"Stede Bonnet's Revenge" Topic

Does anyone know if this is a single, or a two-masted vessel?

I see it listed as a 60 ton sloop, with 6, and later 12 guns, but don't see much more info on it.

Sizes of the cannons would be helpful too.

Sloops have one mast, Brig's have two. I don't know about the gun sizes.

Thanks for the response, but I have to say yes, and no.

There are two-masted Brig-Sloops, and three-masted War-Sloops, or Ship-Sloops. From time to time, these seem to be referred to just as sloops, as well.

The term sloop as a rig is ALWAYS a single masted, fore and aft rigged vessel rigged with the mast slightly forward (further back would make it a cutter).

The generic term sloop as in "sloop of war" did not come into general use until the Napoleonic era. A "sloop of war" is a ship rigged (3 mast square rigged)unrated vessel, a "brig sloop" was a vessel of about the same size rigged with 2 masts (square rigged brig or brigantine). Neither of these ship types are sloops by rig and are merely referred to as sloops due to sloppy use of language in which anything short of a frigate was generically called a sloop.

In either case these were terms primarily by the navy of the late 1700s and beyond, and were not in general use until 80+ years after Stede Bonnet passed from the scene.

By all indications Stede's sloop would be a Bermuda rigged sloop. These were very common to the Caribbean, and came in sizes from 30 to about 80 feet in size

Stede's first sloop was about 60 tons and carried 6 gus . . . . making the gun size most likely 2 or 4 pounders.

Colin Woodard, Author of "Republic of Pirates", has this blog post which should be of interest.

link

From the the letters of Captain Benjamin Candler of the HMS Winchelsea. "There is also or has been lately over on the [North American] Coast, a pirate sloop from Barbados commanded by one Major Bonnet, who has an Estate on that island," Candler wrote his superiors in London in the summer of 1717. "The sloop is his own. This advice I had from a letter from thence, that in April last [1717] he ran away out of Carlisle Bay in the night and had aboard 126 men and 6 guns… and ammunition enough."

Thanks for the info.

I really appreciate the responses, and am a bit better informed now.

I see the Revenge as being equipped with anywhere from 6 – 10 guns initially, and later upgunned to 12, after one of his many prizes was captured.

6 guns sounds about right at first, and then being significantly uprated (at least for a sloop) at a later date.

Best regards,

Rob