The ketch: two masts and no foremast

What is a ketch?

A ship’s masts are named from front to back. A big ship had three: the foremast at the front, the mainmast in the middle and the mizzen near the stern. A ketch around 1700 had only two of these, the mainmast and the mizzen. There was no foremast at all, so the tall mainmast was the front mast and the bow had no mast at all. The naval historian William Avery Baker notes that the usual definition of a ketch is “a ship without a foremast”.

New England ketches were small: usually between about 10 and 70 tons, and most under 30. They were flush-decked, which means one flat deck from end to end, and they were broad, stoutly built, pointed at both ends and very seaworthy. A modern reconstruction of the 40-ton trading ketch Adventure of about 1670 shows what the type looked like.

How was a ketch different from a sloop or a brigantine?

Sails come in two main kinds. Square sails hang across the ship from horizontal poles and are best when the wind is behind. Fore-and-aft sails run along the length of the ship and let it sail closer to the wind.

• A sloop had just one mast, with a big fore-and-aft mainsail.
• A brigantine had two masts, like a ketch, but the other way round: a square-rigged foremast at the front and a fore-and-aft mainsail on the mast behind it.
• A ketch kept its big mast at the front and a smaller one at the back, and around 1715 that big mainmast often carried square sails.

So a sailor in 1715 told a ketch apart mostly by where its masts stood, not by the shape of its sails.

Why did the word “ketch” mean different things at different times?

The name is old. It grew out of the word “catch”, probably from a medieval English verb meaning to catch or chase, and forms of it can be traced back to 1481. The spelling “ketch” turns up in the mid-1600s. At Plymouth in 1624, a ship’s carpenter had cut the timbers for two “catches” before he died.

The early 1600s ketch did not yet fit that definition; it was rigged more like a small all-purpose vessel called a pinnace. By the late 1600s the two-mast layout was the defining feature, and the sails varied. In 1677 a French writer used one word for a ketch with fore-and-aft sails and invented another for the square-rigged kind, and that same year a Massachusetts fishing ketch is recorded with square sails. Swedish maritime museums describe the older ketch as square-rigged on both masts and in use from the late 1600s into the early 1800s.

From the 1800s the meaning changed again. A modern ketch is a yacht-style boat with fore-and-aft sails on both masts. A yawl looks similar, but its little mizzen mast stands further back and carries a smaller sail. Neither definition fits a 1715 ketch exactly, so it is best to picture the masts first.

Were ketches used for fishing in New England?

Yes, above all in the late 1600s. In the second half of that century, small open boats called shallops fished close to shore, while ketches went further out to sea. By about 1700 the ketch was New England’s main offshore fishing vessel. Ketches also carried cargoes along the coast and beyond, north to Newfoundland, south to Barbados, and across the Atlantic to Madeira, the Azores and England.

Then a new name arrived. The word “schooner” appears in Boston and Gloucester records from 1716, and within about four years most New England fishing vessels were being called schooners instead of ketches. The maritime historian William Avery Baker argued that this was partly a change of name: many small fishing ketches already used fore-and-aft sails, much like early schooners. Larger trading ketches probably kept their square sails, and a 1722 view of Boston harbour shows several square-rigged ketches at its wharves.

What was a bomb ketch?

A bomb ketch was a warship built to carry mortars, short and very heavy guns that lobbed large explosive shells, called bombs, high into the air to drop on forts, harbours and towns. The idea came from France. A French engineer, Bernard Renau d’Eliçagaray, designed the first ones, and French bomb vessels attacked Algiers in North Africa in 1682 and Genoa, in what is now Italy, in 1684.

The ketch layout suited the job perfectly. With no foremast, the masts could be placed further back, leaving the front of the ship clear for the mortars to fire forward over the bow. The hull had to be extremely strong to take the downward shock of each shot. To aim, the crew anchored and turned the whole ship with ropes run out to the anchor. Bomb ketches were awkward to sail and carried only a few small cannon to defend themselves, so they were not built to fight other ships.

Did the Royal Navy use ketches?

Yes. In the later 1600s the navy kept small ketches for general work. One, the Swallow, bought in 1661, measured 56 tons, carried six small guns and about 40 men, and served in the Mediterranean and at Jamaica.

After the French success, the English naval designer Edward Dummer studied the French bomb vessels, and England’s first two, Salamander and Firedrake, were approved in 1687 and built in 1687 and 1688. Firedrake measured 279 tons and carried about 50 men. The type stayed in service for decades. The bomb ketch Grenado, built in 1742, carried two 12-inch mortars and served at Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1759 and at the siege of Havana in 1762. By about 1790 British bomb vessels were being built with three masts, so the two-masted bomb ketch belongs mainly to the late 1600s and the 1700s.