Captain Collins Very Interestingly
Notes In A Letter To The Author, Concerning The Measurements Indicated
By His Model:
"Here we meet with a difficulty, even if it is not
insurmountable.
This is found in the discrepancy which exists between
the dimensions - length, breadth, and depth - requisite to produce a
certain tonnage, as given by Admiral Paris and the British Admiralty.
Whether this is due to a difference in estimating tonnage between France
(or other countries) and Great Britain, I am unable to say, but it is a
somewhat remarkable fact that the National Museum model, which was made
for a vessel of 120 tons, as given by Admiral Paris who was a Frenchman,
has almost exactly the proportions of length, depth, and breadth that an
English ship of 180 tons would have, if we can accept as correct the
lists of measurements from the Admiralty records published by Charnock
. . . In the third volume of Charnock's 'History of Marine
Architecture,' p. 274., I find that a supply transport of 175 tons,
built in 1759, and evidently a merchant ship originally, or at least a
vessel of that class, was 79.4 feet long (tonnage measure), 22.6 feet
beam, and 11.61 feet deep." The correspondence is noticeable and of
much interest, but as the writer comments, all depends upon whether or
not "the measurement of the middle of the eighteenth century materially
differed in Great Britain from what it was in the early part of the
previous century."
Like all vessels having high stems and sterns, she was unquestionably "a
wet ship," - upon this voyage especially so, as Bradford shows, from being
overloaded, and hence lower than usual in the water.
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