from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A dispatch-boat; a small vessel used to communicate between the vessels of a fleet.
- n. A horse-drawn carriage with two wheels used in France.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A tender to a fleet, formerly used for conveying men, orders, or treasure.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A tender or small vessel employed to convey men or orders from one ship or place to another.
A second type of small ocean-going vessel in New France was called a patache by Champlain.
The patache was a purpose-built vessel for reconnaissance, surveys, and exploration.
Each large ship was accompanied by a small tender that Champlain called a patache.
He was given a highly specialized vessel called a patache, which a French text defined in 1628 as “a small warship designed for the surveillance of coasts.”
In France and Spain they were also used as dispatch boats, which Champlain called a patache d’avis.
A patache was well suited to his method of close-in exploration in a vessel that “furette par tout; ferrets everywhere.”
He was about thirty-seven miles off the mark, not bad for a hard-partying navigator with a traveling astrolabe.33 Then he was off again in his patache, sailing down the Penobscot River with the sagamore Cabahis aboard as his guest.
His patache had run on a granite ledge and slipped off again with a hole in her wooden bottom.
He always had an eye for the beauty of a full-rigged ship at sea, or the sleek lines of a sharp-built patache, or the charm of a simple shallop bobbing at anchor in a quiet cove.39
Working alongside was her small tender, the patache Sandoval.44
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