This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ships, a project to improve all Ship-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other articles, please join the project, or contribute to the project discussion. All interested editors are welcome. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.ShipsWikipedia:WikiProject ShipsTemplate:WikiProject ShipsShips
Latest comment: 19 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Currently, bomb ship redirects here, but shouldn't it be the other way around? I've never heard of bomb ketches, just bomb ships, though the latter doesn't preclude the existence of the former. Perhaps someone better versed in naval history can answer this one: were bomb ships always ketches? If not, I think we should move this page to bomb ship and turn it into a redirect there. Even if they weren't there's still an argument to do that, ship being a more general term than ketch. --Scott Wilson20:11, 19 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
The requirements of the mortar basically meant you couldn't have a three-masted bomb vessel, thus ketch rigging was usual and "ship" (in the three-masted sense) is potentially misleading. Google "bomb ketch" to see various real-life uses, including books on the subject - it's what I've usually seen, or perhaps "bomb vessel", which would subsume some of the intermediate types built in the early days of steam. Stan00:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
Brian Lavery says that by the 1790s most bomb vessels were ship-rigged. In particular, pictures of Erebus, Terror, Fury, and Hecla as exploration ships always show them as 3-masted ships. Dr.frog14:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)Reply