Phantom ship boats

[BETAQDAVE]

I have a question concerning how the ships pilot on the Phantom got transfered to the ship he was to pilot into port if the Phantom didn't have any boats on board to transfer him with?  According to most of what I have read, most pilot boats, like the Mary Taylor for instance, carried at least one ship boat to make the transfer. The Mary Taylor was close to the same size as the Phantom and built around the same era.  Did they transfer the pilot directly from the deck of the Phantom to the other ship?  I was under the impression that pulling two larger ships close together, especially in rough weather, was a bit dangerous.  Did they have some other way to get the pilot on the other ship that I am not aware of like some type of transfer rigging similar to what they used by the Navy during WWII?  Maybe the ship he was to pilot sent out a boat of their own to pick him up,

[BETAQDAVE]

Well, apparently no one has an answer for this question so I guess that it's up to me.  As this build has been modified already, I guess my choice is to go with a ships boat and will just refer to whatever information that I can come up with.

[Jaager]

My first thought:  Compared to the ships that they worked for, the pilot craft seem like large boats themselves.

The pilot craft were  both fast and maneuverable.   Some were in the 70-80 ft range in size.

The 1st launch of USS Vincennes was 35 ft. Not the same size  but not all that different either.

Rather than risk the hazard of two transfers, my thought is that the pilot vessel itself was able

to get close enough for direct transfer of the pilot.  This from the description of USS Sea Gull and

USS Flying Fish in the U.S. Ex. Ex. squadron given by N. Philbrick in SEA OF GLORY.

 

Then I did some research:   The topic is addressed in Vol. 1 of Tom Cunliffe's PILOTS.

Following its lead - I looked on the NRJ CD for volumes 1-40,  in Vol. 39.3  2 articles,  one by

Eric Ronnberg Jr. and one by Jeff Megerdichian  cover subject with information and plans

to allow scratch build of a pilot canoe/yawl that is likely as close as can be had.

[vossy]

hey dave, when I was in the oz navy, whenever we were abroad all the pilots were land based and came out to the ships from various boats. I cant remember a pilot (and I had a fair bit to do with them), actually being based on a vessel. I did hundreds of os deployments and cant ever remember a time we put our boat over to collect a pilot. it was always the other way around. they would come to us in a boat that was moored at the local dock until needed.

 

chris

 

[Roger Pellett]

In the late 80’s or early 90’s Eric Ronnberg published a series of articles in the Nautical Research Journal about researching and building a model of the Boston pilot Boat Hesper. In these articles he discussed the design of the pilot “yawl” used to transfer the pilot from to and from the vessel to be piloted.  Look it up on their data base of articles.  Trying to bring the much smaller pilot boat along side a much larger ship would be dangerous in a seaway.

 

Roger

[catopower]

I agree that Tom Cunliffe's book covers the topic very well. I always felt that the shape of Ronnberg's pilot yawl didn't seem right to me. There are several photos of them in Cunliffe's book. If I recall correctly, there are also some small plans for them in the book. They are interesting boats. 

 

When I built my model of the Mary Taylor based roughly on BlueJacket's plans, I scratch built the pilot yawls. It wasn't difficult. If I recall correctly, I just use the plans in Cunliffe's book. Here are some pics...

 

Clare

 

 

[wefalck]

I cannot comment on US American practice of piloting in mid-19th century. However, over here in Europe, piloting at that time was a business, albeit with certain government rules, regulations and oversight. The pilot schooners or cutters really were 'motherships' for the pilot-dinghies. The pilot-boat that first hailed a ship usually got the job. For this reason, pilot-boats cruised far outside the harbours or estuaries, say Hamburg pilots as far as Helgoland or off the Dutch coast. That is why pilot-boats had to be tough and seaworthy, to be able to remain on station even in atrocious conditions. It is impossible to approach another ship with a pilot-boat in anything but flat sea, if they didn't bump into each other, the rigs could get entangled, when the vessels were heeling over. So the only way is by using a dinghy. There would be a couple of men in the dinghy and the pilot. They would approach the ship while it may be moving up and down several metres in a heavy sea. At the right moment the pilot would have to jump and grab the ladder that would have been lowered for him from the ship. The dinghy then would push off as quickly as possible in order to not get caught by the ship. Taking the dinghy on board the pilot-boat was another dangerous exercise that required a lot of skill. Putting the dinghy out already was a tricky job: it would hang with all men aboard from the davits and the quick-release gear would have to pulled at the right moment in a heavy sea so that the boat dropped into the water on an even keel, but not too high. Pilot-boats had several dinghies on board, one or two suspended from davits for immediate use and perhaps one or two spare ones. The boats carried around six to eight pilots for whom sufficient living quarters were amidship. Once all pilots had been employed, the pilot-boat would return as quickly as possible to its base in order to pick up the pilots released from the docked ships and the return back to its station as quickly as possible - that's why pilot-boats had to be fast, to compete against other pilot-boats.