Hulk (ship)

“ But I knew that on the other side of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk that swam so majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with heart of fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging it bravely on; and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her arms and left the tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift hither and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows whither. ”

“ Briggs shifted his quid, spat, and inspected the passing hulk with extreme deliberation. I looked at her too, wondering what there was about an old coal-carrier that could pierce Captain Shreve's accustomed phlegm.
The tow was passing abreast, but a couple of hundred yards distant. The tug was shortening the line, and on the hulk's forecastle-head a couple of hands were busy at a cathead, preparing to let go anchor. She was ill-favored enough to look at, that hulk—weather-beaten, begrimed, stripped of all that makes a ship sightly. Nothing but the worn-out old hull was left. An eyesore, truly. ”

“ Her hull had not touched bottom and there was nothing to check her enormous momentum. In a twinkling, literally in the space of a few seconds, her three masts were ripped out and fell on deck with all their hamper, killing and wounding many of the crew. Instead of that most beautiful sight in all the world, a ship under full sail and running free, there was a helpless hulk pounding out her life against the perpendicular wall of rock. The catastrophe befell so suddenly that when Captain Burgess rushed from his cabin at the warning shout, the masts tumbled just as he reached the quarterdeck. ”

“ The hulk was crowded with the entangled machinery of sixteen engines, cuddies, posts, spars, levers, hatches, stanchions, floating trunks, boxes, and the confusion worse confounded by the awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness, but the absence of any ray of light to touch the optic nerve. The sense of touch is the only reliance, and the life-line is the only guide of the diver. The officers and men of the ship were anxious for the recovery of their baggage, and offered the divers salvage for its rescue. ”

“ The wind, increasing steadily, was now whipping the sea into angry breakers that dashed resoundingly against the rocky barrier of the island. To drift within reach of those frightful destroyers would mean the instant annihilation of the Halfmoon and all her company, yet this was precisely what the almost unmanageable hulk was doing at the wheel under the profane direction of Skipper Simms, while Ward and Theriere with a handful of men altered the meager sail from time to time in an effort to keep the ship off the rocks for a few moments longer. ”

“ On the ocean's wide expanse a hulk wallowed sluggishly, the forgotten relict of a once brave and sightly ship, possibly the Sphinx of some untold ocean tragedy, she lay black and forbidding in the ordered procession of waves. Half a mile to the east of the derelict hovered a ship's cutter, the turn of her crew's heads speaking expectancy. As far again beyond, the United States cruiser Wolverine outlined her severe and trim silhouette against the horizon. In all the spread of wave and sky no other thing was visible. ”

“ Whenever he looked at one of the men his scowl was shocking, almost murderous, and he was continually snarling at the mate for not using violence towards them. But the first gale we encountered revealed a new and still more unpleasant side of his character. Although the ship was new, and staunch as faithful building could make her, her equipment in all details of the very best procurable, I was astonished to see how rapidly sail was reduced, as if she had been the veriest poverty-stricken old hulk that ever was sent to sea to sink. ”

“ And so through the afternoon we sat about upon the crest of the hill overlooking the hulk, and thrice had they in the ship to heave upon the big rope, and by evening they had made near thirty fathoms towards the island, the which they told us in reply to a query which the bo'sun desired me to send them, several messages having passed between us in the course of the afternoon, so that we had the carrier upon our side. Further than this, they explained that they would tend the rope during the night, so that the strain would be kept up, and, more, this would keep the ropes off the weed. ”

“ But in spite of the golden light which hung over it, and which ought to have given it a cheerful look, it was the most desolate and sorrowful place I ever saw; for it seemed to belong—and in a way really did belong, since every hulk in all that fleet was the slowly wasting dead body of a ship slain by storm or disaster—to that outcast region of mortality in which death has achieved its ugliness but to which the cleansing of a complete dissolution has not yet been brought by time. ”

“ Rowley sent for a midshipman, whom he requested to shew me every attention, and to introduce me to his messmates as a person likely soon to become a brother Mid. This young man obeyed, with the greatest pleasure, and I soon became perfectly at home. My conductor next took me through every part of the hulk, and I was both pleased and astonished at the novelty of the objects I met with. The hulk had been a line-of-battle ship, and her interior was, of course, extensive and capacious. The decks were crowded with hucksters, who exposed provisions, fruits, and other articles for sale. ”

“ The hulk of the ship seems encrusted with emerald and flossy mosses, and glittering with diamonds, gold, and all manner of precious stones. A pile of brick becomes a huge hill of crystal, decked with jewels. A ladder becomes silver, crusted with emeralds. The spars, the masts, and yards, whenever a point or angle catches the light, multiply the reflected splendor. Every shadow gives the impression of a bottomless depth. The sea seems loop-holed with cavities that pierce the solid globe. ”

“ But at this moment, one of the men having run to the edge of the hill to take a short look at the hulk, cried out that a part of the great superstructure over the quarter had been removed, or pushed back, and that there was a figure there, seeming, so far as his unaided sight could tell, to be looking through a spy-glass at the island. Now it would be difficult to tell of all our excitement at this news, and we ran eagerly to see for ourselves if it could be as he informed us. And so it was; for we could see the person very clearly; though remote and small because of the distance. ”

“ And all the time we watched the deck of that dreadful hulk, feeling, for my part, literally sick with mad suspense, and ready to jump overboard into that filthy scum all about us.
"Down somewhere in the huge bulk of the ship there was all the time that extraordinary dull, ponderous thud, thud, thud, thud growing ever louder. I seemed to feel the whole hull of the derelict, beginning to quiver and thrill with each dull beat. ”

“ It must be explained that at each end of the row of ships by which the harbour mouth was protected, was an empty hulk, and that between the hulk and the pier side was a narrow opening only just broad and deep enough for a boat to pass over. This the prince had observed on some former occasion when he had been reconnoitring the defences of the harbour, and he now steered towards it, the rowers tugging at their oars with all their might. The boat had nearly reached the passage when the manœuvre was observed. The crew of the nearest ship hastened to get on board the hulk ”

“ A hulk-keeper is only human, and as his life is lonely it often happens that when visitors row out to the ship he is by no means displeased to see them, and half-a-crown will frequently procure admittance, not only to his own quarters, but to the hold where the explosive itself is stored in small oblong wooden boxes, each containing fifty pounds. ”

“ Meanwhile the Tempest executes the Decree of Heaven, and leaves nothing of our Ship but the Hulk, which tumbles at the Will of the yet heaving Sea, and invites the Strangers of the Coast to plunder. Accordingly some Fishermen put off in their little Boats, but finding People able to defend their own, change their cruel designs into a very kind Assistance. Thus breaks the Cloud; thus shines the golden Sun. These Lovers so join’d, and even cemented, had past together a particular Night utter’d by Encolpion in one of the finest Raptures, ever pour’d from mouth. ”

“ The shear-hulk is a large ship in which is placed machinery for lifting masts into other ships. Every one who has looked at the thick masts of a large vessel, must see at a glance that they could never be put there by any number of men. Machinery is used to do it, and the shear-hulk contains that machinery; so that when a ship has to get her masts put up she is dragged alongside of this vessel. In the meantime Davy renewed his prayer to his father to let him go to sea, and at last the old man consented. ”

“ Presently, the maid, whom I had learnt was niece to the captain's wife, and named Mary Madison, proposed to take me the round of the ship, to which proposal I agreed very willingly; but first I stopped to examine the mizzen stump, and the manner in which the people of the ship had stayed it, the which they had done very cunningly, and I noted how that they had removed some of the superstructure from about the head of the mast, so as to allow passage for the rope, without putting a strain upon the superstructure itself. ”

“ Captain Farmer came on board with “all his bag and baggage” on our ship’s company “turning over” from the old hulk Blake, to which we all bade a long and welcome adieu, all hands being then mustered by divisions to beat of drum along the upper and lower decks.
We were eight hundred strong, all told; officers and men; bluejackets of all ratings, and marines; boys and “idlers,” as some of the hardest-worked fellows aboard are somewhat inappropriately designated in the watch bill, according to nautical etiquette ”

“ It may be well, however, to remind officers that they should never forget that the mere appearance of their ship is a matter of considerable consequence; and therefore, even in the very busiest times of the outfit, the yards should be carefully squared every evening after the work is over, all the ropes hauled taut, and the decks swept as soon as the artificers leave off work. Not a single person beyond the sentries should ever be allowed to go from the hulk to the ship, except during working hours. This rule prevents any interference with the tools or unfinished work of the dockyard men. ”

“ The dynamite magazines consist, as the name indicates, of the dismantled hulks of old merchant vessels, which, though long past active service, are still water-tight. One man only is in charge of each hulk, which he is not supposed to leave, everything that he needs being obtained for him by the boatman, whose sole duty it is to fetch and carry for the hulk-keepers. ”

“ At this sight, some of the men cried out their astonishment, and then we saw that there had come a number of men into the look-out place in the top of the superstructure, and, immediately, they opened a very brisk fire upon the creatures, and so, by ones and twos they fell back into the weed, and after that, the men in the hulk resumed their heaving, and so, in a while, had the rope some feet clear of the surface. ”

“ The side-walls of this casemate projected down and out over the sides of the hulk, like the eaves of a country house, to protect the water-line, and the hull itself was plated with one-inch iron for two feet below the deck, although the design called for three-inch iron. The inclined sides were carried up high enough to give seven feet head room inside, and then a heavy flat deck twenty feet wide, with hatches in it, was laid across. On the bow, two feet below the water-line, was bolted a cast-iron wedge that projected two feet from the stem, and was for use as a ram. ”

“ His strange amphibian craft, the Argonaut, about which we had been hearing so many marvels, lay off the pier at Atlantic Highlands. Before we were near enough to make out her hulk, we saw a great black letter A, framed of heavy gas-pipe, rising forty feet above the water. A flag rippled from its summit. As we drew nearer, we discovered that there really wasn't any hulk to make out—only a small oblong deck shouldering deep in the water and supporting a slightly higher platform, from which rose what seemed to be a squatty funnel. ”

“ One night as the tide was running out with great force, an old hulk was cut adrift from a wharf, and drifted down rapidly upon the Federal fleet. It was just after the exploits of the "Merrimac" had made Confederate rams famous, and the naval officers were a little nervous. The hulk drifted quite into the midst of the fleet before being observed; and when she was hailed she bore down on the largest of the men-of-war as though she were a powerful ram, steered by a commander of desperate bravery. ”

“ If these men are Thames pirates, as I strongly suspect, then these dark black hulks are their fitting and foul nests.
"Now, brother, take good heed, I beseech you—this is my plan. Presently the wherry will run alongside a hulk, and one man will leave the boat, mount the hulk, and proceed to make ready to disembark the captive. This is our moment to attack! We run in swiftly between the wherry and the hulk—so detaching them. Then we leap into the wherry, and our poignards must do the rest. It matters not what becomes of our little boat, a rescued life is worth a hundred such things." ”

“ Sometimes they caught the dull gray flash of breaking waters, but more often everything was hidden. The roar of the wind and wave was incessant.
Dan's efforts to keep the derelict's head to the seas had failed. The hulk had slued around and was driving before the tempest, whither he did not know. Groaning, crashing, crackling, the hulk lumbered on. Once a wave leaped over the stern, stunning them with its thunderous impact, dragging at them powerfully, as though to draw them back into the sea whence it came. ”