Ships & Ways of Other Days

by E. Keble Chatterton

Model of H.M.S. “Triumph.”

A two-deck, 74-gun line-of-battle ship. Launched 1764, having been designed on the lines of the Invincible, captured from the French by Lord Anson in 1747.

“COMPELLED TO LET THE SHIP LIE ALMOST ON HER BEAM ENDS.”

We have not much room to deal with the glorious fights of the privateers of those days. Those who are interested in the subject will find what they require in Captain Statham’s “Privateers and Privateering.” But we cannot pass on without at least a reference to these adventurous craft. Handsome enough were the prizes which sometimes they gained; but many were the times they failed for the reason that, after some years of peace, their crews were undisciplined and untrained. But about the middle of the eighteenth century improvements had been made in the metal, the casting and the boring of the cannon, which were now made not quite so heavy, and therefore of less inconvenience to a ship. Bags of horsehair were employed for protection against musket shot, whilst a rail, breast high, was affixed each side with light iron crutches and arms and netting to hold the men’s hammocks and bedding long-ways. Rope shakings and cork shakings, too, were also employed as a further protection from the enemy’s fire. But the powder that was served out in those scandalous days was often enough disgustingly weak and lacking in velocity.

In the golden days of the privateer, so soon as she had got out to sea all hands would be called to quarters and officers sent to their stations; there would be a general exercise of guns and small arms, everything made ready for action, and the general working of the ship thoroughly well drilled. Chasing and fighting had been brought down to the condition of a fine art, and there were recognised tactics according as to whether your opponent were as big, bigger, or smaller than yourself. If your enemy were your superior, it was better not to bring your ship right alongside, but, before the attack opened, get on his weather quarter, luff your ship into the wind with the helm alee, until your after lee gun, which you fired first, could be pointed on to the enemy’s stern. Then batter away with your lee broadside. They endeavoured also to rake the enemy fore and aft with their biggest guns as they passed, their object being, if possible, to smash the rudder head, the tiller, tiller ropes and blocks—in fact, to destroy any of the steerage tackle so that the ship might become unmanageable, and thus readily fall into the hands of the privateer.

An Interesting Bit of Seamanship.

Hutchinson remarks that it often happens there is no room to turn a vessel to windward through a crowd of ships, so she has to let the tide drive her through stern first. In Fig. 1 below, the yards are braced sharp up, and she is driving astern to windward. In Fig. 2 the ship is being put on the other tack so as to clear the shore in the bend of the river. In Fig. 3, the tide having slacked, the ship has come to anchor with wind against tide.

One or two devices which have since passed away, but were in use during the eighteenth century, may be mentioned before we pass on. I wonder how many “seamen” now serving on steamships would know what “fothering” meant? It was a device that in the days of the old wooden sailing ships saved both lives and ship on more than one occasion. This was an ingenious means of stopping a leak below the vessel’s water-line when at sea and unable to beach or dry-dock. It was employed at least once during Captain Cook’s voyages at a critical time after the ship had struck on a rock, and the sea was pouring in so fast that the pumps were of little avail. Moore, in his “Midshipman’s Vocabulary,” published in 1805, describes the method as performed by fastening a sail at the four corners, letting it down under the ship’s bottom, and then putting a quantity of chopped rope-yarns, oakum, wool, cotton, etc., between it and the ship’s side. By repeating this operation several times the leak sucks up a portion of the loose stuff, and so the water ceases for the most part to pour into the ship. Hutchinson also mentions that once when cruising the step of their foremast carried away in a gale of wind, and made so great a leak that pumping was little good. They were far from the nearest land, and matters were critical; so they unbent the spritsail, stitched it over one side with oakum, then with ropes to the clews and ear-rings they applied it to the leak, and so effectually stopped the hole that before long the pumps had freed the ship of water.