Log (boating)

“ The grooves in the pegs (Fig. 24) will allow the water to escape from the holes and the water will cause the peg to swell and tighten its hold on the log and cross-pieces.
Now bore holes in the other log under those in the cross-pieces and fill them with water before driving the pegs home, as you did in the first instance. Fig. 25 is a Man-Friday raft.
The Deck
Before placing the bow in position we must go ashore and make a dry deck. Selecting for the springs two long green ash or hickory poles, trim the ends off flat on one side, as shown by Fig. 26. ”

“ Their own row-boats are heavy, square at both ends, and clumsy to row, but as I have said, they are out in them in the spring before the floating ice is out of the river, rescuing logs and fragments of lumber from between the ice-cakes.
There is a good deal to the business of picking up logs. The price for returning 26 “strays” to the right owners is ten cents a log (the rate increasing as you go down stream) , and a good many can be towed at once by a small boat. The price per log rises to twenty-five cents, near the sea. ”

“ When the time comes for performing the operation of heaving the log, as they call it, the men appointed for the purpose bring the log and the reel to the stern of the ship. One man holds the log, and another man the reel. There are two handles, one at each end of the reel, by which the man who serves it can hold it up over his head, and let the line run off from it. Besides the two men who hold the log and the reel, there is a third, who has a minute glass in his hand. The minute glass is like an hour glass, only there is but just sand enough in it to run a minute. ”

“ If a log grounds in the midst of the rapids, the bateaux dashes toward it. One river-driver jumps upon it, and holds the boat fast, while another grapples it with a powerful lever called a cant-dog. In a moment the log rolls off the rocks with a loud splash, and is hurried away by the rapid tide.
During the drive the lumberman is almost always wet to the skin, day in and day out. When a raft of logs is first started in the spring the men suffer from the exposure ”

“ The speed of vessels can be tolerably well calculated from the number of revolutions of the screw.
"Now," said the Captain, turning to the third officer, who was also on the bridge, "what was the last record of the chip log?"
"Twenty knots, sir."
"Common log is not much good at high speeds," commented the Captain.
The common log consists of a triangular wooden float, a line marked with knots at equal distances apart, and a reel. The float is thrown overboard, and the line allowed to run off the reel for a certain number of seconds. ”

“ Along either bank, among the bushes, on sandbars, and in trees, hundreds and hundreds of logs had been stranded when the main drive passed. These logs the rear crew were engaged in restoring to the current.
And as a man had to be able to ride any kind of a log in any water; to propel that log by jumping on it, by rolling it squirrel fashion with the feet, by punting it as one would a canoe; to be skillful in pushing, prying, and poling other logs from the quarter deck of the same cranky craft ”

“ The coast Indians are splendid sailors, and their dugouts do not always come off second best in racing with the boats of white men. With a primitive yet ingeniously made [257] tool, like an adze, in the construction of which a blade is tied fast to a bent handle of bone, these natives laboriously pick out the heart of a great cedar log, and shape its outer sides into the form of a boat. When the log is properly hollowed, they fill it with water, and then drop in stones which they have heated in a fire. ”

“ Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our way cautiously along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenly be broken by yells and a clamor of tin pans, and all in instant a log raft would appear vaguely through the webby veil, close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap knives, but snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piled on all the steam we had, to scramble out of the way! One doesn't hit a rock or a solid log craft with a steamboat when he can get excused. ”

“ From a boat in which I was drifting down stream I saw it, looking like an immense log, lying on the bank; for these brutes are in the habit of coming ashore to sun themselves during the heat of the day. They are not easy to shoot, as at the least sign of danger they are prone to dive into the river. ”

“ When, at last, the log showed above the rail, if she started her antics, all hands near stood by for a run, for the log would suddenly slue inboard, and come across the deck like a gigantic battering ram. The whole process was a series of hairbreadth escapes. Down in the hold, where the stevedores toiled with tackles, rousing the logs about, there were many casualties; but these dagoes never seemed to care. For every hurt they had one remedy: [55] plenty of "caña," a fiery white spirit, fresh from the still. ”

“ These are smooth slimy logs that a white man would find it difficult to sit on if they were on shore, and in this water they would turn with him only once—the log would go one way and the man another. But these fellows are in no fear of the rocks below; they easily guide their barks out of the rushing floods, through the whirlpools and eddies, into the slack shore-water in the rear of the boat, and stand up like men and demand backsheesh. These logs are popular ferry-boats in the Upper Nile ”

“ As late as 1861 an exploring ship was visited by natives of Western Australia, riding simple rough logs. To smooth and sharpen the log’s end and then to hollow it out has been thought to be the first step taken by primitive man in his progress toward a boat; but I think the dugout probably came later, or at any rate no earlier, than the folding of bark into a trough and tying up the ends, as some savages are still content to do. In North America, where materials were favorable, this germ developed into the very highest type of canoe—the Algonkin birch-bark. ”

“ Pins of hard, dry birch, driven into the logs and tied together at the tops, formed rowlocks, and the craft was provided with four large paddles, or oars, hewed out with an ax. In fact, that was the only tool used in building the raft. The pins had been sharpened to a flat point and driven firmly into sockets made by striking the ax deeply into the log, and instead of ropes, cedar withes were used for lashing. These had been roasted in the fire until tough and flexible, and when thus treated they formed a good substitute for the white sailor's marline or the cow-boy's picket rope. ”

“ A catch mark is a mark representing the original mark and is so placed as to appear always upon the upper side when the log floats at rest. Once through the gap, experienced men gather the logs, as they are floated downward by the current, into brills. These are subsequently gathered together in rafts, laid, as a rule, with the logs headed in the direction of the current. Rafts may be transported to any distance southward by the current of the stream, and through the waters of the lake, and not infrequently the whole distance by tow boats. ”

“ A few dozen steel traps were first set along the stream and lagoons entering the lake, and then he and Ray pushed up Beaver Brook, and leaving their canoe, followed its narrow valley in search of suitable spots to set the more elaborated deadfalls, which also merit description.
A deadfall is made by placing one end of a suitably sized log–one perhaps fifteen feet long and a foot in diameter–on a figure four trap, so adjusted that its spindle end, to which the bait is secured, shall be poised beneath the upraised end of the log. ”

“ A derrick was rigged over the main-hatch with a double chain purchase attached, and a powerful winch bolted to the deck, round which the chain revolved. Numbers of iron spikes (dogs) , with rings in them, were fitted with tails of rope about three feet long, and lengths of hawser cut for "mother-ropes." The rafts of mahogany and cedar logs are made by driving a tailed "dog" firmly into the side of each log a foot or so from the end. ”

“ These shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the tribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. ”

“ Outside the harbour and clear of the defences Boyd put her on her southerly course, and the log was streamed. Not a log that tows astern like that of a surface ship, but a long cylindrical tube carrying vanes at its lower end, which is lowered through a hole in the bottom of the boat and packed to prevent leakage. The Destroyer shot ahead at her twenty knots (it was nothing to her, as she was one of the latest class, and capable of a good deal more) and began her zig-zag. ”

“ With such rude implements as he may chance to be possessed of, he fashions the exterior, flattens the surface of the log, and hews out the bow and stern; then fire, kept within due bounds by the assistance of clay, is brought to bear on the mass of timber, and as the wood ashes form, and the wood becomes charred, a sharpened stone or thick sea-shell is used to remove the mass and expose a fresh surface. By dint of labour, patience, care, and perseverance, the shell of the boat is at length formed, but lacking the curves and contour needed to render it stable and seaworthy. ”

“ Four of them, holding their peaveys across their bodies, jumped lightly from one floating log to another in the zigzag to shore. When they stepped on a small log they re-leaped immediately, leaving a swirl of foam where the little timber had sunk under them; when they encountered one larger, they hesitated for a barely perceptible instant. Thus their progression was of fascinating and graceful irregularity. The other two ran the length of their footing, and, overleaping an open of water, landed heavily and firmly on the very ends of two small floating logs. ”

“ From the neighboring precipice, overhanging the scene of operation, a man is suspended by a rope round his body, and lowered near to the spot where a breach is to be made, which is always selected at the lower edge of the jam. The point may be treacherous, and yield to a feeble touch, or it may require much strength to move it. In the latter case, the operator fastens a long rope to a log, the end of which is taken down stream by a portion of the crew, who are to give a long pull and strong pull when all is ready. ”

“ We found a good sized log, tied to it all the ropes we had in one single line, paddled as far down near the head of the rapid as we dared, anchored our canoe with a huge stone taken from shore and then paid out the rope, the log floating ahead of it towards the man on the rock. ”

“ The men who followed this first drive were rather a picked lot for strength and endurance, but they made slow progress past the bend in the cañon. Here a swift current and an eddy together combined to create what is called a jam. The loggers were often seen up to their waists in water for hours, breaking up the jam and working the logs out into the current. When the last one was off the men would get into their boat—a black, flat-bottomed boat, high at stem and stern like a whaleboat—and go whooping down in mid-current like a mob of schoolboys upon some dangerous sort of lark. ”

“ It is in reality the ship's diary, but it is called a log-book, because its chief object is to record the speed of the vessel.
This speed is found by using an instrument called a log, which is attached to a line, divided into equal spaces by knots. These are placed certain distances apart, so many to a mile. The log is made in such a way that it will remain almost stationary in the water when thrown overboard. The line, wound upon a reel, is allowed to run out for a few seconds ”

“ Under such circumstances, if there be any grudge to gratify by the foremost crew, or a substantial joke to be put, such truant logs are run aground, into creeks, in meadow land, among the bushes, and on the shore. A crew of thirty or forty men will take a log belonging to another crew and run it up high and dry on to the land, stand it on end, prop it up, and leave it in that position. ”

“ Often, where the pressure is direct, a few blows only are given with the axe, when the log snaps in an instant with a loud report, followed suddenly by the violent motion of the 'jam;' and, ere our bold river-driver is jerked half way to the top of the cliff, scores of logs, in wildest confusion, rush beneath his feet, whilst he yet dangles in the air above the trembling mass. ”

“ Like axemen and log-rollers, the river hands who look after dams and floating logs have their accidents and hairbreadth escapes. They have to trust to courage and to an amphibious dexterity, of which they exhibit an ample share. Watch a man standing upright on a log huge enough to be a mast, and poling it along as though it were a punt. ”