Talk:Le Griffon

Wreck location
As far as I know, there is another candidate for the wreck. A man who lives along Lake Huron near the Bruce Peninsula brought up pieces of a wreck that he believed were the Griffon. I am certain it was never confirmed to be Griffon, as the article mentions it has not been positively identified, but I am not aware if that particular wreck has been ruled out. GBC 16:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Masts..?
I came here after reviewing some old DYKs, so good to know they have some benefit!

The infobox says the ship had 1 mast with many square sails, but this is in conflict with the picture which seems to show two masts. Who can fix this (someone with more knowledge of ships, masts and sails than me!)? Bigger digger (talk) 00:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Mills wrote in "Our Inland Seas" that Le Griffon had two masts. However, other sources and information from Chicago's Field Museum indicate that she had only one mast.  The picture shown of the Le Griffon is from a woodcutting that is possibly not accurate.  I don't have the definitive answer though.--Wpwatchdog (talk) 21:34, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, I read through a bit of it, I see that no-one really knows. Would it not be worth mentioning these discrepancies? Bigger digger (talk) 21:56, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Check whether my latest edit helps clarify the discrepancies. Please improve further as you see the need.  --Wpwatchdog (talk) 00:36, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to listen to Mills. The graphic at Chicago Field Museum page displays:
 * 1. topsail... i don't know (longboat?)(single mast)
 * 2. ketch, but square rigged main... again, this is a sail plan i haven't encountered (two masts)
 * 3. square rigged.. single mast boat
 * 4. square rigged schooner (two masts)


 * The likely explanation is that the Museum site is by an archaeologist who had a passing familiarity with ships and the rigs of the time.


 * The woodcut shows a brig/snow/pinnace, all two masted vessels, the majority of which were square rigged. Bark could refer to any utility sailing vessel. Barque and Barquentine in later use (late 1700s) were always a three (or more) masted ship featuring at least one fore-and-aft rigged mast. Perhaps it would be best simply to omit specific (and hence unsupportable/incorrect) terminology regarding the number of masts and the rig pending input from a more authoritative source. 69.152.169.30 (talk) 11:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Translated journals of those who accompanied LaSalle called Le Griffon both a brigantine and a bark. They also called the little vessel some call the Frontenac a brigantine. It seems their use of these words was not as precise as later usage, and therefore cannot be used conclusively to determine how many masts she had. Note, too, that the foremasts of some vessels, though angled so far forward that they resemble a bowsprit, were called masts and were often rigged with a square sail. Unless someone can conclusively establish that a wreck they find is Le Griffon her rig and sail plan will remain a matter of conjecture.RDavS (talk) 01:23, 8 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I recommend that you go ahead with the revisions and cite your sources.--Wpwatchdog (talk) 14:18, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The Frontenac
I suggest a revision be made regarding the references to the Frontenac. While some sources clearly make reference to it, others clearly do not. James Cook Mills (Our Inland Seas -- Their Shipping & Commerce for Three Centuries; A.C. McClurg & Co.; Chicago; 1910; pp.41ff.) refers to the vessel of 10 tons burden as a crude barge, certainly nothing that could be called a ship. In any case, the vessel that left Fort Frontenac on Nov. 18, 1678, cannot be the same vessel that foundered on Jan. 8, 1679. The first vessel arrived safely at Niagara on Dec. 6, and was pulled ashore the following day. They did not send a contingent of men back to get LaSalle and Tonty, and even if they had, it would have taken until at least January 11 to return to the point where the second vessel sank. Neither Mills nor the translations of the journals of LaSalle's associates that I have found so far make any mention of a Frontenac. While there may have been such a vessel, its existence is too much in doubt to be as definite as the current text of the article. I post this here before making any changes to solicit discussion on the matter.RDavS (talk) 02:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * New section added. Addresses Frontenac issue.RDavS (talk) 23:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

File:Le-griffon.jpg Nominated for Deletion

 * I added the source of the image and notified the editor who placed the deletion tag.--Wpwatchdog (talk) 13:22, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Duplicate info on construction
It seems to me there needs to be some streamlining and removal of duplication between "Above Niagara" and "Construction". Both of which are a bit long for a wiki article to begin with, if people want that kind of information they generally expect to go to a source that is referenced here. Nerfer (talk) 16:30, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. It's a tangled mess but I'll try to get a start on it. Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:37, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Accuracy tag.
The articles as it stands now suggest that the boat had one, two, or three masts, was rigged square or fore and aft, was...

...well, it’s a confused mess. Not the writers’ fault, in one sense, because the sources are also mixed, but the article should not paper over that in the lead as it does. Warning the reader is needed. Qwirkle (talk) 15:03, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

La Mothe or La Motte?
The article uses these two names interchangeably. Jnmwiki (talk) 20:20, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Mills spells it "La Motte" so I'm going with that. Kendall-K1 (talk) 21:28, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Rig
Many of the terms used to describe the boat historically have had different meanings over time, in different places, and in different disciplines, and even otherwise decent sources have problems from the accidental equivocation this causes. This boat was not a bark (ship) in the way that Wiki uses, quite likely, yet three hundred years of sources seeing the word “barque” and drawing anachronistic conclusions from it have built up a goodly pile of “reliable sources” that suggest otherwise. “Barque” and “brigantine” were both used loosely at times, for damn near anything that floats; were used to suggest size rather than rig; and were used to express function rather than either.

The number of masts in descriptions and depictions ranges from one to three, and several depictions and accounts describe a foremast that was, to modern eyes, closer to a bowsprit. French naval architecture of this period, like Spanish and (other) Mediterranean boatbuilding traditions, never quite lost the artemon. To Northern Europeans, including a good many Frenchmen, these were an oddity, and might not be seen as a mast.

The dimensions of this vessel, except displacement and draft, are entirely consistent with larger ship’s boats, and overlap with canoes, pirogues, and bateaux. What differentiated it was that it was built like a small ship, with standing rigging, full decking, heavy scantlings, and a large amount of inclosed space. The “small ship” idea, of course, lives on with Benford, Bolger, Hanna, Archer, and so forth, but they weren’t and aren’t entirely ships proper. Something 10 yards long can’t be. Qwirkle (talk) 15:47, 8 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The lead did not match the article as required by WP:LEAD. I fixed that but it might be good to expand on the "Construction" section if proper sources can be found. Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:01, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Comparison with La Belle (ship)
I shoulda thought of this earlier, but what the hell, it’s been a good twenty years since I last did any serious looking at this. Do we have any contemporaneous accounts from La Salle or his party that compare Griffon to La Belle? It was the same burden, contemporaneous, and its construction from a prefab kit mighta inspired the other boat. Qwirkle (talk) 20:47, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Steve Libert interview
Charlevoix diver believes he's found 'holy grail' of Great Lakes shipwrecks (June 18, 2021) Mapsax (talk) 22:56, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Shipwreck, debris field paragraph
The short paragraph stating Libert’s belief that a debris field discovered in 2014 is Le Griffon, and giving the title of a self-published book in the text, is unacceptably dubious for 3 reasons: publishing what someone merely believes, unless he is acting in an official capacity, is hearsay; a self-published book cannot be WP:RS - by putting it into the text, it is some combination of WP:PROMOTION and the imprimateur of being in an article of the encyclopedia. That paragraph must be removed; we might be able to state the bare fact that a debris field was discovered at that place. I can find no reference to professional research conducted there, or a statement by the Michigan state archaeologist regarding the validity of any claims made about such debris. Sbalfour (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Shipwreck, Poverty Island claim
This claim has now been thoroughly debunked by Michigan DNR, continued protestation by the Liberts not withstanding. This claim now stands no better than 19 other claims we don't mention at all. It takes up most of the verbiage of the section, as if it were the most important item, when the only claim that still stands, the Manitoulin Island claim, is mentioned only in passing without any account of what was found there. That claim is long and interesting on its own. The whole shipwreck section now needs redrafted to focus on that claim. I think it reasonable to have a subsection on a few of the other more notable claims since the Manitoulin Island claim as bullet points, drastically reducing the text now devoted to the spurious Poverty Island claim. Sbalfour (talk) 01:28, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Negotiations with the Seneca
There is a large and unwieldy paragraph about this. We call the Natives Iroquois and then Seneca. Readers may not know that the Seneca are one of the 5 nations of Iroquois. Nothing happened. We can replace this whole thing with: "Negotiations with the local Seneca resulted in an uneasy truce." Sbalfour (talk) 15:18, 9 June 2023 (UTC) Sbalfour (talk) 15:18, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Discovery of Niagara Falls
I just realized that the original expedition up the Niagara River by Hennepin et.al. is missing how they transitioned from lower to upper Niagara, necessarily discovering Niagara Falls! How could that happen? The editors edited piecemeal, and quite possibly, didn't actually know the history. It's important enough to be level 2 section by itself. Sbalfour (talk) 19:17, 9 June 2023 (UTC) Sbalfour (talk) 19:17, 9 June 2023 (UTC)