What kind of ships were the Fox and the Tigre, and what did they look like?

HMS Fox and Le Tigre were two very different types of 18^th century sailing ships. Le Tigre, a French ship, was a merchant ship designed for a large cargo space and minimal crew in order to maximize profits. The Fox, however, was a small, sleek, and swift military schooner, heavily armed with 16 cannons. The following discussion explains the characteristics of these two types of sailing vessels

Le Tigre was referred to by Pierre Viaud in his shipwreck narrative as a brigantin or, in English, a brigantine. As Viaud was a sailor, he probably knew the correct nautical term for the type of ship he was sailing on, though the classification of ship types in the 18^th century could be confusing and varied from nation to nation. An example of this problem can be seen when reading the definition of a brigantine (or brig for short) in the 1780 Universal Dictionary of the Marine by Englishman William Falconer:

      BRIG, or BRIGANTINE, a merchant-fhip with two mafts. This term is not univerfally confined to veffels of a particular conftruction, or which are mafted and rigged in a method different from all others. It is varioufly applied, by the mariners of different European nations, to a peculiar fort of veffel of their own marine.

Falconer goes on to describe the English brigantine:

      Among Englifh feamen, this veffel is diftinuifhed by having her main-fail fet nearly in the plane of her keel; wheras the main-fails of larger fhips are hung athwart, or at right angles with the fhipıs length, and faftened to a yard which hangs parallel to the deck: but in a brig, the foremoft edge of the main-fail is faftened in different places to hoops which encircle the main-maft, and flide up and down it as the fail is hoifted or lowered: it is extended by a gaff above, and by a boom below.

By around 1725 or so, the ship-type known as the brigantine was generally a two-masted craft with a square-rigged foremast and a schoonerıs mainmast, sometimes with and sometimes without a square topsail. Other types of two-masted merchant ships (with noticeably different though somewhat similar sail and rigging arrangements) included the snow and the bilander. By the mid-17^th century the word "brigantine" was commonly abbreviated to the simpler term "brig." The picture below depicts an accurate drawing of a "brigg" from Fredrik Henrik af Chapmanıs shipbuilding treatise Architectura Navalis Mercatoria (published in Stockholm in 1768).

Chapmanıs brig has a fore-and-aft mainsail set on a boom instead of a square mainsail. The main mast is taller than the foremast, and there are topgallant sails above the topsails.

The picture at the very top of the page is an engraving of a French brigantin (it is labeled brique or brig) made by Pierre Oxanne and published in 1762. It depicts a fairly small two-masted vessel with no sails above its top-sails, equipped with a relatively short bowsprit with no spritsail yard or jibboom. Le Tigre probably looked like the craft in this drawing. Below, an engraving of a small Dutch brigantine ("barkentyn") at sail, published in 1789.

By the beginning of the 19^th century, the rigging of the brigantine and snow were very similar, and the terms brig and brigantine began to denote rigs of increasingly different types.

HMS Fox was not a merchant brig but a sleek military schooner sporting heavy armament and deadly speed. The very first schooners appear to have been Dutch yachts common by the mid-17^th century. The vessel and rig type were probably used in England by the beginning of the 18^th century, but it was not until 1757 that a schooner (the Virginia-built 130 ton Barbadoes) was registered in the British Royal Navy. Schooners tended to evolve over the next decades into vessels with finer hull shapes, longer hulls, increasingly raked masts and longer arms on the square sails. The image below is of a Dutch schooner circa 1786.

Falconer (1780) defined the schooner as:
      SCHOONER, a fmall veffel with two mafts, whole main-fail and fore-fail are fufpended from gaffs reaching from the maft towards the ftern; and ftretched out below by booms, whofe foremoft ends are hooked to an iron, which clafps the maft fo as to turn therin as upon an axis, when the after-ends are fwung from one fide of the veffel to the other.

The above picture depicts the rigging of a schooner by Chapman in 1768.

Towards the end of the 18^th century, there were two distinct classes of schooners in existence. The first was smaller in size, usually full or sharp-built and without square sails, and usually used as fishing vessels, tenders, or pilot boats. The second variety were larger and ocean-going, and usually built on fine lines. They sported a large amount of square canvas on both masts, and were almost always heavily armed. The Fox was of this latter type. These types of vessels were utilized by various nationsı navies, and also by privateers and pirates to prey on merchant shipping.

A British example of a fast-sailing, heavily armed schooner probably similar to the Fox is HMS Helena. Helena was 76 * feet long (on deck), 26ı 9" wide, drew 13ı 9" of water, and was 214 88/94 tons. She was built in 1778, probably to serve as a privateer, but she was captured by the French. Later re-captured, she was incorporated into the British Navy in 1779. Her hull and sailing plan have been reconstructed by maritime historian David R. MacGregor, and are illustrated below. This is probably what the Fox looked like before she wrecked between St. George and Dog Islands.

Chapelle, Howard I.
1935The History of American Sailing Ships. Bonanza Books, New York.

Chapman, Fredrik Henrik
1971 Architectura Navalis Mercatoria: A Facsimile of the Classic Eighteenth Century Treatise on Shipbuilding. Praeger Publishers, New York.

Culver, Henry B. and Gordon Grant
1924 The Book of Old Ships. Doubleday, Doran, and Company, New York.

Fabel, Robin F. A. (trans. and ed.)
1990 Shipwreck and Adventures of Monsieur Pierre Viaud. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Falconer, William
1970 Falconerıs Marine Dictionary (1780). Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers, New York.

Gardiner, Robert (ed.)
1995 The Heyday of Sail: The Merchant Sailing Ship 1650-1830. Conwayıs History of the Ship Series, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

MacGregor, David R.
1985 Merchant Sailing Ships 1775-1815: The Sovereignty of Sail. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

Wright, James Leitch Jr.
1967 William Augustus Bowles: Director General of the Creek Nation. University of Georgia Press, Athens.