page_title: Cutter (boat)
section_title: Pilot
hierarchical_section_title: Cutter (boat) / Types / Pilot
caption_attribution_description: English: Wooden pilot cutter (built in 1998) and charter vessel Lizzie May at Brest 2008
context_page_description: A cutter is generally a small to medium-sized vessel, depending on its role and definition. Historically, it was a smallish single-masted, decked sailcraft designed for speed rather than capacity. As such, it was gaff-rigged, with two or more headsails and often a bowsprit of some length, with a mast sometimes set farther back than on a sloop. While historically a workboat, as used by harbor pilots, the military, and privateers, sailing cutters today are most commonly fore-and-aft rigged private yachts.
  Powered cutters vary in size depending on their function, with small boats for ferrying passengers between larger craft and shore sometimes referred to as cutters, rugged smallish vessels serving the traditional role of delivering harbor pilots, and large ocean-going U.S. Coast Guard or UK Border Force ships referred to as cutters by tradition.
  Open oared cutters were carried aboard 18th century naval vessels and rowed by pairs of men sitting side-by-side on benches. A similar form that evolved among London watermen remains in use today in club racing.
context_section_description: The pilot cutter developed from the need for a fast boat to take maritime pilots from harbour to incoming large trading vessels.
  As most early pilots were local fisherman who undertook both jobs, although licensed by the harbour to operate within their jurisdiction, pilots were generally self-employed, and the quickest transport meant greater income. As their fishing boats were heavy working boats, and filled with fishing equipment, they needed a new type of boat; early boats were developed from single masted fishing cutter designs and twin masted yawls, and latterly into the specialist pilot cutter.
  The natural dangers of the Bristol Channel brought about over many years the development of the specialist Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter. According to records from Pill, Somerset now housed in the Bristol Museum, the first official Bristol Channel pilot was barge master George James Ray, appointed by the Corporation of Bristol in May 1497 to pilot John Cabot's Matthew from Bristol harbour to the open sea beyond. In 1837 Pilot George Ray guided Brunel's SS Great Western, and in 1844 William Ray piloted the larger SS Great Britain on her maiden voyage.
caption: Wooden pilot cutter Lizzie May under sail in Brest, France
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