The record of vessels arriving at Philadelphia in the eighteenth century shows a variety. Here are a few:
The ship Pink John and William, 170 passengers, 17 Oct 1732.
The ship Samuel, 291 passengers, 17 Aug 1733.
The ship Eliza, 190 passengers, 27 Aug 1733.
The ship Hope, 389 passengers, 28 Aug 1733.
The brigantine Pennsylvania Merchant, 191 passengers, 18 Sep 1733.
The ship Pink Mary, 171 passengers, 29 Sep 1733.
The brig Mary, 41 passengers, 28 Jun 1735.
The ship Billander Oliver (from South Carolina), 45 passengers, 26 Aug 1735.
This is a sample taken from Rupp's " Thirty Thousand Names of Immigrants ". Vessels fell into categories such as bilander, brigantine (brig), pink, schooner, ship, sloop , or snow , not all of which are represented in the sample above. The phrases such as ship Pink or ship Billander , used above, should be considered as a redundancy. More properly it would be the pink "John and William" and the bilander "Oliver" . The word Pink or the word Billander (Bilander) is not a part of the name of the vessel but is the type of vessel. One type of vessel is " ship ".
The construction of the vessel, or how it is built, especially the sail configuration, defines the type of vessel that it is. Specifically, the word ship defines a large seagoing vessel with a bowsprit and three (sometimes more) masts which carry square sails. This is probably the image that most of us have when we think of early sailing ships. But not all vessels were of this construction.
The bilander , such as the infamous Oliver, was a small two-masted vessel, having a lateen mainsail. A lateen sail is triangular and used with a spar at right angles to the mainmast. This type of sail is often seen on racing yachts. The bilander design was intended for coastal work (note the Oliver above came from South Carolina). In 1738, the Oliver was used in transatlantic work, and, on its voyage to Virginia, was greatly overloaded. It was wrecked off the coast of Virginia with the loss of many lives that would have augmented the First Germanna Colony.
The brigantine or brig was another two-masted vessel, square-rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft rigged on the mainmast. The pink had a hull which was pointed or pinched at the stern. It could be rigged or equipped with a variety of sail configurations. Sloops had a single mast, which was rigged fore-and-aft with a jib at the bow. Basically, this is a modern sporting configuration. The snow was two-masted.
As shown above, the vessels properly called ships carried the most passengers. The pinks, snows, and bilanders generally carried fewer people as they were smaller.
If a reader has more of a nautical bent than I do, please join in and amplify upon the descriptions.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.