No More Learning

_ 5. 210:

She is not rigg'd, sir; setting forth some lady
Will cost as much as furnishing a fleet. --
Here she is come at last, and like a galley
Gilt in the prow.

Jonson plays on the names of Pinnacia in the _New Inn_, _Wks. _ 5. 384:

'_Host. _ Pillage the Pinnace. . . .
_Lord B. _ Blow off her upper deck.
_Lord L. _ Tear all her tackle. '

Pinnace, when thus applied to a woman, was almost always used with a
conscious retention of the metaphor.
Dekker is especially fond of the
word. _Match me in London_, _Wks. _ 4. 172:

--There's a Pinnace
(Was mann'd out first by th' City), is come to th' Court,
New rigg'd.

Also Dekker, _Wks. _ 4. 162; 3. 67, 77, 78.

When the word became stereotyped into an equivalent for procuress or
prostitute, the metaphor was often dropped. Thus in _Bart. Fair_,
_Wks. _ 4. 386: 'She hath been before me, punk, pinnace and bawd,
any time these two and twenty years. ' Gifford says on this passage:
'The usual gradation in infamy. A _pinnace_ was a light vessel built
for speed, generally employed as a tender. Hence our old dramatists
constantly used the word for a person employed in love messages, a
go-between in the worst sense, and only differing from a bawd in not
being stationary.