17th century sailing commands

Depends on nationality and culture...

V.W.Singer said:

I'm writing something that involves some sailing - as in galleons - and I'm having a terrible time finding examples of technically correct sailing commands. There are loads of websites with nautical terms (port, stern, mizzen, etc) but no complete commands such as "Prepare to come about".

I'm not looking to write a detailed description of ship handling, but if the Captain gives a series of commands, such as when casting off and moving out of port, I would like the orders to correct and historically appropriate.

Anyone know of a (preferably free) source?

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Plenty of info here, though more about the Napoleonic-era Royal Navy.

I'm also writing a naval story in the same time period, and I've amassed many different resource books. I know it's not a free source, but I have one book, The Pirate's Primer ,that has a listing of many commands (easily upwards of 100). To me, it's an extremely useful resource for the time period, even though its main function is to help a writer flesh out their pirate characters so they say more than aargh. I actually find the pirate speak stuff the least useful.

But it has the exact types of commands you're looking for, stuff like 'wear ship', 'weather quarters', 'tacks and braces', 'turn the hands up', 'shake up the main', 'pipe to quarters', 'rouse away', 'keep her trimmed by the head', 'helm a-starboard', 'full and by', etc, etc. I don't know if it's allowed, but I could write a post with a bunch of commands in it and their explanations. The next step is to know what actually happens as the sailors carry out the order (which is really a far deeper rabbit hole than just knowing the commands).

Another great source is the actual Textbook of Seamanship, that all midshipman were required to read during the age of sail. I know it's dated 1891, but it's basically the same book they'd read 100 years earlier. There are different ship commands mentioned throughout, but you'd need to read through the thing to find them all.

One thing to keep in mind too is that even in the Royal Navy, there really was no definitive set of commands (or uniforms, punishments, rigging, etc.) standardized at that period in time. So every ship and captain could be different. If your characters are on a private vessel, they'd have even more freedom to just issue whatever orders in whatever style they wanted.

V.W.Singer said:

Thanks for the replies.

I'm basically interested in English commands, although some Spanish versions wouldn't hurt.

Torgo: Thanks for the link. Unfortunately it does not provide the commands I am looking for. I have read modern sailing books, watched Master and Commander and the entire Hornblower TV series as well as searched Wikipedia with no success.

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Well, in fact, you have some full commands there.

'All hands to weigh anchor!' gets everyone in position at the capstan etc. Then:

A fiddler or fifer, squatting cross-legged on the head of the capstan, strikes up a rhythmical tune to regulate and encourage the men as they begin to thrust at the bars, turning the capstan clockwise so that the starboard side of the messenger is hauled taut and begins to move aft, bringing the anchor cable with it.

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The anchor is raised to hang over the cathead, then:

The officer supervising the forecastle party then calls out 'Up and down. sir', and the captain or first lieutenant in charge of the whole operation replies 'Thick and dry for weighing' - meaning that the cable must be allowed to resume its normal girth after the stretching and attenuation which it naturally suffers during the hauling process, and that as much water as is reasonably possible must be drained from it, before any more of it is brought inboard.

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Huzzah, you've weighed anchor.

You'll get lots more stuff if you read the Patrick O'Brian novels - not only are they completely brilliant, they're full of detail like this.

Torgo said:

Well, in fact, you have some full commands there.

'All hands to weigh anchor!' gets everyone in position at the capstan etc. Then:



The anchor is raised to hang over the cathead, then:



Huzzah, you've weighed anchor.

You'll get lots more stuff if you read the Patrick O'Brian novels - not only are they completely brilliant, they're full of detail like this.

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I agree:

1) read o'Brian
2) sail a relatively large sail boat on the sea with an experienced sailor
3) kedge a boat out of a rocky inlet
4) note that some obvious ship motions don't have specific commands -- for example -- nobody screams "tack!", instead -- since timing is everything the action of tacking would be a cascade of sub-commands that would be different for different ships or even the same ship if the sails were set in different ways.

I used to post on a Classic Boat forum and a lot of the people who sailed traditional craft were very well-informed about the history. I wonder if there's anybody out there that sails replica boats of your era. If so they're likely to have looked into trying to get the commands right if possible.

I think if I was researching this I would be googling to see if there are any ships afloat of the right era and if so, sending emails to their captains or the trusts that managed them to see if they knew.

V.W.Singer said:

Appreciate all the replies

Rain Gnome: Thank you. I'll keep an eye out for the Pirate's Primer. I've already gone through the Textbook of Seamanship at HNSA, but it is from the 19th century and is American. The language has changed a bit since the 1600's, (e.g. they still used "larboard" rather than "port" when referring to the left side of the ship) but it is still a useful reference.

Maxx: The closest I've been to a sailing ship is the HMS Victory I'm not too sure how useful learning to sail a modern boat would be, since the crew, rigging, and sail plan of a 17th century galleon or frigate is vastly different. As you say, the cascade of commands will differ depending on if the ship is Royal Navy, a Merchantman, or a Pirate.

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Victory is pretty big and very late for a sailing ship. Lots of 17th century ships (esp if rigged for and aft like most modern sailing boats) would sail a lot like a modern sail boat in many ways -- and not so much like HMS Victory. Though whenever the boat uses its diesels you'd have to imagine a different mode in the 17th century.

The cascade of commands could be different on the same ship depending on how it was set up in the wind so tacking from sailing broad would sound pretty different from tacking from sailing close-hauled. In written accounds these are condensed pretty confusingly. Plus of course accounts written by people who were eye-witnesses to events would emphasize what was unusual, so in once instance in the mid-18th century (a time from which it seems there are more accounts available) the French in battle line cleverly did something technical (and of course I don't recall the exact term) with their top sails that shifted the gunnery range just enough to throw off the aim of their opponents. Of course, we don't know what the exact commands were on these ships or how they were signaled ship-to-ship since the writer was concerned about the novelty and the effectiveness of the sailing rather than the signals and commands.

V.W.Singer said:

My character commands a square rigged, three masted, fourth or fifth rate 38 gun ship.

Indeed, it is knowledge of useful, perhaps even unorthodox sailing maneuvers that might lend colour to the story without boring the reader with a data dump. For instance, according to John Smith, in a boarding action when a ship caught fire, the fighting sometimes came to a halt and both sides cooperated to dowse the flames. Then the crews would "drink kindly one to another", before resuming combat.

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So true. As one boarder to another, I have a minor quibble in that a 38 -gun (presumably 18-pdrs or less) ship is a typical late 18th century Frigate -- which is (again) around 100 years later than what you seem to want.

On the other hand, there are plenty accounts of sneaky things to do with 38-gun Frigates. For example, a French 40-gun (close to that type), fought off Nelson's 64-gun Agamemnon (image is Agamemnon in 1781):

V.W.Singer said:

Maxx :

Ship size was a hard decision. My character is fairly wealthy, having fled England after Charles I lost his head and then established a successful trading house in the Caribbean, so he could afford something better than a sloop. I chose a vessel something in the lines of the HMS Dragon, launched 1647, 38 guns, 96ft. The first frigate (as in low and fast) built at Chatham. There's a page on her in Wikipedia. My ship is probably armed with culverin-drakes firing 9lb balls.

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So a bit smaller and faster than ships like the Constant Warwick and Constant Reformation (which were rated as 4th rates and had 9-pdrs as their largest guns). But such ships required large crews (over 300 on the Constant Reformation when she sank in 1651). Your hero might be better off with a smaller crew and fewer guns, depending on what his business is.

From the Wikin on Constant Warwick:
Her armament had been reduced to 40 guns by 1685,[2] with eighteen demi-culverins (drakes) on the lower deck, eighteen sakers (6-pounder guns) on the upper deck, and four 3-pounder guns on the quarter deck.

Just some general info, but in the 1680s, the privateer Edward Davies traveled a little with William Dampier (as he made his first voyage around the world). Davies's ship was called the Bachelor's Delight, with 36 guns and a crew of 156. Up to the point of being captured by Davies, it was being used as a Danish merchant and slaving ship (it actually had 40 guns onboard when caught) but had an unremarkable crew. So it's reasonable to suspect that such ships were not entirely uncommon. (This info taken from A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, pp.100-101 and 127).

When a warship like the Constant Warwick requires a crew of 300, that's the men needed to fire all the guns, but it requires only a few dozen to sail the thing if you're happy without the guns. Or half the complement of crew if you're happy firing guns from one side of the ship, and then running over and firing the other side.

In 1700 money, a 350-ton, 36-gun frigate would run you about £8,000; where a sailor would be making about £12 a year; the Governor of New York would be making £1,200 a year; and a 500 acre sugar plantation in Barbados could net you £7,500 a year. Just an idea on how common such frigates might be, and the kind of capital and enterprise needed to commision one. (Figures taken from the book The Republic of Pirates, p.34).

Coming in a bit late, but "Seamanship in the Age of Sail", by John Harland is a useful book for anyone writing about sail to have on their shelf. It does have list of commands for the various functions involved in shiphandling. Not specific to a particular era (it covers the 17th to 19th century) but from memory these is some discussion of changes over time.