Billander

Billander
Album - Ships of the 15th to 18th Centuries
Filesize = 14 KBs,  Dimensions = 400x311,  Date added = May 08, 2007,  Viewed = 151 times
A trading ship with two masts with a form of the mainsail differed from those used on other two-masted vessels was called a billander (bilander). This sail was installed on the Lateen yard and it still saved the form of a mizzensail. The Lateen yard was hanged on the mainmast with an angle of 45 degrees and the foot of the sail nearly touched the stern. The sheet was fastened on the transom and the tack was fastened by tackles on the deck in a diameter surface of the ship approximately in the half of its length. W. Falconer pointed that on large ships of such a type the mainsail was set not in an aft surface but it was hanged on the Lateen yard set athwart, i.e., across the vessel. In his work 'An universal Dictionary of the Marine'. (London. 1769, Neudruck, 1979) he also said that only few vessels were rigged in such a manner because, perhaps, it was difficult to manage these ships. He noted that the name of a 'billander', as well as of a 'brigantine', in different places of Europe often was used for different types of ships. In 1794 D. Steel noted that only the Dutch used this type of vessels.

Model Ships @ shipmodeling.info