Hatch (ship)

“ Nor were we under any apprehension that the immured men could find other means of escaping. The bulkhead of the forecastle was a massive wall of wood. There was, indeed, a little hatch right forward, by which the forepeak might be entered, but this forepeak was also stoutly bulkheaded, with the cargo in the hold coming hard against the division; and though the men should contrive to break through into the hold, the secured after-hatches would still as effectually bar the deck to them as though every mother's son lay helplessly manacled in the bottom of the ship. ”

“ Time enough to sarve ’em so when they becomes pious and turns ’spectable sailor-men. Blowed if this ’ere hatch ain’t froze! Len’s a hand to lift the cover.’
A second figure dropped below. The light was so dim in the hatch above that I could distinguish nothing but the shadowy shapes of the two fellows. The hatch in the deck of the store-room was lifted. One man climbed out and handed down a shovel and a lantern, and the other descended with them into the fore-peak. A bucket was let down, and I heard a shovelling of coal in the bowels below. ”

“ A cloud rises to windward, looking a little black; the skysails are brailed down; the captain puts his head out of the companion-way, looks at the cloud, comes up, and begins to walk the deck. The cloud spreads and comes on; the tub of yarns, the sail, and other matters, are thrown below, and the sky-light and booby-hatch put on, and the slide drawn over the forecastle. ``Stand by the royal halyards''; and the man at the wheel keeps a good weather helm, so as not to be taken aback. The squall strikes her. If it is light, the royal yards are clewed down, and the ship keeps on her way ”

“ I knew it could not be through the deck that the light came. There are no open spaces between the planks of a ship’s deck. It must be through the hatchway; and very likely the crack I saw was through the boarding of the hatch, at a place where the tarpaulin might be off or torn. ”

“ I got more heart as time went on and the hatch remained untouched. I heard a great deal of thumping overhead, and treading of feet as of men coming and going, and then I felt once more the same straining sensation in the ship I had before taken notice of; I supposed we were under way, in which case the Childe Harold had fairly begun her voyage.
Saving the occasional lifting of the hatch at long intervals when a man went below into the fore-peak to shovel coals and send them up in buckets, nothing broke the overwhelming [306] monotony of that black and silent time of concealment. ”

“ In an instant, the watch on deck, bending on to the halliards with a will, hoisted the gleaming white sails aloft and sheeted them home; when, bellying out before the northerly breeze, they expanded their folds, making the yardarms creak again, and looking like the wings of some gigantic seabird, the ship herself bearing out the resemblance and swooping away in a heavy lurch to leeward, after apparently preening her pinions for a fresh flight, being now a perfect pyramid of canvas from truck to deck. ”

“ The great boxes and bales of cargo were only just discernible in the dim light that came through the opened hatchway above. There, he could see a few stars, appearing at odd moments, to vanish almost immediately behind the narrow, long-drawn clouds that streaked a wind-blown sky. He could hear the waves, one after the other, beating violently against the sides of the ship, the water washing over the decks and along the scuttles, the rigging creaking, and the long chain of the steam steering-gear jolting, from time to time, as the great strain of a heavy sea was brought to bear upon the rudder. ”

“ During the long time the first mate and I had been down below in the stoke-hold, the skipper had lowered the upper yards and housed her top-masts, getting her also under snugger canvas, the fore and mizzen topsails being set “scandalised,” as we call it aboard ship, that is, with the heads of the sails hauled up, and their sheets flattened taut as boards, so as to expose as little surface as possible to the wind, only just sufficient to keep the vessel with her head to sea, like a stag at bay. ”

“ The seas were breaking over the forecastle and sweeping along the decks, and the shouts and outcries of the captain and the sailors made a dreadful din. At last they put the step-ladder in its place again, and we got down. Then they put the hatches on, and we could not come out any more."
"The hatches?" said Phonny. "What are they?"
"The hatches," replied Beechnut, "are a sort of scuttle-doors that cover over the square openings in the deck of a ship. They always have to put them on and fasten them down in a great storm." ”

“ She is too light foreward and we have no sail aft to help her round. Everything is against her at present as it happens. There is that upper deck and the foreward boat, all on the starboard side. What with the big funnel and bridge, the life-boat on the engine-room skylights, the awning of wood instead of canvas and too little cargo, she’s all top and no bottom.” The ship now began to lie down almost steadily on her beam ends, the big seas dashing over her as if she were a half tide rock, and pouring down into the engine-room and stoke-hole. ”

“ In answer to the skipper’s signal a sudden blast of steam rushed up the funnel abaft the wheel-house, and I could feel the ship tremble as the shaft began to revolve and the propeller blades splashed the water astern with the familiar “thump-thump, thump-thump.”
All hands joined in a hearty cheer, to which Masters and I in the top lent what aid our lungs could give.
“Steady amidship, there,” sang out the skipper as the old barquey forged ahead once more. “Steady, my man.” ”

“ It is the calm that brings ships mysteriously together; it is your wind that is the great separator.
The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white tallness breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size. The tall masts holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare for catching the invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from the water, sail after sail, yard after yard, growing big, till, under the towering structure of her machinery, you perceive the insignificant, tiny speck of her hull. ”

“ As they lay out along the foot-rope they were almost blown away; but, holding on “by the skin of their teeth,” they managed to cast-off the gaskets, when, the clew-lines and bunt-lines being let fly, the huge sail at once bellied out in puckered folds, banging about as if it would soon thump the mast out of the ship.
“Now, tumble down smart, men!” cried the captain. “Look alive and bring the sheets to the capstan.” ”

“ Yes, there, in the distance, sailing at an angle to our course, right before the wind, was a large full-rigged ship. Everything, though, was not right with her, as I noted the moment I made her out, with her white canvas all crimson from a last expiring gleam of the afterglow ”

“ Soon those white sails would be set to the breeze, soon those strong, slender masts would sway against the sky, bearing aloft their press of flattened canvas, soon those new ropes would snap and sing, settling into a taut network from deck to truck and from masthead to masthead, whose every strand would have its use and meaning. Soon the ship would surge beneath him—his to control, to guide, to learn, to play upon, as an organist brings out the tone and volume of his instrument. ”

“ All through that winter it was dangerous to be alone far from the fort.
Not having sufficient stores set aside, not able to deal with the natives, and without the use of the resources of the countryside, there is small wonder that conditions became serious, even desperate, for the settlers. Those few men fortified on Hampton Roads under Capt. James Davis (after Captain West, perhaps under threat from the crew, left Virginia for England in the colony’s best ship) fared far better than did those at Jamestown. ”

“ I could not imagine the like of that picture of confusion—her studding-sails, having been set on both sides, drowned all her forward part in canvas, a goodly portion of which had been torn into rags by the fall; immense stretches of sail lay in the water, sinking and rising with the rolling of the ship, and dragging her head to the wind; her main topmast studding-sails, and all the canvas on that mast and the mizzen—the yards lying square—were shaking furiously, owing to the posture in which she had fallen ”

“ And, all this while, the ship was tacking every now and then to make the most out of the wind, which was shifting from the west to the south, and veering occasionally from the east to the north; rising as it shifted and blowing with an ever-increasing force, till the vessel was running under reefed topsails and foresail, with her spanker half brailed up, her spread of canvas having been reduced by degrees, in preparation for the threatening gale that seemed coming from the south-west, that is, if the appearances of the sea and sky were to be trusted. ”

“ But, unfortunately, he failed to grasp it, and the exertion evidently being too much for him, for he tumbled forward on his face at the bottom of the boat, while the rope slipped over the side into the water, coming back home to us alongside the old barquey on the next send of the sea, the heavy roll of our ship when she brought up broadside-on, as well as the weight of the line saturated with water, fetching it in to us all the sooner.
“Poor fellows; they can’t help themselves!” cried the skipper, who had watched the boatswain’s throw and its unsatisfactory result with the deepest interest. ”

“ I know I am sometimes,” retorted old Masters, evidently aggrieved by the skipper speaking to him like this before the men. “But, sir, seein’ is believin’. There’s this ship an’ there’s that there craft a-sailin’ alongside in the teeth o’ the gale. Hass or no hass, I sees that, captain!”
“Hang it all, man, can’t you see that it is only the mirage or reflection of our own vessel, produced by the light of the meteor throwing her shadow on to the mass of cloud leeward? Look, there are our two old sticks and the funnels between, with the smoke rushing out of them! ”

“ We had hauled the trysails and other fore and aft canvas, which was comparatively useless to a steamer when running before the wind at the time we had altered course towards the south, in quest of the ship in distress, the Star of the North speeding along with only her fore-topsail and fore-topgallantsail set in addition to her fore-topmast staysail and mizzen staysail and jib. ”

“ The sails of ships and vessels, from being made with the cloths and seams in a vertical instead of an horizontal direction, are more liable to split up and down, and to be blown to pieces, either when carrying a press of sail in a gale of wind on a lee shore, or from the shaking of the sails; and a ship and crew might be lost from a few inches of a vertical seam giving way, when there might not be time to take the sail in to repair it. ”

“ The ship herself was cased in ice—hull, spars, and standing rigging, and all—with long pendulous icicles hanging from the main and mizzen yards. The fog or mist having also cleared away and the clouds vanished from the sky, every object glittered like jewels in the golden rays of the rising sun. ”

“ Or again, should the vessel strike on a rock, the compartment below in which perforce they are compelled to work deep down in the vessel’s bowels will fill, from the very weight of the engines, quicker than any other part of the ship, most probably, when those confined below must necessarily be liable to be drowned, like rats in a hole, without the chances of escape possessed by the passengers and hands on board. ”

“ And it is, for these boats have not only themselves to propel; they must meet incoming ships which are more or less helpless to direct their movements in such limited spaces as are available in a harbour. If the new arrival be small, one tug can readily place her beside her pier. If the ship be the Majestic or the Leviathan, then a dozen or more tugs must push against her mighty side, or puff great clouds of steam as they strain at great hawsers before the giant is safely at her berth. ”

“ I was equally puzzled for the moment, for although our good ship rested as peacefully on the bosom of the deep as if she were moored, the raftlike bundle of spars, to which she had been made fast the night before, was now no longer to be seen bobbing up ahead, athwart our hawser as then. ”

“ The first mate, one of the most active of men, had, the instant he reached the deck, set to work to relieve the ship, but as he was casting loose the lee braces from the cleats the lurch of the sail caught him, and at the same moment the main-topgallant mast with all its belongings coming down with a run, he was stunned for a second by some portion of the falling gear, and before he could recover his balance or take hold of anything to save himself by, was carried overboard with the wreck. ”

“ I’m blest if it isn’t that very identical boat that you saw in the afternoon passing by the Sea Rover! Isn’t it providential, old chap, that after all these hours we should come across it again? Thank God for it, Jonathan,” he added more earnestly a moment afterwards; “it may save both our lives in case the ship is unable to find us and pick us up!”
Yes, there it was, a long black boat, the cutter of some vessel, that had been washed away from the bows, as it was twenty feet long and more, floating keel uppermost, alongside the raft, although buried somewhat deep in the water. ”