Following Malay traditions, this vessel became the prototype for a new class of vessels called pinas, probably after the word pinasse, which in the French and German of the time referred to a medium-sized sailing boat.
However, it certainly was not only this one vessel, which became the prototype of the pinisiq. Already since the early 18th century, the Dutch East-India trading company VOC had started constructing European style vessels for her inter Asian trade in Javanese shipyards, thus continuously introducing new constructional methods and rigs, including the Dutch version of the then new fore-and-aft sails.
The word pinisiq does refer to the rigging only -i.e. seven to eight sails, consisting of three foresails on a long bowsprit, a mainsail and a mizzen on standing gaffs, two topsails and a staysail on the mizzen-mast’s forestay- while the different types of hulls bear their own names.
In the early years the schooner-ketch rigging was set on padewakang hulls, but after some experience the Sulawesian traders decided to use the sharp-bowed and faster palari (derived from lari, ‘to run’) as being much more fit for the driving power of the fore-and-aft sails.
Being genuine sailing ships, pinisiq were fitted out with masts much taller than those you find installed on the motorised vessels of today; the whole hull was cargo space, and only a small cabin for the captain was placed on the aft deck, while the crew slept on deck or in the cargo-hold. The two long rudder blades fixed to strong traverse thwarts projecting out on both sides of the aft part, like those used on a padewakang, were retained as a steering device.
