Some Basic Facts

Today, most often we reserve the word chebec for the family of ships to which belonged Le Requin, but in the years 1750, the term Schabeck was more frequently used. The year 1748 marks the end of galleys and it is in 1749 that the Admiralty of Toulon proposes to the Ministry of the Marine to provide itself with chebecs. These vessels, being the specialty of the shipyard of Majorca, the Court of Spain gives his consent to the French Consul to select two shipwrights and four carpenters who will arrive at Toulon on July 3, 1750. Upon consultation with the Administration and the Admiralty, it is at the end of this same month that the setting in of two ships of 24 cannons is started, Le Requin and L'Indiscret. They will be respectively launched on March 14 and March 24, 1751.

In parallel, two other ships of 18 cannons are layed down at the end of August 1750, le Ruse and le Serpent, which will be launched in June 1751. Upon completion of their work, the people of Majorca receive the order on July 30 to leave Toulon to rejoin their country embarking at Marseilles: they will arrive there at the end of September.

Le Requin will be condemned in 1770 and L'Indiscret will become Spanish in 1761, the two other chebecs will be stricken from the lists in 1775.

The construction of four other ships of twenty cannons will be started in 1762: le Cameleon, le Singe, le Renard and le Seduisant, they will all complete their career in 1779.

This ship comprises three masts of pole type as cach one of them forms: a continuous whole and does not have a top. The foremast is strongly tilted forward, the main mast is vertical and the humble mizzen mast is leaning abaft. At the bow a stem supports a jib boom called “batelot.” Along each broadside, openings are made behind each ten first gun-ports to enable using large oars necessary to work the ship in calm weather and in harbours. One of the characteristics of the shape of a Chebec is of course the slenderness and the extreme elegance of the ship thanks to a very pinched bow and a pronounced shear. The bow presents a stem that is not far from the horizontal, whereas the stern is strongly raised and ends in a vast platform of gratings framed by remarkably fine flanks. It is in the aft section of the ship where all the elaborations of the decoration are abundant in the form of many paintings and sculptures.

If, originally the chebecs were traditionally equipped with three very large lateen sails and a jib, numerous transformations of their rigging will see the light of day: it became square for the foremast and indeed even for the main mast and finally for that of the mizzen.