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The Corvette

THE word "corvette" seems a hard etymological nut to crack. Jal and some of his followers claim its derivation from the latin corbis meaning a peculiar form of Roman basket as applied to the Roman merchant ships called corbita. (Compare Roman corbita, page 50.) Kenna denies this derivation and contends that the word is of Netherlandish origin; that its earliest known appearance is in 1476 and that if it were derived from Mediterranean sea language, it should be possible to find some connecting link and transitional stage between Roman times and the 15th Century. He says that the word occurs first and most frequently in parts of Flanders near the French border and that about the year 1500 there was a type of Dutch fishing boat similar to a dogger then called a cobre and later corve. The divergence of form of the craft to which the word "corvette" has been applied is almost as confusing as the origin of the word itself. We have seen that it was first used for a boat like a dogger. In the 17th Century the corvette is described as a sort of barque longue having only one mast and a little stay-sail and propelled by both sails and oars. The definition of a barque longue, which it is unnecessary to quote, still further complicates the matter. In the early years of the 18th Century, corvettes are described as having two masts and a bowsprit carrying a spritsail. After the middle of that century Jal states that the corvette had increased in size and had taken a form similar to that of a ship of the time. He describes the corvette of his day (1840) as having the general build of a frigate with similar masts and sails, and mounting from 14 to 32 guns.

As usually understood, the corvette was a name common in the French Navy and applied to that class of smaller war vessels somewhat analogous to the ships called, in the British and American navies, sloops of war. Hamersly's "Naval Encyclopaedia" says that the term was never adopted in the United States Navy. Corvettes were distinguished by their comparatively low freeboard and absence of a high quarterdeck.

Corvette is a fascinating word. One would like to derive it from corbeau, a raven, and to imagine the commander of such a vessel as displaying a red flag showing a raven in full flight holding a skull in its claws, with the motto Gare le corbeau, reminiscent of the wicked Templar in that favourite romance of our boyhood days, "Ivanhoe."