This is a scan from Surirey de Saint-Remy’s Memoires d’Artillerie, Troisieme Edition, Volume II, plate 98, Paris: Chez Rollin Fils, 1745. It shows a wagon intended for pontoon boats similar to bateaux. The design is intended to be used with a set of wheels and shafts for horses or oxen that would attach to the left end of the wagon.
A Bateau Wagon in St. Remy
On Loading Barrels
We’ve often wondered if there was a particular way that barrels were always loaded. We’ve tried loading barrels in the bateaux both with the bilge down and with the head down. We’ve also tried with the bilge of the barrel athwart the vessel and with the bilge along the axis of the vessel. As far as convenience of loading empty barrels, having the bilge along the axis of the vessel seems easiest and gets the most barrels in the bateau, but I have no idea if this was the standard method or not.
I was looking through Sailing Vessels in Authentic Early Nineteenth-Century Illustrations (“Sixty Five Plates of Shipping and Craft”) by Edward William Cooke, originally published in 1829 with reprints at various times. I have a Dover Publications book from 1989 (ISBN 0-486-26141-7). On page 16 is a plate which shows a small boat loaded with barrels (see picture). Rather than the barrels all being stacked one way or another, they are all in a jumble, stacked any which way. From this, I conclude that there is no standard method of loading them.
More bateaux images
Here are two more pictures from New York: A Pictorial History by Marshall B. Davidson, Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1977. I’ve seen these published in other spots. Both are related to the attack on Fort Washington in 1776.
Note the strangely tall square sails.
Woman Sailors
Here are two references to woman sailors in the British Navy. This isn’t strictly bateau or Big Row related, but interesting anyway.
- From “The Mariner’s Mirror”, Vol. 3, No. 4, 1913, p. 381:
“Women as sailors.–In the Annual Register for 1807, p. 496, there is an account of the court-martial which tried William Berry, first lieutenant of H.M.S. Hazard for an unnatural offence, and it contains the following passage:–“One of the witnesses in this awful and horrible trial was a little female tar, Elizabeth Bowden, who has been on board the Hazard these eight months. She appeared in court in a long jacket and blue trousers.”
…
There is a further note of a female sailor on a Whitby collier.
- From “The Mariner’s Mirror”, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1940, p. 310:
The HMS Hussar has a crew complement of 270, including one woman. She was killed in action Sept. 11, 1814 at the Battle of Plattsburgh Bay shortly before the HMS Hussar struck.
Bateaux at Saratoga
While looking through New York: A Pictorial History by Marshall B. Davidson, Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1977, I came across a drawing of the funeral of General Fraser at Saratoga. This includes the waterfront along the Hudson River showing quite a number of bateaux, plus three scows, one of which has a cannon on it.
A few days later, someone posted a link to a high-resolution image hosted by Brown University. See here: http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8080/ImageServer/scrollnav.jsp?filename=1168005686203125.jp2.
Here is an excerpt from the image with the bateaux.
The Big Row
I’ve converted much of The Big Row material website on orbitals.com to this website. I’ll also post bits of historical research, projects, and reenacting events here.