La Belle: Rigging in the days of the spritsail topmast, a reconstruction of a seventeenth-century ship's rig
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Date
2009-05-15
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Abstract
La Belle’s rigging assemblage has provided a rare and valuable source of knowledge of
17th-century rigging in general and in particular, French and small-ship rigging
characteristics. With over 400 individual items including nearly 160 wood and iron
artifacts, this assemblage stands out as one of the most substantial and varied among all
available rigging assemblages and currently is the only assemblage of 17th-century
French rigging published. Furthermore, French rigging in general has not been as well
defined as English rigging, nor has the 17th century been as well researched as the 18th.
As such, La Belle’s rigging assemblage has provided a valuable source of knowledge
whose research will hopefully provide a valuable foundation on which future studies can
be built. Specifically, this project has attempted to catalogue these artifacts and
reconstruct a plausible 17th-century French rig. This project has further attempted to
define the differences between the better known English rigging features and those more
characteristic of the French and Dutch. The reconstruction is based on the specific
details derived from La Belle’s artifacts as well as contemporary French and other
continental sources such as rigging assemblages, ship models, treatises, and nautical
dictionaries. Together, these have suggested that La Belle probably carried a relatively
simple rig with decidedly seventeenth-century characteristics and a Dutch influence.
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Keywords
Nautical Archaeology, Rigging, Seventeenth Century, La Belle