Ship's boats are utility boats carried by larger vessels to act as tenders

Ship's tender

A ship's tender, usually referred to as a tender, is a boat, or a larger ship used to service a ship, generally by transporting people and/or supplies to and from shore or another ship...

 amongst other roles. Boats had different names depending on hull form, rig, size and role during the Age of Sail

Age of Sail

The Age of Sail was the period in which international trade and naval warfare were dominated by sailing ships, lasting from the 16th to the mid 19th century...

, this nomenclature

Nomenclature

Nomenclature is a term that applies to either a list of names or terms, or to the system of principles, procedures and terms related to naming - which is the assigning of a word or phrase to a particular object or property...

 persisting to the present, especially in military circles, long after most distinctions have disappeared.

Types

Ship's boats that might potentially be carried by a sailing ship include:

• Launch
  Launch (boat)
  A launch in contemporary usage refers to a large motorboat. The name originally referred to the largest boat carried by a warship. The etymology of the word is given as Portuguese lancha "barge", from Malay lancha, lancharan, "boat," from lanchar "velocity without effort," "action of gliding...
  
  
• Captain's gig
  Captain's Gig
  The captain's gig is a boat used on naval ships as the captain's private taxi. It is a catchall phrase for this type of craft and over the years it has gradually increased in size, changed with the advent of new technologies for locomotion, and been crafted from increasingly more durable...
  
  
• Jolly-boat
• Cutter
• Admiral's barge
  Barge
  A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats...
  
  
• Pinnace
  Pinnace (ship's boat)
  As a ship's boat the pinnace is a light boat, propelled by sails or oars, formerly used as a "tender" for guiding merchant and war vessels. In modern parlance, pinnace has come to mean a boat associated with some kind of larger vessel, that doesn't fit under the launch or lifeboat definitions...
  
  
• Dinghy
  Dinghy
  A dinghy is a type of small boat, often carried or towed for use as a ship's boat by a larger vessel. It is a loanword from either Bengali or Urdu. The term can also refer to small racing yachts or recreational open sailing boats. Utility dinghies are usually rowboats or have an outboard motor,...
  
  
• Whaleboat
  Whaleboat
  A whaleboat is a type of open boat that is relatively narrow and pointed at both ends, enabling it to move either forwards or backwards equally well. It was originally developed for whaling, and later became popular for work along beaches, since it does not need to be turned around for beaching or...
  
  

Roles

One of the main roles of a ship's boat was to act as a taxi to move stores and people between shore and ship, and between ships. Although some boats were general purpose in nature, boats such as the Captain's gig and the Admiral's barge were for the exclusive use of officers. It was also the role of a military vessels boats to act as landing craft

Landing craft

Landing craft are boats and seagoing vessels used to convey a landing force from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. Most renowned are those used to storm the beaches of Normandy, the Mediterranean, and many Pacific islands during WWII...

, to deliver boarders

Boarding (attack)

Boarding, in its simplest sense, refers to the insertion on to a ship's deck of individuals. However, when it is classified as an attack, in most contexts, it refers to the forcible insertion of personnel that are not members of the crew by another party without the consent of the captain or crew...

 and cutting out parties. Boats were also sometimes armed with a single bow mounted forward firing smoothbore cannon to function as small gunboat

Gunboat

A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.-History:...

s, boats so equipped would support landing operation

Landing operation

A landing operation is a military action aimed at a bringing the landing force usually via landing craft to a shore or to land with the purpose of power projection ashore by forces coming usually from ships and also aircraft and able to fight....

s and act as picket boats for ships at anchor.

When a ship was becalmed, mastless, run aground

Ship grounding

Ship grounding is a type of marine accident that involves the impact of a ship on the seabed, resulting in damage of the submerged part of her hull and particularly the bottom structure, potentially leading to water ingress and compromise of the ship's structural integrity and stability...

 or otherwise unable to move, a ship's boat provided a source of motive power. The ship's anchor

Anchor

An anchor is a device, normally made of metal, that is used to connect a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the vessel from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ancora, which itself comes from the Greek ἄγκυρα .Anchors can either be temporary or permanent...

 and cable would be rowed a distance from the ship before being laid, the crew would then man the ship's capstans

Capstan (nautical)

A capstan is a vertical-axled rotating machine developed for use on sailing ships to apply force to ropes, cables, and hawsers. The principle is similar to that of the windlass, which has a horizontal axle.- History :...

 to haul the ship forward, this would be repeated as many times as needed.

The ship's boats could also when needed be used as a lifeboats and rescue boats.

Storage

During the age of sail the ship's boats of larger ship's of the line would be stowed upon the deck, sometimes nested one atop the other. Boats would be deployed and recovered by davit

Davit

A davit is a structure, usually made of steel, which is used to lower things over an edge of a long drop off such as lowering a maintenance trapeze down a building or launching a lifeboat over the side of a ship....

s with some vessels carrying a single small boat suspended astern.

Present day

Ships today from large cruise ships to small private yachts continue to carry ship's boats as tenders

Ship's tender

A ship's tender, usually referred to as a tender, is a boat, or a larger ship used to service a ship, generally by transporting people and/or supplies to and from shore or another ship...

 and lifeboats

Lifeboat (shipboard)

A lifeboat is a small, rigid or inflatable watercraft carried for emergency evacuation in the event of a disaster aboard ship. In the military, a lifeboat may be referred to as a whaleboat, dinghy, or gig. The ship's tenders of cruise ships often double as lifeboats. Recreational sailors sometimes...

. Aboard military vessels ship's boats often rigid-hulled inflatable

Rigid-hulled inflatable boat

A rigid-hulled inflatable boat, or rigid-inflatable boat is a light-weight but high-performance and high-capacity boat constructed with a solid, shaped hull and flexible tubes at the gunwale. The design is stable and seaworthy...

continue to do many of the things expected of their Age of Sail predecessor.

External links

• HMS Victory's boats