La Belle: Rigging in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, a Reconstruction of a Seventeenth-Century Ship's Rig
Catharine Leigh Inbody Corder
Thesis: December 2007
Chair: Crisman
Nautical Archaeology Program
La Belle's rigging
assemblage has provided a rare and valuable source of knowledge of
17th-century riggin 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 gerneral has
not been as well definted 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 provicde a valuable foundation on which future
studies can be built. Specifically, this project has attempted to
catalogue these artifacts and reconstruction a plausible 17th-century
French rig. This projects has further attempted to define the
differences between the better known English rigging features and those
more characteristic of the French and the 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.