Double banked versus single banked ships' boats

[allanyed]

The only reference to when a boat was double banked versus single banked that I have been able to find so far is on page 219 in Lavery's The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War where he writes that "in 1783 it was ordered that all launches should be equipped to row double banked."  Looking at the boat scantlings for launches circa 1800 in May's The Boats of Men of War, the smallest launch that he shows has a length of 24 feet and a breadth of 7 feet 10 inches.  OK, that seems like a lot of room to be double banked.

 

My quandry is whether there was a minimum breadth required for any type of boat to be double banked.  Lacking other information one could make the argument that any boat that had a breadth of 7' 10" or more would/could be double banked, but that kind of assumption is probably a bad idea.   Was there a rule that stated a minimum breadth for any boat that would be double banked or single banked?  Mays has a photo of a contemporary model of a 37 foot barge that has a breadth of 7 feet that is single banked.  On the same page he shows a contemporary plan of a 32 foot barge (no breadth given)  that is double banked, adding to my confusion.  I would appreciate any information.  Thanks

 

Allan

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

If you look at the mechanics of a lever, I believe that the single/double bank issue is like gearing in a car.  Boats intended to travel at high speeds benefited from two oars per thwart.  On the other hand, heavy workboats like longboats and launches benefited from the added leverage gained by one oarsman per thwart using the breadth of the boat to gain leverage.  At least that’s how I arranged thole pins in my Longboat model.

 

I also see no reason why these boats could not have been converted back and forth from single to double banked and vice versa as needed as thole pins could be added or removed from holes in the gunwales.

 

In researching these boats carried aboard warships IMHO there are many details that we know little about.

 

Roger

[allanyed]

Your reasoning makes a lot of sense Roger.  There is indeed very little outside of the Lavery and May books.  At least there are reasonably close scantlings and details that would help anyone building a ship's boat for the ship model with hand tools.     There are also a lot of contemporary drawings that show the diversity even within a given time period.   

Allan  

[wefalck]

Eric McKee in his 'Working Boats of Britain' looked a bit into the mechanics/ergonomics of rowing and I think gives some dimensions, if I remember correctly, for spacing thwarts, inboard vs. outboard lengths of oars etc. Rowing efficiency, both from the purely physical perspective as well as from the physiological perspective is quite complex. While in the 18th/19th century, of course, there were no scientific studies on this, people had a lot of experience.

 

I gather there are in principle x different rowing arrangements in ships' boats:

 

- one man per thwart with two oars (in small boats only)

- one man per thwart with one oar (single bank)

- two men per thwart with one oar each (double bank)

- four men per thwart with two men per oar (in large boats only)

 

You will need an inboard length of the oar of around 3 feet minimum to give a reasonable fulcrum, whereby one hand is placed on the handle and the other more or less at shoulder width further towards the thole pins. This means that you would need a minimum of around 6 to 7 feet for a double banked boat, while a single-banked one could be as narrow as about 4 feet, with the men off-set to each side of the boat.

 

Faster, lighter boats could have proportionally longer oars with wider space between the thwarts to allow for longer strokes, propelling the boat faster, while heavy working boats would have closer spaced thwarts with shorter oars, as here you need the 'torque' of the oars at slower speed.

 

[allanyed]

Thanks Eberhard.   As with so many things in those days, there is a lot of diversity.  Understandable with many yards building boats, but there were contracts with scantlings that help to some extent.  The following is one example of a contract transcribed (with notes)  from the original at the National Archives in Kew by  Mark Porter.

 

A point to note with dating is that in contracts it was often written as 7ber, 8ber, 9ber & 10ber  

 

Contracted the 9^th of 7ber [September ] 90 with the Hono^ble Tho[mas] Willshaw, Esq^re one of the Princip^all Officers  & Comm^rs of their  Maj^ties Navy, for and behalf of their Ma^ties, by me  Tho[mas] Oxford of Gosport Shipwright and I  doe hereby oblige my self to deliver into their Maj^ties Stores at Portsmouth, by ye end of 8ber [October] next ensueing the  Pinnace and Yawle undermentioned  of the Dimensions and Scantlings foll^ing  (viz)     

                           Long              Broad            Deep

Pinnace   of         30ft:   -----      6ft:  ------     2ft: 7ins   -------  

Depth of the Keel: 5 ins  breadth 4 ins, Scantlings of the timbers 1 ½ ins Roome and space 13 ins,   depth of the Gunwales up & down 4½: ins  in and out 2 ins & 1½ in, Scarph of ye Timber 18 ins, breadth of ye Stem thwartships 3½ ins fore and aft 7 ins, Stern post 3ins, Rising 4½  in, footwales 4½ ins and one inch in and out, Keelson 8 ins X 1½  in thick, to be fitted with 12 Iron Knees 5 bound thwarts w^th Iron Knees & two Transom Knees, with gang boards) and Scarr boards [Wash boards?], benches three  lynings, Grounds  & mouldings, plankshires turn[e]d off,  back board one,  bottome boards two, Keel band 22 ft Ring bolts two,  Rother iron two paire, Rother one  once primed at the Rate of fourteen shillings per foot.

 

Yawle of        Long                            Broad                     Deep

                                                          ft                             ft

                    23 ft                               5   7 ins                  2    5 ins                  One

Railes for the upper strake to be made out of ye whole wood up & down Gunwales stuck,

3 thwarts bound with Iron knees, & ye transoms with two Iron knees.

The State Room (stern sheets, or officers’ seating area) stuck (presumably meaning ‘struck’) with an O:G. & plansheer for the Gunnwales with pannels on each side the back board, a locker under the after bench & lynings under the benches,  keel thwart shipps 4 ins up and downe, 4 ½ ins X 4 ins  Keelson 6 ins broad of 1 ½ ins planck timbers of 1 ½ ins with 13 ins roome and space and 18 ins Scarph, the flower [floor] timber heads to Naile to ye lower edge of ye binding strake, with bottom boards, & shear boards, Keelbands and Iron bolts and Rings for stem and stern, to row with six Oars to be graved and primed to the water line and paid with stuff in the inside to ye Riseing att 12s per foot  

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by allanyed

[iMustBeCrazy]

G'day Allan,

 

11 hours ago, allanyed said:

5 bound thwarts w^th Iron Knees & two Transom Knees

 

So if this is 1690 (Thomas Wilshaw fits with that) and we have 23ft boats being fitted with "iron knees" doesn't that open up a new can of worms? How common were iron knees? Does it perhaps mean that the RMG boat drawings not specifically showing wooden knees had iron knees? 'shudder' too much to think about.

 

 

EDIT, I just looked up Mays Boats of Men of War and the scantlings table ca1800 gives iron knees for Barges, Pinnaces, Yawls and Wherrys. I don't see anything for earlier but the contracts show that it might have been true for a long time.

Edited September 13, 2022 by iMustBeCrazy

[Lieste]

For double banked barges and pinnaces the instructions for embarkation given in "Aide Memoire to the Military Sciences" are:
 

Quote

If there is any motion, care must be taken not to overload the boats, for fear of
their swamping; there will therefore be room for the crew to pull . As many of the troops as possible must be made to sit down in the boats: in a barge or pinnace one soldier between each rower and the rowlock, before the oar, looking aft, and one abaft each oar, with his back to the gunwale,

In launches or larger boats there will be room for men to sit or stand in the centre of the boat between the two lines of rowers, in addition to those marked for barges , &c. The head and stern sheets of old boats to be packed as close as possible consistent with safety.
If the water is perfectly smooth , the boats may be laden much deeper, the men standing as close as possible together ; but in this case they must be towed , for two reasons : 1st , the crew have no room to pull ; 2nd , when boats are very deep, the men cannot get the blades of the oars out of the water so as to pull with effect.
It must, however, be remembered that it is slow work towing a heavy boat by a light one ; load , therefore, the boats employed in towing as deeply as you can without inconveniencing the rowers.
Boats employed in landing troops are to have neither guns , masts , nor sails; their equipment to be - gang -boards, oars, grapnels and painters, boat - hooks , bailers , hammers and nails , sheet -lead, grease , and canvas ; the latter articles are to enable them to stop a small shot-hole in case of accident.
 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2022 by Lieste

[druxey]

Iron (or 'yron') knees take up much less valuable room inboard than wooden ones, so it is a logical choice.

[Fritzlindsay]

I am not sure if this has been addressed in the past, but I could not find anything so far.  Apologies if this is a repeat.  I have seen at least one supplier that offers kits for pinnaces with the tholes set up like a double banked boat on every other thwart.  Why are there the alternating thwarts with no tholes at all?  Contemporary drawings sometimes only show the tholes in the side view and it looks like every other one is missing, but I THINK this is being misinterpreted.  Were pinnaces ever built for two tholes on a single thwart then no thole for the next thwart?

Thanks

Fritz

The first and third drawings are easy to interpret, having two views with the alternating thole locations.  The middle drawing might be problematic as the tholes are only shown on the elevation view so I can see how this could be misinterpreted if the pinnace was single banked.  With a breadth of only 6'-7" I cannot see two rowers on one thwart, then every other thwart with no rowers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 10 by Fritzlindsay

[wefalck]

Perhaps the banks without tholes are meant to seat marines during landing operations?
 

[Fritzlindsay]

14 hours ago, wefalck said:

Perhaps the banks without tholes are meant to seat marines during landing operations?

You may be right, but I am betting there would still be tholes for single banked rowing on every thwart when used for other purposes.  Based on the contemporary drawings  which I am trying to reload here, there is one thole for every thwart on the first two plans.  The third drawing shows the alternating tholes on the top view, but leaves out any tholes on the side view.  Sorry they do not appear to have been loaded properly in my previous post.

Fritz

[druxey]

The drawings with tholes on every other thwart indicate just one side of the boat. The opposite side would have the alternating thwarts.

[wefalck]

In principle yes and it was also my first thought, but I think the images above show actually relatively wide double-banked boats.

 

 

[cotrecerf]

Yes Druxey, one can see that you are right:  sailor on thwart a operates oar in thole 1 and so forth. Considering the moulded breadth  of 6 feet, 4 inches (= approx. 190 cm) offers a  powerful lever arm for the rower sitting on the opposite hull side of the  dedicated thole.

 

Joachim

[cotrecerf]

oopps, sorry

 

[cotrecerf]

Like so:  https://preview.redd.it/whats-the-point-of-bucket-rigs-and-why-does-bucket-rigging-v0-odtwdx3gsi9a1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=d447a1c12b029eee1b31ae9a39ed0306fef1a42f

[Fritzlindsay]

Thanks, it appears there is agreement that pinnaces were single banked and the pinnaces that show some thwarts with no tholes are incorrect.  An example is below.     

 

 

Pinnace with possible missing tholes

Another question.  Were barges ever double banked?  I cannot find any contemporary information that is other than single banked.  Two examples of the many that I found showing the single  banked design follow:

 

 

 

Edited February 11 by Fritzlindsay

[druxey]

In the examples above (post #17) one can see the tholes offset from each other from starboard (sheer) and half-breadth (port).

[Fritzlindsay]

I agree Druxey but there are a lot of plans that do not show the offset tholes in the overhead view which might be the reason some kits get it wrong as in the photo above in post #17.

Fritz

 

Edited Saturday at 01:03 PM by Fritzlindsay

[iMustBeCrazy]

2 hours ago, Fritzlindsay said:

there are a lot of plans that do not show the offset tholes in the overhead view

The problem is a lack of standards. There were no drafting text books so it was a case of doing as you were taught.

 

Some drawings such as the one above may, for example, depict a half hull model while others the whole boat.

When depicting the whole boat, sometimes objects the far side of the centreline are drawn dashed, sometimes solid.

Sometimes extra details are depicted on the half breadth, sometimes not.

 

Ultimately these drawings are not the engineering drawings of today, they are general guides backed up by scantling details and contracts which we rarely see.

 

2 hours ago, Fritzlindsay said:

which might be the reason some kits get it wrong

Or the might be right, but I don't think so.

 

[Fritzlindsay]

15 hours ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

scantling details and contracts which we rarely see.

There are a lot of contracts for ships, but I agree with you that boat contracts do not appear to be so common.

 I have seen contracts for a pinnace and yawl of 1790 and a contract for long boats from 1695 that include scantlings, so they do exist, but they are not so easy to find.

 

 

[Fritzlindsay]

20 hours ago, druxey said:

In the examples above (post #17) one can see the tholes offset from each other from starboard (sheer) and half-breadth (port).

Druxey

Would you agree that pinnaces would always/usually be single banked, set up with one thole per thwart as in the plans in post #17, alternating, rather than two tholes for one thwart and no tholes for the adjacent thwarts?

Thank you

 

[iMustBeCrazy]

This is what I can come up with for pinnaces:

 

[Fritzlindsay]

Thanks for posting this Craig.  

 

[dafi]

Thank you bringing up this topic again, as I am at the moment working on that.

 

After working on the sweeps and oars, the question was arising, as the oars prooved too long for double banked use. This thread nicely shows the solution as mostely single banked were used was for the "slimmer" boats. Nicely to be seen for my 1800 subject in the 1765 model of victory.

 

I have the feeling too, that for single banked use oars with a curved blade were used, while for double banked use sweeps with a straight blade were preferred. At least the choice of RMG suggests this.

 

 

Some more hints from the RMG, sorry I did loose the reference numbers on those ones.

 

alternating single banked with oars

 

 

 

double banked with sweeps:

 

Special both versions?

perhaps single bancked for 4 oars or alternatively 2 pairs of sculls?

 

Edited yesterday at 08:41 AM by dafi

[Fritzlindsay]

Thanks for posting these photos.  They give corroboration that actual ship's boats did not ordinarily have thwarts without any tholes at all.

Fritz.

Edited Monday at 07:26 PM by Fritzlindsay

[iMustBeCrazy]

I came across this pic of Police on the Thames which opens a new can of worms:

 

[druxey]

Looks like a highly posed photo! Look also at the blade angles....

[dafi]

On 2/11/2025 at 6:12 PM, Fritzlindsay said:

Thanks, it appears there is agreement that pinnaces were single banked and the pinnaces that show some thwarts with no tholes are incorrect.  An example is below.     

Wonderful, once I saw this info I already found plenty of otherwise very true models showing this "feature" 🙂

 

But I would expect an even number of twarts for single banked, but there is quite often an uneven number. Does this mean the lesser side had to pull harder or was there one thole left free?

 

Also there seems no rule as to what side of the boat has the most foreward thole.

 

XXXDAn

Edited yesterday at 08:41 AM by dafi

[iMustBeCrazy]

5 hours ago, druxey said:

Looks like a highly posed photo! Look also at the blade angles....

Certainly, but the boat is fitted with as a hybrid rowing system.

 

4 hours ago, dafi said:

But I would expect an even number of twarts for single bancked, but there is quite often an uneven number. Does this mean the lesser side had to pull harder or was there one thole left free?

I suspect it was something like preventing resentment of the rest of the crew if the bowman was carried around like an Admiral. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

-------

 

Anyway, I thought trying to nail down terminology might be worthwhile. I think this is how it goes:

 

Starting with OAR, basically every paddle worked against a fulcrum (THOLE)  is an oar.

 

Oars are broken down into two types, SCULLS and OARS. (there is also SWEEPS which are 'larger OARS' used on ships or boats).

 

SCULLS are operated by one man SCULLING with one oar over the transom or one or more men operating two oars each on the one thwart (also called SCULLING).

 

OARS are operated over the sides of the boat by one or more men per OAR. They can be single (one oar per thwart) or double banked (two oars per thwart), single banked would tend to use SWEEPS. 

Operating a boat with one or more men per OAR, with the oars over the sides, is known as ROWING.

 

To add to the confusion, an OAR operated over the transom could be called a SCULL if used for propulsion or a SWEEP if used for steering. And SCULLS and OARS were also the two types of "water taxis" used on the Thames.

 

Maybe.