Shipshape

“ A ship is said to careen when she inclines to one side, or lies over when sailing on a wind; off her keel or carina.
CAREENING. The operation of heaving the ship down on one side, by arranging the ballast, or the application of a strong purchase to her masts, which require to be expressly supported for the occasion to prevent their springing; by these means one side of the bottom, elevated above the surface of the water, may be cleansed or repaired. (See Breaming.) But this operation is now nearly superseded by sheathing ships with copper, whereby they keep a clean bottom for several years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we take a trip down the Chesapeake Bay, in the day-time, we may see for ourselves the utter fallacy of the idea that when a vessel appears “hull down,” as it is called, it is because the hull is “behind the water:” for, vessels have been seen, and may often be seen again, presenting the appearance spoken of, and away—far away—beyond those vessels, and, at the same moment, the level shore line, with its accompanying complement of tall trees, towering up, in perspective, over the heads of the “hull-down” ships! ”

“ A group of them, by the ship’s rail, talking in clear staccato tones, would give her a sudden sense that she was closely concerned in what they were saying. But when she looked, the stolid faces were as impassive as the long black queues depending from each round hat almost to the ship’s deck and responding in oblique black lines to the attraction of gravity—as the boat moved up and down.... After a time she ceased to think of them. ”

“ Seaward the channel buoys and the nearer lightships are sharply distinct, cutting the distant sea-line like the topmast spars of ships hull down. Every ripple and swirl of the tide is exaggerated by the lens of a rare atmosphere; the bow wash of incoming vessels is thrown upward as by mirage. ”

“ We descended by a ladder in perfect correspondence with the rest of the fittings of this ship—the hand-rails carved, and the steps a sort of grating—different, indeed, from the pieces of coarse, rough wood nailed to the bulkhead, which in these days form the road down through the forescuttle. The light of the heavens fell fair through the hatch, but seemed powerless to penetrate the gloom that lay around. ”

“ Art. 7.—Ships, whether steamships or sailing-ships, when at anchor in roadsteads or fairways, shall, between sunset and sunrise, exhibit where it can best be seen, but at a height not exceeding twenty feet above the hull, a white light in a globular lantern of eight inches in diameter, and so constructed as to show a clear, uniform, and unbroken light visible all around the horizon, and at a distance of at least one mile. ”

“ As these mammoth ships lie in port beside the wharf, it seems as though their size and enormous weight would place them beyond the influence of the wind and waves: but the power of the latter is so great as to be beyond computation, and makes a mere toy of the largest hull that floats. No one can realize the great strength of the waves who has not watched the sea in all of its varying moods. ”

“ Where the keel of the ship is to go a row of timber blocks is placed a few feet apart, and upon these blocks the plates of steel which form the lowest part of the ship are laid. Upon them are laid other parts, and upon them others, the joints being made by riveting. Thus the great ship grows from the keel upwards. As she gets bigger and bigger there comes the danger of her tipping over, and that is provided against by the use of props or shores along both sides. ”

“ It is the relative situation of an object with the ship, when that object is placed in the arc of the horizon contained between a line at right angles with the keel and the point of the compass which is directly opposite the ship's course. An object—as a man overboard—is described by the look-out man at the mast-head as abeam, before, or abaft the beam, by so many points of the compass. ”

“ A ship is wrecked, say, in the Pacific Ocean, and ultimately all the loose metal upon her will succumb to the irresistible attraction of this magnetic upper stratum, and will find its way to its shores. ”

“ If we should be accused of arguing at times by inference without actual facts before us, let us be allowed to say this much: there are signs in a ship’s lines and rigging which, to the landsman, are devoid of meaning, but to the man who has been wont to handle ships, and perhaps to design and build them, they are full of significance. Generally speaking, to the former a model is a nicely-carved piece of wood, adorned with a maze of complicated strings. Curves of hull, the position of the masts, the amount of sail area aft or forward, go for nothing. ”

“ We have found, for the first time in the history of ship-building, that the inward pull of the deck-beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of marine architecture. ”

“ They do not put any tow or oakum into the seams of their ships, yet join the planks so artificially, that they hold out water admirably, the seams being pitched and held together with iron nails, and the wood of which their ships are built is better than ours. Their sails are made of cotton cloth, doubled in the under parts, by which they gather much wind and swell out like bags, having only one sail to each vessel. ”

“ An old ship-captain who accompanied me was so overcome by it that he verily believed he had left the marks of his fingers, an inch deep, in the solid stone of the cornice, by the spasmodic strength with which he clung to it! Climbing the mast-head is a different thing, for a ship’s spars are designed to be tossed about and bend before the gale. But even an old seaman is seized with affright at beholding himself on the edge of an enormous pile of building, at a giddy height in the air, and apparently hanging without any support for its ponderous mass of stones. ”

“ And of late years it has been found possible to add enormously to the size of sailing-ships without increasing the cost of their working to any extent. Four-masted ships have become plentiful, carrying an area of canvas which would have seemed incredible to the seamen of fifty years201 ago, accustomed as they were to the flying clippers of Britain and America. These vessels are as handsome as the tramp steamer is hideous, their graceful lines, taut spars, and spidery rigging all lending themselves to beauty. But in these, as in the tramps, the foreigner is paramount. ”

“ A shower pelts the deck and the sails of the ship as if flung with a scream by an angry hand; and when the night closes in, the night of a south-westerly gale, it seems more hopeless than the shade of Hades. The south-westerly mood of the great West Wind is a lightless mood, without sun, moon, or stars, with no gleam of light but the phosphorescent flashes of the great sheets of foam that, boiling up on each side of the ship, fling bluish gleams upon her dark and narrow hull, rolling as she runs, chased by enormous seas, distracted in the tumult. ”

“ Course, Topsail, and Topgallant Sail of an Early Nineteenth-Century Ship.
After the end of the eighteenth century, the salutary practice of building ships under cover became general. Nowadays, of course, most ships are constructed in the open air. But in the time we are speaking of the ship—men built with wood and not steel. And when the weather was not allowed to get inside and rot the wood, it was found that the vessels lasted much longer than before. Furthermore, the method of uniting two pieces of timber together by “scarfing” was introduced. ”

“ Still there remain many sailing ships, particularly in the fishing fleets and the coasting trade, and occasionally, but with less and less frequency, one sees a fine old square-rigged ship driving through the great green swells of mid-ocean, but they are few—and for the person who is drawn by the drama and adventure of the sea, painfully few. ”

“ I mean the heave up and the swoop down. If a ship oscillated on an immutable basis, a cot or a balanced chair would effectually stop nausea; like a wineglass on a swinging tray, the passenger could always maintain a posture perpendicular with the horizon. But what is to qualify the sensations which follow the swoop down into the hollows and the roaring heave up on to the summits of the seas? Everything in the ship must accompany her in her falls and in her risings ”

“ Iron blocks, by means of which sails are sheeted home. In any violent wind they beat upon the mast with great rapidity and force.
Sheets. Ropes or chains which extend the lower corners of square sails in the operation of sheeting home.
Shifting suits (of sails) . The operation of removing a ship's sails, and replacing them with others.
Shrouds. Wire ropes of great strength, which support lateral strains on masts.
Shroud-screws. Iron contrivances by which shrouds are hove taut.
Sidelights. A sailing ship carries two of these between sunset and sunrise: one green, to starboard; one red, to port. ”

“ It makes no difference whether a ship is of wood, or is tin-clad, or is iron-clad, if she gets over a torpedo it blows the same size hole in the bottom of all alike, which I found on an average to be just twelve feet by eight square. ”

“ And so, too, when a ship is built, the keel does not lay itself, neither does the mast erect itself in the centre, nor do all the other timbers take up their positions casually and by their own motion. ”

“ A ship should therefore be so balanced by her sails that a slight change of her helm may answer the purpose.
If a vessel is going astern, and the rudder is turned off from the line of the keel, the water, striking against the back of the rudder, pushes the stern off in the same direction in which the rudder is turned. For instance, if sternway is on her, and the helm is put to the starboard, the rudder turns to port, the water forces the stern in the same direction, and the ship's head goes off to the starboard. ”

“ A change in color at one edge of his plate caught his eye, and he saw the ship nearest on his right begin to glow as a heavy beam from below worked on its screens, burrowing its way in and in, trying to blast the ship out of existence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With regard to such fundamental properties of vessels as displacement, weight, and carrying capability, nothing new has for a long period been added to the fund of scientific knowledge. One of the conditions now most commonly laid down by the owners of a proposed ship is that which provides for a certain carrying capability on a given draught of water and at a certain speed, the principal dimensions of the vessel also being stipulated. ”

“ Now, were the line sufficiently strong, and made to pass through a metallic cylinder, in form of a sliding hoop, the ship’s crew might, one by one, if placed thereon, slide along the rope from the mast to the shore, as on an inclined plane. The ship’s stores, buckled to the sliding hoop, might be conveyed in the same manner; nay, even the ship itself, drifted on a neighbouring sand bank, or ledge of rocks, might, by men properly stationed on the beach, be thus towed safely to shore. ”

“ 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. ”