Naut. [Later form of cache, CATCH sb.2, with e for a as in keg, kennel, kestrel, etc.] A strongly built two-masted vessel, usually from 100 to 250 tons burden, formerly much used a bomb-vessel (see BOMB-KETCH); now a similarly rigged small coasting vessel.
[1481 —: see CATCH sb.2]
1655. Cromwell, Lett., 13 June, in Carlyle. Those [dispatches] which were sent by a ketch immediately from hence.
1665. Lond. Gaz., No. 3/4. Thursday last the Drake Friggot, and a Ketch with Goods,… were put back by the storms.
1720. De Foe, Capt. Singleton, xviii. (1840), 315. She sailed now with square sail and mizen-mast, like a ketch.
1876. T. Hardy, Ethelberta, II. 44. Outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack.
b. attrib. and Comb., as ketch fashion, rig; ketch-rigged adj.
1819. Rees, Cycl., s.v., At present only a few coasting vessels are rigged ketch fashion.
1845. Nicolas, Disp. Nelson, II. 177. La Vierge de Consolation, one hundred and twenty tons, ketch-rigged.
1891. Daily News, 13 Feb., 3/5. Some twelve thousand square feet of sail spread in what is known as the ‘Salcombe ketch rig.’
