a peculiar description, and deriving her name from having an opening or large port in her poop, through which horses were shipped, for the conveyance of which these vessels seem to have been more especially designed. This large opening, when the Huissier had completed her loading, was securely closed and caulked, like the bow and stern ports in the ships of our own time employed in the timber trade.
The Cat.
The Saitie.
The Galliot, &c.
In the list of ships engaged for the expedition
against Crete (A.D. 949) mention is made, not merely
of Huissiers, Zelanders, and Pamphyles, but of vessels
known as Zelander-Huissiers and Zelander-Pamphyles,
or of a description embodying the qualities
and advantages of both. "Cats," to which William
of Tyre, speaking of an incident in 1121, calls attention,
were sharp-beaked ships, larger than galleys,
having one hundred oars, each of which was worked
by two men, or "double banked" in the phraseology
of our own time. The Saitie, or Sagette (arrow),
was a small, fast-rowing vessel, or barge, propelled
by oars, but considerably less than even the smallest
class of galleys. In the twelfth century this description
of craft had from ten to twelve oars on
each side, and was employed during the five succeeding
centuries for the same purposes as the Brigantine.
The Galliot, the Furt, the Brigantine, and
the Frigate became in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries diminutives of the galley, and were known
as the Galeass, when large, broad, and heavily
armed. The galeass had her oars ranged, either in
threes upon a single bank, or had twenty-six oars on
each side, in which case, the oar being larger and
