No More Learning

_ 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. ' A glance at the examples given above will show,
however, that the term was much more elastic than this explanation
would indicate.

The dictionaries give no suggestion of the origin of the metaphor.
I suspect that it may be merely a borrowing from classical usage.
Cf. _Menaechmi_ 2. 3. 442:

Ducit lembum dierectum nauis praedatoria.

In _Miles Gloriosus_ 4. 1. 986, we have precisely the same
application as in the English dramatists: 'Haec celox (a swift
sailing vessel) illiust, quae hinc agreditur, internuntia. '

=1. 6. 62 th' are right.