The lieutenant and commander

by Basil Hall

The state in which the ship happens to be at the time she is commissioned, must decide, as I said before, the course to be followed in her equipment. If she be already masted and alongside the hulk, and the ballast in, the officer will most likely wish to make some show in the way of rigging—for as yet the masts are naked to the girt-lines, or single ropes rove through blocks at the mast-head, by which first the men and then the shrouds are drawn up, and the eyes of the rigging placed over the mast-heads. If there be only a few sailors on board, these can be employed to get off the furniture, that is, all the blocks, ready stropped in the rigging loft; and to draw the present use stores from the dockyard. These can all be kept under lock and key in the store-rooms of the hulk; and if the rigging, and everything required in placing it aloft, be previously fitted and arranged by the boatswain, so that he can put his hand at once on the gear as soon as a sufficient number of the crew join, much time will be saved. Even the lower rigging may be got off all ready fitted from the loft; while the runners and tackles, the luffs, and other purchases, may be put in preparation for use the moment there are hands enough to employ on them.

By application to the boatswain of the yard, assistance will be given to gammon the bowsprit, preparatory to its being clothed, which is the technical term for rigging that important spar. One of its principal offices is to support the foremast and fore-topmast, by means of their stays, as the slanting ropes are called which stretch forwards and downwards from the head of every mast, great and small, in the ship. Some of these, as the main-stay, lie at so inconsiderable an angle with the horizon, that they possess great power of sustaining the mast; while others, such as the fore-stay, being necessarily more perpendicular, do not act to such good mechanical purpose. There is a peculiar disadvantage attending the method of securing the fore-stay, arising from the position of the mast. It is placed so near the extremity of the ship, that the stay, which forms its only support in the forward direction, cannot be attached to the body of the vessel, without making so very small an angle with the mast as would divest it of nearly all its character as a supporter. To remedy this, the bowsprit has been devised, chiefly as an out-rigger for the fore-stay. But in order to render the spar effective for that purpose, it requires to be very strongly bound down. There has, therefore, been contrived what is called the stem, or cut-water, which is a strong but narrow projection from the bows, securely fastened by long and thick bolts of iron and copper to the body of the ship. The chief purpose of this stem is to furnish a point of support for the ropes securing the bowsprit. Of these, the most important is called the gammoning, which consists of a strong and well-stretched hawser, passed up and down successively, in perpendicular turns, over the bowsprit and through a hole horizontally cut in the stem. At each turn the gammoning hawser is hove taut, while every effort is used to bring the bowsprit down into its place. A heavy boat is sometimes suspended from the end, the weight of which greatly assists the gammoning process. Another set of ropes, called bob-stays, extending from about one-third from the outer end of the bowsprit to the cut-water, nearly at the water-line, contribute essentially to its stability. It is further secured in a lateral direction by shrouds reaching from its extremity to the bows of the ship.

I need not mention, that, in order to give a finish, as it were, to the end of the ship, and to convert that into a source of ornament which might otherwise be deemed a deformity, the top of the stem has been appropriated as the position of the figure-head, the characteristic emblem of the vessel. In some ships the sailors pride themselves especially on the beauty of their figure-head; and many a time have I seen the captain of the forecastle employed for hours in painting the eyes, hair, and drapery of his favourite idol. I suppose few commanding-officers will allow of this liberty; for it must be owned that as Jack's taste in female beauty, and in the disposition and colours of dress, are borrowed from a very questionable model, his labours in adorning the figure-head are apt to produce strange monsters. I once heard of a captain who indulged his boatswain in this whim of representing his absent love as far as the king's allowance of paint could carry the art; and it must be owned, that, as the original Dulcinea owed her roses to the same source, the representation "came very close aboard of the original," as the delighted boatswain expressed it. This very proximity in colouring, scantiness of drapery, and so forth, which formed the boatswain's pride, perplexed the worthy captain, who had given his sanction to the work, for he could never cross the bows of his own ship with a party of friends, without raising a laugh at the expense of his taste in figures. The whole crew, however, soon fell as much in love with the damsel as the boatswain had done before them; and it would have been cruel to have sent the painter to daub her ladyship all over with one uniform colour, according to the general fashion. The considerate commander took a different line.

"You seem proud of your head, Mr. Clearpipe, I shall gild her for you!"

In a few days, the sparkling eyes and blushing cheeks of Mrs. Boatswain, like Danaë, had yielded up their charms to the golden shower. The glittering figure-head soon became the delight of the ship's company, and on one occasion furnished the captain with rather an odd means of calling out their energies. The ship was sailing in company with several others of the same class, and when they all came to reef topsails together, she was beat on the first occasion. As they were setting about a second trial of activity, the captain called out to the people aloft,—

"Now, I tell you what it is, my lads, unless you are off the yards, and the sails are hoisted again before any other ship in the squadron, by the Lord Harry I'll paint your figure-head black!" From that time forward, she beat every ship in the fleet.

As soon as a sufficient number of hands are collected on board the ship which is fitting out, all the spars, except the spare ones, may be got off to the hulk. These consist of topsail yards, topmasts, and top-gallant masts and yards, jib and spanker boom, studding-sail booms, and one or two others. The lower and topsail yards can be fitted on the hulk's decks, ready to be swayed into their places when the masts are in a state to receive them. If a dockyard lump, or lighter, can be got to put all the spars in, together with the tops and other things which are usually made into a raft and floated off, it may save a great deal of trouble; as it frequently happens that they cannot all be got in before night, and if bad weather comes on, they may break adrift and be lost.

There seems no fixed rule for rigging a ship progressively. Different officers adopt different ways of setting about the operation, and slight variations occur in the arrangement of the ropes; but, generally speaking, everything is disposed according to the long-established rules of seamanship. The grand object is to support each mast laterally by a number of shrouds on each side, inclining slightly abaft the perpendicular, to prevent its falling either sideways or forwards, and also, by means of two stays, the principal stay and the spring stay, both stretching in the line of the keel, to hold it forwards. The width of the ship affords what is called a spread for the rigging, which spread is augmented by the application of broad shelves, called channels, carrying the rigging three or four feet further out on each side, and making its angle with the masts greater, and consequently increasing the support of the shrouds. These channels act merely as out-riggers, for the ultimate point of fixture, or that against which the shrouds pull, is lower down, where long links of iron called chain-plates, are securely bolted through and through the solid ribs of the ship, and rivetted within. The upper ends of these chain-plates are furnished with what are called dead-eyes, great round blocks of wood pierced with holes, through which the lanyards are rove by which the rigging is set up, or drawn almost as tight as bars of iron. The topmasts, rising immediately above the lower masts, are supported chiefly by rigging spread out by the tops, or what people on shore miscall round-tops. These, like the channels for the lower rigging, are mere projections or out-riggers; the true point of support for the topmast rigging is the lower shrouds, the connection being made by what are called futtock shrouds and catharpins. The top-gallant masts, at the next stage aloft, are supported by shrouds passing through the ends of small spars called cross-trees, at the head of the topmast; and so on in succession, up to the sky-scrapers and moon-rakers in some very fly-away ships.

As early as possible, the boats, which are duly warranted for the ship, should be selected, and their equipment superintended by the officers of the ship, who are the persons most interested in their completion. The master boat-builder attends to any little extra fittings that the first lieutenant may have a fancy for—such as the arrangement of the kedge and steam-anchor davits, the slide for the carronnade in the launch, and so on. The boats will be painted of any required colour, provided that colour be consistent with the dockyard regulations; if any other be required, the captain must purchase it himself, but the dockyard painters will lay it on. In the same way, if the gun carriages are to be painted of any particular or fancy colour, the people at the gun-wharf will prime them in a manner suited to that colour, but no more.

I may here take occasion to remark, that in the numberless dockyards I have drawn stores from, I never met with any real difficulty in getting all that was reasonable from the officers in any department. I have heard, indeed, one and all of these persons abused over and over again, for being crusty and disobliging; for pertinacity in sticking to the mere letter of their instructions, and forgetting its spirit; and for throwing obstacles in the way of the service, instead of promoting its advancement. But I can only say for myself, that I never met with anything but a hearty zeal to furnish all that was right, and that, too, in the pleasantest manner, provided the proper degree of civility were used in making the application.