could be run by as few as 75 men and sailed briskly regardless of the direction of the wind. Robinson called her the schooner and she ushered in a new age of fast, effective sailing not dreamed of prior to her introduction.


The word schooner is a conundrum as there are similar words in most Latinate languages and German as well. John Batchelor and Christopher Chant offer that the word actually comes from the Scottish dialect of Gaelic in their The Complete Encyclopedia of Sailing Ships. According to them, schooner derives from scoon:

… a verb describing the skipping progress of a stone skimmed over the water.

No more poetic description could be used to help one imagine the quick, bouncing form of a schooner in full sail. The sails, routinely fore-and-aft, were rigged on two masts and at first included one or two square topsails on the fore. These were replaced in the late 18th century by so called jackyard topsails that were shaped very much like a jib sail (as illustrated on both fore and main mast in the painting at the header). This configuration of sail made the schooner a viable option for all types of conditions as she did not have to run before the wind to attain high speeds, as was the case with square-rigged vessels. She could sail with the wind on any quarter, turn and tack more readily and quickly, and keep to coastal waters where larger, deeper draft ships would founder.

This speed, ease of handling and ability to be run by a smaller crew, as fore-and-aft sails were more easily handled than square rigging, made the schooner the ship of choice for just about every use. By the dawn of the 19th century, she was being built in Europe as well as the U.S. and could be found in virtually any port around the world. She was used as a mail packet, a tender for ships of the line, a troop and supply transport. Most notably, she was a favorite vessel of both pirates of the Golden Age and the new breed of privateers that came after them. A stop in the Laffite brothers’ Barataria Bay circa 1810 would have revealed half a dozen schooners of various rigging at anchor at any given time. Along with the hermaphrodite brig – which itself was a variation of the schooner type – nothing was more trusted or handy in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean at the time.

Because of its popularity with the men of a piratical bent, the schooner was also the ship of choice for the best of pirate hunters. David Porter, the brilliantly successful Commodore of the Mosquito Fleet that virtually wiped out the tail end of the pirate class in the West Indies, counted on schooners to enter lagoons and bays around islands like Cuba. This allowed him and his men to ferret out the worst offenders and relieve U.S. merchants of the predations that were costing the entire country an arm and a leg.

In the 1840s, with the dawn of the California gold rush and the need for even more speed, the schooner type was modified again. Square rigging was added to her light frame, along with a third mast, and the legendary clipper ship was born. Schooners are still a favorite vessel with sailors of all types, myself included. Their ease of handling and beautiful lines are hard to resist. And what could be better than to be aboard a fast runner on a clear day? Not much at all.

Header: Early 19th century clipper ship by an unknown artist

Ships: Poetically Named And Ready To Work

The two-masted schooner, in her original form, is a uniquely New World ship that was originally built by the seamen of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The first proper schooner was launched in 1713 and built at the yard of Andrew Robinson. Her nativity, like so many Yankee built items, came out of necessity.

The coast of North America, with its reefs, shoals, feathers and inlets, did not lend itself well to square-rigged sailing. The common frigate was fine before the wind in blue water, but the need for a shallow draft and ease of maneuvering quickly made itself clear to the merchants, fishermen and, yes, pirates who plied the waters off New England, the Chesapeake and the Islands of the Caribbean. Enter the schooner.

Originally a take on a Dutch design, the American schooner averaged between 80 and 100 tons and could have a draft of as little as three feet unladen. She carried a foremast stepped close to her extended bowsprit and a taller main mast. Both masts were rigged with fore-and-aft gaff sails, boomed on the main and frequently “loose-footed” (not connected to a horizontal boom or spar at the bottom) on the fore. The foremast could be fitted with square-rigged topsails and the long bowsprit allowed for the setting of as many as five jib sails, all of which increased speed and improved tacking.

Over the course of the 18th century, the schooner became the most important vessel up and down what is now Canada and the U.S. From pirates in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to cod fishermen off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the schooner was put to good use. She could carry a compliment of up to 75 men, a relatively small crew for a sailing vessel made possible by the ease of working fore-and-aft sails in comparison to square-rigged sails. She could make up to 15 knots – a remarkable speed at the time – in favorable airs and she could carry up to ten smaller cannon and a few swivel guns as well.

All of her assets brought the schooner to the attention of navies on both sides of the Atlantic who used her for scouting coastlines, carrying messages, and as a tender to larger ships. Largely because of its speed, the schooner became popular for transportation of personnel and livestock as well. In the 19th century, the schooner’s sleek hull would be married to three square-rigged masts to create the clipper ship.

The origin of the schooner’s name gives her a bit of romance to add to all that recommends her. Though there are words similar to “schooner” in a number of European languages, it is probable that the Scottish Gaelic word scoon, which means to skim the water like a flat stone, is the original base for the ship’s moniker. And to my mind, that makes a schooner’s name just as lovely as she is.

Header: Anonymous painting of the schooner HMS Speedy c 1803