Hull (ship)

“ The hull of a first-rate occupies nearly one half of the picture to the right, her bows toward the spectator, seen in sharp perspective from stem to stern, with all her port-holes, guns, anchors, and lower rigging elaborately detailed, two other ships of the line in the middle distance drawn with equal precision, a noble breezy sea, full of delicate drawing in its waves, a store ship beneath the hull of the larger vessel and several other boats, and a complicated cloudy sky, all drawn from memory, down to the smallest rope, in a drawing-room of a mansion in the middle of Yorkshire. ”

“ The hull of a ship is its prime necessity. Without a hull there can be no ship, just as without a foundation and without walls there can be no house, for a ship’s hull combines her foundation and her walls. In order, then, to understand the greatness of the gigantic liners we are discussing the first thing to understand is the hull.
All hulls of great size are built of steel. First a great steel framework is constructed, then it is covered with sheets of steel and many steel decks are built, and steel bulkheads are installed in order to give still greater strength. ”

“ These hulls are huge and are tremendously strong, yet so great are the dimensions of the ship, so great her weight, that should her giant hull touch a rock the heavy steel plates would curl up like paper, the frames would bend like tin, and driven head on against a cliff or an iceberg the great structure would crumple its bow, twist its great frames, and might become a total wreck.
Modern ships that are propelled by machinery use two principal methods of propulsion, paddle-wheels and screw propellers. Paddle-wheels bear a very close resemblance to mill-wheels. ”

“ In England deep-water ports had favored deep hulls, but the American designer who wished to increase the capacity of a hull had to make it wider instead of deeper. Wide beam gave greater stability; a wide ship could carry wide sails and yet "stand up like a church" in a heavy wind. Of course stout masts were needed for wide sails, but the forests were full of enormous pines that could be had, at first, for the cutting. Wide hulls of shoal draft, with wide sails spread upon stout spars, made speedy ships, a fact that even now is not as well understood as it should be. ”

“ The farther we proceeded in removing the sheathing, the more we discovered of the decayed state of the ship’s hull. The next morning, eight feet of a 262plank in the wale were found to be so exceedingly rotten, as to make it necessary to shift it. This left us for some time at a stand, as nothing was to be found, in either ship, wherewith to replace it, unless we chose to cut up a top-mast; an expedient not to be had recourse to, till all others failed. The carpenters were therefore sent on shore in the afternoon in search of a tree big enough for the purpose. ”

“ Certain it is that for many thousand years after sails were known there seems to have been no connection in the minds of ship-builders between the use of sails and the construction of the underbodies of their ships so as to interpose any especial obstacle to the water in order to prevent the undue motion of their hulls sideways. Naturally enough, the very earliest of ships was constructed with the idea of ease of propulsion forward, but, so long as that object was gained, the shape of the hull, apparently, gave them little thought save in so far as space was needed for crew and cargo. ”

“ But the work of cleaning, painting and varnishing a hull intrinsically sound may be accomplished by the man or boy of average intelligence and industry.
What is true about a hull is still more so of her rig. When I first went to sea on a deep-water voyage, as soon as the ship was out of soundings the crew's first duty was to undo the work of the professional rigger, stay the masts anew by shrouds and backstays, and replace the hurried botch-work of knots and splices by seamanlike and shipshape work. ”

“ The hull of the Great Eastern is built entirely of iron, and is 680 feet in length, 83 feet in breadth, and 60 feet in height from keel to deck. It is divided transversely into ten separate compartments of 60 feet each, rendered perfectly water-tight by bulk-heads, having no openings whatever lower than the second deck; whilst two longitudinal walls of iron, 36 feet apart, traverse 350 feet of the length of the ship. ”

“ If the hull were properly designed, such a sail might readily be made to propel the hull at a little less than at right angles, and, once that were done, the ship would actually be making headway against the wind. It is quite conceivable that the Egyptians had perfected this art—not, perhaps, with the sail I have mentioned, but with a later development of this sail when the lower spar had disappeared and the upper spar had become greatly elongated and was set at an angle to the mast, so that from it depended a great triangular sail, called, now, a lateen sail. ”

“ Is it, then, surprising that a vessel constructed considerably more than a century earlier than the ships of Anson's squadron, in an age when the art of building was little understood, when a ship's hull was as tall as a great castle, when all things aloft were ponderous, when the immense beam, helped yet by the wide channels, gave such a spread to the shrouds that they could make of the [255] breeze no more than a beam wind when braced up as sharp as the yards would come—is it surprising, I say, that this Dutchman, so constructed, should never be able to contend with a contrary wind? ”

“ As the hull reaches that degree of completion when it can safely be put in the water, strong wooden structures termed launching ways are constructed one on each side of her. These really act like huge rails upon which in due course there will slide a gigantic toboggan. Tremendously solid and strong they have to be, as they have each to carry half the total weight of the ship. [Pg 212]
Under each side of the ship and upon the launching ways there is built a timber framework capable of raising the ship bodily off the blocks upon which until now it has reposed. ”

“ By the time the hull is ready for launching it is often of great weight, all of which is borne upon the wooden blocks underneath the keel. Consequently, if the ground be not good, piles have to be driven in or concrete foundations laid to enable the huge mass of the ship to be supported. ”

“ It is perhaps superfluous to add that great care should be taken to have each side of the craft alike, for if a preponderance of weight is on one side, the vessel will tip; while if the curve is unequal, she will not sail evenly.
The hollowing out of the inside is most conveniently accomplished with a sharp gouge and mallet, while the hull is secured firmly in a vise. When this is finished, a hole should be made in the bottom to receive the lower end of the mast, and care should be taken not to bore through the hull, as it would be difficult to stop the ingress of water through it. ”

“ There was a steady breeze off the port beam, and the yacht, with every cloth which she carried on her, was driving through it as though she were in tow of a steamboat. The scene was full of life. On one bow was an English smack, as gaudy in the misty brilliance of the sunshine as an acquatic parrot, with her red mainsail and brown mizzen, and white foresail topping, aslant, the gloomy black hull from whose sides would break from time to time a sullen, white flash, like a leap of fire from a cannon's mouth, as the swing of the sea swerved the black, wet timbers to the morning lustre. ”

“ The hull from water line falls in as shown, so as to describe at midships an arc of 4 feet 6 inches, and a circular deck of 1⁄8 inch plate is riveted on the hull. There are two man-holes, each 16 inches diameter in the clear, placed in end plates of the circular deck as shown, and provided with covers 3⁄8 inch thick, secured by twenty screws 3⁄4 inch diameter. The edge of each manhole is stiffened by a welded iron ring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then Sweyn stood up and said: “That dragon shall bear me high to-night, for I shall be its steersman.” And they all cried: “The Long Serpent is indeed a wonderful ship, and the man who built it must be great of mind.” But in his excitement Eirik forgot where he was, and he cried aloud so that the King himself heard him: “If there were no other vessels with King Olaf but only this one, King Sweyn would never with the Danish forces alone be able to take it from him.” ”

“ The shaping of the hull may now be completed, using a gouge, spokeshave, and rasp, keeping the midship section for a guide, and running the curved surfaces smoothly and evenly into the sides of the keel, stern, and stem, the latter tapering to five-sixteenths of an inch forward.
The hole for the rudder-stock is next bored, one-fourth of an inch in diameter, and burned out with a moderately hot iron to five-sixteenths of an inch; then, should the stock swell when wet, it will not stick in the charred wood, but will still turn freely. ”

“ She has a curved stem and rounded, swelling bows, shaped like a bellying sail and surmounted by a flat, platform-shaped forecastle which overhangs the water. The waist has greater freeboard than that of a warship, and the poop is small and square. No guns are visible, and the hull is evidently designed for stability and carrying capacity rather than speed and fighting convenience. There are three pole masts, each with a round top and one square sail. There are no topmasts and no bowsprit. Three other sailing-ships are shown on the same map. ”

“ After loading the light hull with our impedimenta, it was an easy business to place it at the water's edge, and, at a suitable opportunity, run it out into waist-deep water, jump on the almost uncapsizable hull, and with quickly-grasped paddles—no troublesome operation of shipping lengthy oars in row-locks—force the slender craft beyond the breakers. ”

“ Work on an ocean steamship never ends, for no sooner does she reach her moorings in New York, Liverpool or Hamburg than preparations begin for the next voyage. Her decks are holystoned, sprinkled with sand and made beautifully clean; the outside of her hull, from deck to water line, is repainted and, if it be the end of a round trip or voyage, all the exterior paint work receives a new coat, while her sanitary and plumbing arrangements, her smokestacks, woodwork, spars and rigging are all carefully examined and overhauled. ”

“ Such a typical craft is a schooner of about eighty tons, clean-cut about the bows, and with a long overhang at the stern that would give her a rakish, yacht-like air, except for the evidences of her trade, with which her deck is piled. Her hull is of the cutter model, sharp and deep, affording ample storage room. ”

“ while upon the tarnished headboards, near by, appeared, in stately capitals, once gilt, the ship's name, "SAN DOMINICK," each letter streakingly corroded with tricklings of copper-spike rust; while, like mourning weeds, dark festoons of sea-grass slimily swept to and fro over the name, with every hearse-like roll of the hull. ”

“ The great dragon ship which Canute was in was borne forward by the flood, and because of her size she was unwieldy, and they could not prevent her from driving in amongst the Norwegian and Swedish ships, whose crews immediately tried to board her, but her height was so great and she was so well defended that she was not easy to attack. Seeing that Canute’s ships were gradually collecting again, and finding that little more was to be gained by an uneven fight, King Olaf stood off and out to sea, and, observing that Canute did not follow, sailed away eastward toward Sweden. ”

“ Most of these older boats have a single collision bulkhead in the bow, as if the theory of probabilities were that in any collision they would do the ramming. Gashed in any spot behind their collision bulkheads, these ships are as helpless as they would be with the hull construction of a ferry-boat. None but the most modern freighters have the "inside skin" or double hull that safeguards the giant steamships of the passenger service. ”

“ Length, 790 feet; breadth, 88 feet; depth, to boat deck, 80 feet; draught, fully loaded, 37 feet, 6 inches; displacement on load line, 45,000 tons; height to top of funnels, 155 feet; height to mastheads, 216 feet. The hull below draught line was divided into 175 water-tight compartments, which made it—so the owners claimed—“unsinkable.” ”