Wooden ship

“ At this time each nation was devoting its best talents to developing the material that lay nearest at hand; and while the American wooden-built type was earlier brought to perfection, its possibilities were more limited by natural causes. Greater economy, durability, and regularity of speed on the part of the iron screw steamer were the qualities that finally drove from the seas the far more picturesque and beautiful wooden sailing ship. ”

“ And here it may not be inappropriate for one whose earliest professional studies were devoted to the construction of wooden ships, but whose personal labors have been most largely devoted to the iron era, to pay a passing tribute of respect to the constructive genius of those great builders in wood who designed the stanch and towering battle-ships of the good old times. ”

“ But while the art of ship-building progressed more rapidly after the development of the use of wooden pegs for fastenings, and the use of sails and oars made possible more extended sea journeys, still the development was slow, and until the discovery of the power of steam in the latter part of the 18th Century no revolutionary changes in ships took place. ”

“ The forefoot and dead wood aft appear to have been cut away to an extraordinary extent, probably for the purpose of increasing the handiness. The rigging was of the type which was practically universal in ancient ships.
Fig. 13 gives the sheer draught or side elevation, the plan, elevations of the bow and stem, and a midship section of a Roman vessel, which from her proportions and the shape of bow is supposed to have been a merchant-ship. The illustration is taken from a model presented to Greenwich Hospital by Lord Anson. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a rule, every wooden vessel's ribs are of oak, and, for greater strength, preference is given to the best qualities of live-oak. As a ship's side curves, her outside planking has to be forced into place, and for the short curves near the bows and stern, the planks have to be steamed, and bent on while moist, as otherwise they would crack and split in the process. ”

“ There's not a ship that sails the ocean, But every climate, every soil, Must bring its tribute, great or small, And help to build the wooden wall! ”

“ As the lines of steamers dwindle the river widens; and when we come to the bend of a long reach, it opens into a metal-coloured surface of gleaming water trembling with the speeding of its own rushing, though it retains polish enough to serve as a mirror, and to hold under each vessel the dark, inverted shadow of a phantom ship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Directly the wind is out of it and it begins to shiver he yells, 'Raise tacks and sheets!' when, except that the foretack is held a bit to prevent the foresail from bellying aback, all the remaining ropes that held the ship on her old tack are loosed. A roar of wind-waves rushes through the sails, and a tremor runs through the whole ship from stem to stern. The skipper waits for the first decided breath on her new tack and then shouts, 'Mainsail haul!' when the yards come swinging round so quickly that the men can hardly take in the slack of the braces fast enough. ”

“ At the foot of a flight of broad stone steps leading to the water from a wharf on the quay near one of the bridges, a superior sort of ship’s boat was moored, where her crew, some resting on the benches, some lounging on the steps, were grouped in conversation, evidently directing their attention to a beautiful ship of small tonnage but perfect symmetry that lay at anchor at a short distance, easily distinguished from the numerous vessels in her neighbourhood by the smartness of her rigging and the elegance of her build. ”

“ The wet decks, the naked spars, the two top-sails tucked up to a treble reef, and seeming mere strips of canvas, grey with damp, the raffle of gear lying about, with here and there a man over his knees in water slowly coiling it up, hanging on meanwhile by one hand, combined, with the lowering sky and leaden sea, to make up a gloomy picture indeed. The ship was nearly close-hauled, and a big lump of a head-sea on, with which she was doing her level, or rather, most unlevel, best to fill her decks fore and aft. ”

“ She was freighted with coal, and carried a crew of twenty hands, being indeed a ship of 1360 tons register. A vessel of that size, unless maimed by short fore and mizzen topgallant-masts, is sure to make a handsome picture on the water under full sail. The Americans rarely mutilate their ships, but, on the contrary, with sky-scrapers and moon sails, pile their canvas to the heavens, and, mixing plenty of cotton with their sail-cloth, carry a yacht-like whiteness aloft that will shine upon the horizon like a peak of ice brilliant with snow. ”

“ Most big craft are built of oak or hard pine, and fastened together with iron spikes and bolts—sixty tons at least to a three-hundred-ton schooner. After a year or two this hard, heavy wood becomes water-soaked, and, with the iron bolts and spikes, is heavier than water, and will sink when the hold is flooded.
"This craft of ours was like a small boat—built of soft light wood, with trunnels instead of bolts, and no iron on board except the anchors and one capstan. ”

“ As she shines through the wood like the light from the skies.
And a ship now and then from some far Ophir’s shore
Draws in from the sea. It lies close to the bank;
Then a dull, muffled sound of the slow-shuffled plank
As they load the black ship; but you hear nothing more,
And the dark dewy vines, and the tall sombre wood
Like twilight droop over the deep sweeping flood.
The black masts are tangled with branches that cross,
The rich, fragrant gums fall from branches to deck,
The thin ropes are swinging with streamers of moss
That mantle all things like the shreds of a wreck ”

“ His gaze was fixed unvaryingly straight before him and he seemed to notice and observe more distant objects; the larger panorama of moving craft in the harbor, the fussy haste of the scuttling tugboats tugging nothing, the sullen reluctance of the urged scows, the outgoing and incoming pungies and schooners, the interwoven pattern they all formed together, the break in it now and again from the dignified passage of a towed bark or ship or from the stately progress of a big steamer. ”

“ We can see the men busily at work, whilst the dockyard manager or superintendent is carried in a kind of Sedan-chair to see how the work is progressing. Some are engaged hammering and chipping away at the wood that is to become a boat; some are fixing the different sections in place; whilst others are setting up the truss which was employed for preventing the ship from “hogging.”
But already by the close of the Third Dynasty, Professor Flinders Petrie says, the Egyptian shipbuilders were using quite large supplies of wood for their craft. ”

“ The flash of the sea far down, the guns of the sea low down, the white lightning of the gulls' flight went with them; and with them rode a pleasant panorama of shipping; a line-of-battle ship was making her way up Channel; she hung sullen, and tossed with massive plunge, heaving about her the foam of a dozen breaking seas; a smart little schooner, with masts like fishing-rods, sitting low and almost [Pg 112] level, save where her bow struck for domination in an abrupt leap of sheer, was cutting through her own yeast ”

“ A winch is better than a capstan for heaving anchor, and if placed abaft the mast, serves also for "swigging" on halyards, or hoisting sail.
As for sails, the dream ship's were all "barked" or tanned after the fisherman style, and there is no doubt that this process prevents rot, especially in the humid tropics. We carried one medium-weight mainsail, a working and a balloon foresail, storm and balloon jibs, and a squaresail, and of these the last was the most generally useful. Again I hear the howlers howling: "Why not a spinnaker?" ”

“ Taking the shape of the stern, he by this cut out his transom from a whole piece of plank, and secured it to the stern-post. There is quite a difference between the timbering of a vessel and a boat. The timbers, which form what is called a frame in ship-building, reaching from the keel to the top, are numerous, and are named floor timbers, futtocks, top timbers, and naval timbers, or ground futtocks. ”

“ It resists the sea-worm; and our colonial vessels, when hove down for repairs or survey at Sincapore, Launceston, or other ports, have always excited the admiration of the surveyors, and have been pronounced not to require to be coppered. This wood is long in the grain, but very close and tough, and not only makes very good planking, but excellent beams, keel-pieces, and many other portions of a ship. Growing without a branch to the height of from fifty to one hundred feet, and from eighteen inches to three feet and upwards in diameter, it excites the admiration of all practical men ”

“ There is a great quantity of timber all round the islands and abundance of sails and rigging just about the place where the ships sunk, and a mast, one end a little above water, which makes them conclude an entire ship to be foundered there, because all the force they can procure is not able to move the mast. ”

“ No doubt a ship with stun'sails set below and aloft, flying along with a steady breeze just abaft the beam, the golden sunlight glancing on her canvas, and making her look like a mountain of snow, while the sparkling wavelets leap around her or are churned into lovely wreaths of dazzling foam by the eager sheer of her cutwater, makes a magnificent picture, and one that will be soon only seen in pictures. ”

“ When the work was done, below deck, the Pass of Balmaha was an auxiliary cruiser, armed to the teeth. Above deck she was merely a poetic old sailing ship loaded with a prosaic cargo of lumber.
Timber made the ideal cargo for our purposes, because a ship carrying lumber loads her deck as well as her hold. The piles of lumber even cover your hatches, so no one can go below until you unload. Hence no search crew would be likely to inspect us carefully at sea. They would either order us to Kirkwall, or let us go. ”

“ The result is, that, in order to lessen these dues individually, our vessels are constructed deep in proportion to breadth, consequently are sluggish sailers, and not nearly so safe and pleasant sea-boats as they otherwise would be—many a ship, especially with light cargo, getting on her beam-ends and foundering, or not standing up under canvass to weather a lee shore. ”

“ The ship was followed by the representation of a large wood, with men in it dressed in green; a green, scaly skin was drawn over their own, and their faces were masked, to appear as savages, each squirting water at the people from large pewter syringes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If they are to be part and parcel of the great oak, the grafts must be nourished by the same sap that supports the tree itself. The little boat that is launched on the great sea to shift for itself, must soon be separated from the great ship. ”

“ Even before the introduction of steam as a motive power for boats shipbuilders had been casting about for some satisfactory substitute for wood in the construction of vessels. One reason for this was that suitable wood was becoming scarce and very expensive. But also there was a limit to the size that a wooden vessel might be built with safety. A wooden75 boat more than three hundred feet long cannot be constructed without having dangerous structural weakness. ”

“ 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. ”