The reader who is familiar with Elizabethan literature must have found considerable confusion existing in his mind as to what a “pinnesse” really was. Let us say at once, then, that the name was indiscriminately given to two distinct classes of craft. One class was a kind of galleasse, only smaller; that is to say, she relied on both oars and sails. She was a sea-going ship and decked. Under this heading came also row-barges, and at various times also galleots, galleys, frigates, and shallops. The point to notice is that this class comprised really big craft. The other “pinnesses” were ships’ boats. The modern use of the word pinnace expresses pretty clearly its relation to the mother ship. The greatest critics are unable to define exactly what a “bark” was, but from an early Venetian print I gather that she was smaller than the prevailing Mediterranean galley. At the same time the word seems to have included also vessels ranging from fifty, to a hundred and fifty tons. Thus they were sometimes small ships, and sometimes large pinnaces. Whilst Elizabethan seamen included all sailing vessels fit to take their place in the line of battle under the generic term of ship, the shipwrights divided them according to their design into “ships,” “galleons,” “galleasses”; “barks” being a convenient term for vessels of smaller ability. [Illustration: FIG. 53. THE “BLACK PINNESSE,” WHICH BROUGHT HOME THE BODY OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.] The “brigandine” or “brigantine” was a Mediterranean type of small galley, rowed by its own fighting crew and without slaves. Sometimes she was classed as a “pinnesse” and sometimes as a bark, but never as a galley. Whether or not she possessed sails she was primarily a rowed boat. The illustration in Fig. 53 represents a big sea-going pinnesse as distinct from the ship’s boat. This was the vessel that carried home the body of Sir Philip Sydney, and is taken from “Sequitur celebritas et pompa funeris...” (of Sir Philip Sydney) by Thomas Lant, printed in 1587. The Elizabethan deep-sea pinnaces were from eighty to fifteen tons. The present illustration shows the vessel with her waist-cloths rigged up to prevent boarding, and with nettings[87] drawn over the waist to intercept the missiles dropped from the fighting-tops of the enemy. Mr. Masefield says that this cloth was of canvas two bolts (three feet six inches) deep. It was gaily painted with designs of red, yellow, and the Tudor green and white. It was of no protection against the enemy’s guns, yet it helped the sail trimmers on board from being aimed at. But against the enemy’s arrows sent from the tops it was efficacious, for though they penetrated the texture they were caught. We have already called attention to the additional protection of the shields or pavesses that ran around the outside of the deck. [Illustration: FIG. 54. A GALLEON OF THE TIME OF ELIZABETH.]