Talk:Cutter (boat)

How about a header?
the photo shows a boat with 2 masts. Is this not then a yawl (as the mizzen appears to be stepped aft of the rudder post)?

If this in indeed a cutter, the defnition of cutter on sail-plan needs fixing becuse otherwise it os not a cutter(not official looking)..

Ship?
With the exception of some of the largest Coast Guard cutters, and arguably, not even them, a cutter is a boat, not a ship. I suggest moving the article to Cutter (boat). Please comment if you have any objections. (Woland (talk) 19:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC))
 * Technically you are right - ship was obviously the inexperienced proposal of the wrist-slasher below. By all means go ahead, but bear in mind you have about 300 redirects to sort out! Motmit (talk) 20:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Is this OK?
I haven't a copy of the reference in the text so I can't check to see how we have come by the rather misleading information in the article. I include below, what I propose as an improvement. (RJP 20:55, 19 February 2006 (UTC))

A cutter is any of several types of boat or ship and can be demonstrated by the terms "cutter rigged ketch" " cutter rigged yawl" or in the case of the Mutin, a gaff rigged, cutter yawl.

Sailing
A classic cutter is a sailing vessel with more than one head sail and one mast. In a traditional vessel there would normally be also, a bowsprit to carry the topmast forestay with the jib hanked to it. (The sloop carries only one head sail, properly called a foresail though nowadays usually called a jib.) Correctly speaking, a jib is set on the topmast forestay.

The term is English in origin and refers to a specific type of vessel, namely, a, decked boat with one mast and usually a bowsprit, traditionally with a gaff mainsail, though not invariably so. The foot of the mainsail would normally be laced to a boom and the head to a gaff above which a (gaff) topsail would be set (as in the picture) in suitable conditions. There would also be a foresail and jib and possibly a flying jib set above the jib.

Pulling
A pulling cutter was a boat carried by sailing ships for work in fairly sheltered water in which load-carrying capacity was needed, for example in laying a kedge. This operation was the placing a relatively light anchor at a distance from the ship so as to be able to haul her off in its direction. The oars were double-banked. That is, there were two oarsmen on each thwart. In a seaway, the longboat was preferred to the cutter as the finer lines of the stern of the former meant that it was less likely to broach to in a following sea. In the Royal Navy the cutters were replaced by 25 and 32 foot motor cutters. However, as ships became larger, some of the cutters' traditional work had grown beyond the capacity of a boat. Though primarily a pulling boat, this cutter could also be rigged for sailing.

Customs services
Renamed section from revenue as historically revenue refers to direct taxes whereas customs and excise are indirect. I have also removed references to "The Revenue" since as far as I know and can find the UK Customs service has never been known as "The Revenue"; indeed "The Revenue" would refer to the Inland Revenue who have been recently merged with HM Customs and Excise to form HM Revenue and Customs. Alistairbell (talk) 19:48, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

US Coastguard
Cutters in the modern Coast Guard are fast, lightly-armed and frequently used in patrol work.

In the U.S. Coast Guard, a "cutter" is any Coast Guard vessel, with a permanently assigned crew and accommodations for the extended support of that crew. See chapter 10 USCG Regulations (Cutters are traditionally 65 ft. or greater in length). Larger cutters, over 180 feet (55 m) in length, are under control of area commands (Atlantic area or Pacific area). Cutters at or under 180 feet in length come under control of district commands. Cutters usually have a motor surf boat and/or a rigid hull inflatable boat on board. Polar Class icebreakers also carry an Arctic survey boat (ASB) and landing craft.
 * By USCG Regulations, ALL "cutters" are 65 feet in length or greater, whether or not they have permanently assigned crew and accommodations for the extended support of that crew; The United States Coast Guard is unique in this tradition, whereas litterally anywhere else such a large vsl would be desiganted something else.
 * From the Coast Guard's website: |The Revenue Marine and the Revenue Cutter Service, as it was known variously throughout the late 18th and the 19th centuries, referred to its ships as cutters. The term is English in origin and refers to a specific type of vessel, namely, "a small, decked ship with one mast and bowsprit, with a gaff mainsail on a boom, a square yard and topsail, and two jibs or a jib and a staysail." Since that time, no matter what the vessel type, the service has referred to its largest vessels as cutters (today a cutter is any Coast Guard vessel over 65-feet in length). 65.100.56.249 (talk) 04:59, 10 September 2009 (UTC)A REDDSON

Picture
I think the second picture, shown on discussion page, is inappropriate in that for it to even look like a cutter you need to "forget the mizzen" and therefore it is not a cutter, and should not be on this page. Rico 00:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes there seem to be at least two pictures of boats that do not belong. Might there be an additional meaning of the word in northern European languages that is confusing things?Ogbn (talk) 19:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The word kútter is used in Iceland and the Faeroe Islands for what on English WP is known as a smack (ship). These were typically English-built fishing ships with a mainmast and a mizzen that were bought by fisheries in these countries in the 1890s when they were already old in England and sold for a quarter of the price of a new ship. They were used as fishing ships in Iceland until the 1920s and longer in the Faeroes. Example: William Boyce built in Yarmouth in 1878, bought to Iceland in 1898 and named Haraldur (a well-known Icelandic song, Kútter Haraldur, is from the 1930s), then in 1901 given the name Hákon, stranded near Grindavík in 1926. Another example is the Faeroese Westward Ho built in Grimsby in 1884. This boat is called a slupp in Faeroese but usually called a kútter in Icelandic. --Akigka (talk) 12:02, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

self injury
I think a search for "cutter" should redirect to self injury. Almost 100% of the use of the word "cutter" refers to the wrist slitter's concept. Then this page should be moved to "cutter (ship)". If nobody is willing to argue it I think I'll go ahead and change it and see how it works out. Randy6767 00:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Very bad idea. “Cutter�? meaning “self-hurter�? is a colloquialism, whereas “cutter�? meaning an ocean-going vsl is a specific technical term. A disambiguation page, however, would be helpful. 65.100.56.249 (talk)A REDDSON —Preceding undated comment added 05:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC).

Lead
The lead was terribily tortured because it half-way looked like a MOS:DAB. Lists items with paragraphs of prose are very poor style. As well, there was an over emphasis on the Coast Guard definition of a cutter which in fact is no definition at all. They call everything a cutter, that's just ignorance. Let's show some respect to the hundreds of years of naval heritage which has always defined a cutter as: small with speed over capacity. I added to substantive cites to support "speed over capacity." Interestingly enough this also covers a harbor official's boat, a Coast Guard boat and a support vessel. --Hutcher (talk) 03:13, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Clarity
I'm not at all sure that this page makes it clear enough that in respect of sailing yachts, "cutter" means solely that there is more than one stay on the boat where a foresail can be rigged. There's too much dancing around various historical uses of the term that either don't apply any more or are of historical interest only. There's a reference to "somewhere in the 1950s or 2000s" which is a bit wide -- even back in the 1970s a cutter was distinct from a sloop in that it had more than one forestay (usually two). I don't know about earlier than that. 118.93.109.22 (talk) 04:03, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
 * There's a lot in this article that is technically wrong. As with many nautical definitions, there is no single definition of what a cutter is, We have (a) the modern coast guard cutter (powered all-weather craft able to stay at sea for extended periods), (b) the naval/revenue cutter predecessors of these, which were fast sailing single-masted vessels with fore and aft and square rig, (c) the ship's boat that was (and is) an open boat that could be propelled by oar or sail, and whose rig was usually a two-masted lugger (this was a very common naval ship's boat in the Royal Navy from the early 19th century until their replacement in regular use by motor launches and rigid inflatables) (d) the traditional yacht rigged as a cutter - which meant single masted, fore and aft rigged, the outermost headsail set flying (i.e. not hanked to a stay) and the bowsprit (if fitted) being a running bowsprit (e) the "modern yacht dealer's" cutter, where there are simply 2 headsails: a staysail and a jib - both of which are attached to a forestay - in older times these could have been described as a sloop, and in some parts of the world there are newly built old style sloops with 2 headsails.


 * The history is important because: lots of people read historical books (factual or fiction), so if you want to understand something in, say, Hornblower, or the Alexander Kent Bolitho books, this encyclopaedia needs to answer that question. It also leads logically into the question about, say, whether Ellen MacArthur's trimaran B&Q was a sloop or a cutter. (The boat had multiple headsails, each set on its own stay. The designer insisted she was a sloop - and a good understanding of the history of rigs helps you to understand this.) On top of that, there are still a lot of traditionally rigged cutters being sailed today. Some even have fibreglass hulls and are still in production.


 * Simply saying that a cutter is a yacht with 2 headsails, each on its own stay is wrong. That might be the definition in some cases. But not in others.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:20, 29 January 2021 (UTC)