The tiller of iron-wood was well wedged into the rudder-head. Of course any joggling or slackness here is like a broken front tooth, or a loose steel pen. No plan that I heard of, or saw, or could devise yet, is entirely satisfactory for enabling the tiller to be set fast in a moment, at any angle, and yet to be perfectly free in ordinary times. I used a large piece of rough cork as a wedge to set the tiller, and a cord loop at each side of the gunwale, to keep it “hard down” when going about. At night, to stop the vibration of the rudder, I knocked in a brass wedge between its head and the iron bushing of the rudder hole.
Every bit of iron above water was galvanized; but this operation weakens small pieces of iron unless it is carefully done. However, the only part which carried away was my small anchor-stock, and this took place at the first cast of it into the Thames.
Such is the Rob Roy yawl, of 4 tons register, and the map (about 70 pages farther on) shews the general course of her first sea voyage by a dotted line, but many a long mile of zigzag had to be sailed besides.
CHAPTER XV.
Ducklings—Victoria Park—Yachtsmen—Cowes—Floating family—The ‘Zara’—Lifeboats—Wrecked—Mop—An odd story—The law of anchors—Experiments—The Royal yacht.
Medina Dock is the place to see all sorts of ships and boats for steam, sailing, or rowing, lifeboats, rafts, and models. The basin is full of broken-backed men-of-war whose old black bones are being disjointed and dragged asunder here to make strong knees again, just because they are black and well seasoned. Alongside the quay we had seen the three American yachts, which came across the Atlantic amid many English cheers for the vessels of two hundred tons crossing from New York, while we scarcely record the voyages of our own hundred-ton vessels that have often sailed to Australia.
In Mr. White’s garden there are Chinese junks and catamarans afloat in a pond, and even the walls around are not allowed to be quite of dry land, being painted with sea soundings and charts of the neighbouring coasts. This may indeed be called the Admiralty of the yacht fleet, and Cowes is its Portsmouth.
“Nauta nascitur non fit,” which is in English, “British boys are ducklings born to the water.”
Now many of these have affectionate parents not web-footed, and the filial duty of a little duck to the motherly hen is a very difficult question of conscience when a pond is near; but then there is no positive need to boat, while there is a positive command to obey. This ought to solve the question with all brave loving boys, who are manly enough to obey the woman dearest on earth to them.
A little vessel two feet long may be called a toy ship, but it is a toy that can teach much to an Admiral, and I should not like to have as my comrade on a voyage the man of forty who can pass the Serpentine without a glance at the little ragged urchin there, who is half in the water himself while he reaches with a twig his tiny lugger after its long voyage across the lake among ducks, and row-boats, and billows two inches high.