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The Brig/Brigantine
The only available drawing of the vessel showed it as a sloop, so the general guidelines of the brig/brigantine are a result of historian's reconstruction based on similar vessels of the time and scattered references by other captains who saw Lady Washington after her conversion from a sloop. We are not even quite sure if she was a brig, brigantine or snow.
The terms for ship rigs were very different in the eighteenth century than they are today. Far from being specific, many names meant basically the same thing though what that was nobody knew. The Lady in her new rig was called a brig, brigantine and snow. Kendrick himself insisted it was a brig, but he had difficulty with language and might have had in mind something different than what we believe the word to mean now.
A brigantine was, in general, a two-masted squarerigged vessel with a fore and aft mainsail, a brig was also a two-masted squarerigged boat and a snow had an extra trysail mast. Some historians have argued that Kendrick rigged the Lady as a brigantine since that was easier and less expensive. This topic has been described as having "serious disagreements and heated discussions among many historians" (Miles 31).
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 Photo from Creative Enterprise Studio
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