Chest for a Portable Altar

The need to carry as little cargo as possible on long ocean voyages mean that priests needed a chest of this type with all the equipment needed to celebrate mass, both aboard ship and on land in places where there was no appropriate place of worship.
Priests were required to celebrate mass every Sunday and holy day. These were masses with no consecration, and consequently no communion, as this was prohibited on board-.They became known as “dry masses”.