Talk:Bomb vessel

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[edit] Bomb Ship/Bomb Ketch

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 Wilson 20:11, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

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. Stan 00:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

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.frog 14:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)