Ship's hold

“ The whole of the main-deck ports and dead-lights being stove in, and the ship labouring so much as to render it almost impossible for the people to remain at the winches, the water in the hold gained upon the pumps for a very considerable period ”

“ I say again, give me tough masts, sound spars, well set-up rigging, and stout canvas, with a properly built ship under my feet, and I’ll keep the sea in all weathers, and carry her safely round the world. ”

“ As before, the sea received the tumbling maze of spars, rigging, and sails; the vessel surging at the same instant, from its recumbent position, and rolling far and heavily to windward.
"She rights! she rights!" exclaimed twenty voices which had been mute, in a suspense that involved life and death.
"Keep her dead away!" added the calm but authoritative voice of the young commander. "Stand by to furl the fore-top-sail—let it hang a moment to drag the ship clear of the wreck—cut, cut—cheerily, men—hatchets and knives—cut with all, and cut off all!" ”

“ It is very sad, but this is war time, and the fleet must be manned.
All day long duty-boats keep going up and down. Now it is an admiral’s twelve-oared barge with the flag at the bows; now a captain’s gig, or a pinnace, pulling between ship and shore; now a midshipman’s boat scurrying off to answer the flagship’s signal. Ships’ long-boats with water-casks and pursers’ stores for various men-of-war in harbour, pass and repass, and beer hoys and yard craft of all kinds. ”

“ We will confidently leave our feeble vessel entirely to thy guiding care, to shape its course and direct its way; nor will we dread the greatest danger, with thy hand upon the helm, believing no hidden rock can escape thy penetrating eye, nor any storm or danger surpass thy skill, or counteract thy unbounded power.
The hour arrives, all is in readiness, the pilot gives the signal, the anchor is weighed, and with all sails set, our bark proceeds to sea. What more majestic sight than a gallant ship, under full sail, wafted by a fair gale, proudly cutting her way through the vast deep? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Captain MacWhirr and Jukes kept hold of each other, deafened by the noise, gagged by the wind; and the great physical tumult beating about their bodies, brought, like an unbridled display of passion, a profound trouble to their souls. One of those wild and appalling shrieks that are heard at times passing mysteriously overhead in the steady roar of a hurricane, swooped, as if borne on wings, upon the ship, and Jukes tried to outscream it. ”

“ Imagine some good ship, wrought by skilled hands, well built within and fairly adorned without, with rudder answering to the touch, taut rigging, lofty mast, resplendent tops, and shining sails; in a word, supplied with all such gear as may serve either for use or the delight of the eye. Imagine all this and then think how easily, if the tempest and no helmsman be her guide, the deep may engulf her or the reefs grind her to pieces with all her goodly gear. ”

“ Throughout the whole of these trying moments, indeed, the discipline of the ship appears to have been maintained, not only without the smallest trace of insubordination, but with a degree of cheerfulness which is described as truly wonderful. Even when the masts fell, the sound of the crashing spars was drowned in the animating huzzas of the undaunted crew, though they were then clinging to the weather gunwale, with the sea, from time to time, making a clean breach over them, and when they were expecting every instant to be carried to the bottom! ”

“ The gallant ship spreads her broad wings one by one, and gracefully bending to the power of the breeze, glides, like a fleet courser, over the fathomless depths of the sea, while the mind that controls her motions again assumes his reverie on the quarter-deck. ”

“ The ship, in trending to the wind, lay quite down on her broadside, and as it then became evident to all that nothing held her, each man instinctively took his station, while those at the leads, having secured themselves as well as was in their power, repeated their soundings, on which our preservation depended, with as much composure as if we had been entering a friendly port. ”

“ I sat astride of the hammock-cloth on the weather-quarter, and watched the beautiful apparition during the whole chase, only taking off my eye, now and then, to give some order to the officer of the deck, or to cast it admiringly upon the buckling and bending masts and spars of my own beautiful ship, as she sped forward, with all the animation of a living thing, in pursuit. The poor little, affrighted fawn ahead of us, how its heart must have gone pit-a-pat, as it cast its timid eyes behind it, and saw its terrible pursuer looming up larger, and larger, and coming nearer and nearer! ”

“ The power that drives the great hull against the rolling masses of water seems to have no sympathy with either the ship or the waves; and drenched from stem to stern, the vessel reels and staggers on her way, kept only to her work by careful use of helm. ”

“ He said that our force was ample, every gun shotted, and the ports open: that we had the windward gauge of her, and that the proper course was to send a boat in to cut her cable, and, when she drifted down with the current, we would ware ship, lay up alongside, grapple, pass lashings aboard, and send the whole crew on to her deck with a rush. ”

“ Thus bound, but carefully looked after, inert and powerful, those emblems of hope make company for the look-out man in the night watches; and so the days glide by, with a long rest for those characteristically shaped pieces of iron, reposing forward, visible from almost every part of the ship’s deck, waiting for their work on the other side of the world somewhere, while the ship carries them on with a great rush and splutter of foam underneath, and the sprays of the open sea rust their heavy limbs. ”

“ As is always the case on board a man-of-war, especially when lying in port, where the escape to the shore is easy, sentinels were placed at stem, stern and waist of the English ship, at all hours, pacing their allotted round of the deck, and keeping watchful guard over every avenue of exit from the vessel. ”

“ Then the mortal perils of eating, drinking, moving, sitting, lying; standing can’t be done, even by the sailors, without holding on. The night of the gale, my cot twice touched the beams of the ship above me. I asked the captain if I had dreamt it, but he said it was quite possible; he had never seen a ship so completely on her beam ends come up all right, masts and yards all sound. ”

“ Along the bulwarks of the ship, fore and aft, hung rows of large painted wooden shields, which gave an Argus-eyed aspect to the craft. Between them was a double row of thole-pins for the great oars, which now lay at rest in the bottom of the boat, but by which, in calm weather, this "walker of the seas" could be forced swiftly through the yielding element.
VIKING SHIPS AT SEA.
Near the stern, on an elevated platform, stood the commander, a man of large and powerful frame and imposing aspect, one whose commands not the fiercest of his crew would lightly venture to disobey. ”

“ We crossed the steamship lanes in all directions with guns loaded and with a sharp lookout so as not to lose any opportunity to damage the enemy’s commerce.
Shortly before dinner the first merchant ship arose on the south horizon. It was a sailer, a large, full-rigged schooner, which, hard by the wind, headed towards the French coast. With majestic calm, lightly leaning to the wind, the splendid ship approached. ”

“ A ship is under sail, the wind blows fresh, and she is bearing down upon a rock: let her alone, and her destruction is certain. Or a squall suddenly arises: let her alone, shorten no sail, do not put the vessel before the wind, and no effort is needed to insure her ruin. ”

“ At length, one evening, just about dusk, a large ship came suddenly out of the mist. Her position, it was at once discovered, equally by those on board and by the people on the shore, was perilous beyond hope. The sailors, as soon as they saw how near they were to the shore, made every effort to save the ship, and then to prepare for saving themselves. The tempest raged with such fury from the west, that the ship parted her anchors at the moment her strain came upon them, and she swang round,—her only sail flying into ribbons in the gale—rushing, as it were, eagerly upon her fate. ”

“ It doesn’t seem possible either craft can stand up very long under such a press of sail. It is blowing a full gale; our decks are awash, and the ship is burying herself to such an extent that every third or fourth wave sweeps over her from stem to stern. It’s enough to make a fellow turn pale with fear, to stand there five minutes watching the surge towering on either hand, ahead and astern, even above the mastheads. ”

“ A large ship, under full sail, running off before a pleasant breeze, is a beautiful sight; but it is by no means so grandly impressive as that of the same ship, under close canvas, gallantly riding out the merciless gale that carried destruction to every unseaworthy craft which came within its reach. ”

“ That our vessels are strong no one will deny who ever saw a teak-built ship with her heavy beams and prodigious wooden knees; that they are lasting follows as a matter of course, but this very qualification is at this moment our drawback to improvement. ”

“ Ships, forty years since, carried no spars aloft but such as were stout enough to carry sail upon, in fair weather or foul—sliding-gunter sky-sail masts, and other useless sticks, were as much unknown to ship-builders and riggers, as railroads and steam-boats. ”

“ Thou shalt be "as he that goeth to bed on the mast's head,"—where the position is precarious even if the sea be perfectly calm, but becomes sure destruction if the winds awake and the ship begins to climb large billows and to plunge down into their unquiet troughs. ”

“ The after part of the ship was now breaking up fast. Our gallant captain still remained on the quarterdeck, having buckled on his sword as if going into action. Grasping his speaking-trumpet he shouted his last order: "Look to yourselves, men, and God have mercy on us all!" Then came a huge, tumbling, white-crested wave that swept the doomed vessel from the stern as far for'ard as the foremast. ”

“ Not an English ship this time—a Yankee, by her beautiful flag.
It is the old scene—the hurried assembling of the people; the signals and answering signals; the manning of the surf boat; the meeting of the elders for consultation as to ways and means of reception. But this meeting is for serious work. The new ship is a trader; and only a ship of war imports no danger to these defenceless folk. There may be a rough crew, not too well in hand, fierce men, beyond punishment for excess, immediate or remote. ”

“ See the noble fellow’s face As the big ship, with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! See, safe through shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock. Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! [Pg 42] The peril, see, is past, All are harbored to the last; And just as Hervé Riel halloos, “Anchor!”—sure as fate, Up the English come, too late. ”

“ The whole ship's company, about three hundred sailors and marines as I supposed, knew what ship we were, and the very frigate herself as she rolled without way, looked like some startled beast mad for flight, the foam [161] draining from her bows to the slow pitching, as a terrified steed champs his bit into froth, and shudder after shudder going up out of her heart of oak into her sails, as you would have said to watch the tremble and filling and backing of them to the wind. ”

“ To watch a vessel at anchor on the turn of a tide, and cast her by the helm, and some sail if necessary, so as to keep the cable clear of the anchor or turns out of her cables when moored.
TENDER. A small vessel duly commanded, and employed to attend a larger one, to supply her with stores, to carry intelligence or volunteers and impressed men to receiving ships, &c. An enemy's ship captured by cutters or boats fitted out as tenders by men-of-war, but without any commission or authority from the admiralty, will not insure a prize to the benefit of the ship. ”

“ The hurry of the times, the loading and discharging organization of the docks, the use of hoisting machinery which works quickly and will not wait, the cry for prompt despatch, the very size of his ship, stand nowadays between the modern seaman and the thorough knowledge of his craft. ”

“ After dinner, all hands are on deck, and kept there till dark. In very large merchantmen, and all warships, this rule is departed from, and the watch is not so torturing—so true is it that the servants in small [pg 223] establishments, whether on sea or land, are always the worst treated. However, we suppose that the hands are on deck. The breeze has now almost died away, and the sea runs in long, low, slow swells; the ship gently rocking, and the sails occasionally collapsing with a crash against the creaking masts. ”

“ And our ship for action clear,
[308] By the cannon and the sword,
We will die or conquer here.
The foe, of twice our force, nears us fast:
To your posts, my faithful tars!
Mind your rigging, guns, and spars,
And defend your stripes and stars
To the last."
At the captain's bold command,
Flew each sailor to his gun,
And resolved he there would stand,
Though the odds was two to one,
To defend his flag and ship with his life:
High on every mast display'd,
"God, Our Country, and Free Trade,"
E'en the bravest braver made
For the strife. ”