Sea life in Nelson's time

by John Masefield

The keel or backbone of the ship, the first wood to be placed in position, was “laid down” upon oak blocks distant some four or five feet from each other. The keel was generally of thick elm timbers, placed lengthways, which were “scarfed together,” bolted and clinched at the sides. Under this keel, and to each side of it, in some ships, was placed a false keel of elm, lightly secured by copper staples. This false keel protected the main keel if the ship grounded. On this backbone or groundwork the hull of the ship was built.

Much of the oak used in the building of the ships was grown in England in the royal forests—such as the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, and the New Forest in Hampshire. The oak was very costly, for the service required the very best wood. It could not be, or should not have been, used for a year after cutting, for it needed to be seasoned before being handled by the shipwrights. On coming to the yards it was stacked for some months in sheds, in various positions, according to its future use, to allow it to season. Much of it was pickled, or boiled in a kiln for many hours, to allow the workmen to bend it to the frame of the ship. In times of stress much of it was used green—not properly seasoned.

The ships were built in the open air, and it was the custom to allow the frame or skeleton of every ship to stand exposed to all the airts “for a twelvemonth or a little more,” before any timbers were placed across her ribs. It was thought that this exposure seasoned the oak of the frame. As a matter of fact, the constant wettings and warpings, from rain and sun, set up decay in the exposed wood, so that many ships had begun to rot “before a plank was put on.” Some, indeed, were as green as grass with mildew and fungus before the timbers were fitted. The general life of a ship in those days, built under these conditions, was only eight or nine years. Few lasted so long “without great repairs equal almost to their first cost.” Many rotted to pieces after a few months at sea. In 1812 a fine three-decker, which had seen no hard sea service, was condemned as rotten a year after she was launched.

The timbers of these ships were secured to the uprights of the frames by long wooden pins, of oak or pitch-pine, known as tree-nails. The use of tree-nails was reckoned “a great cause of decay,” but custom and thrift prescribed them. They were most insecure, as fastenings, for they were liable to shrink, so as to admit water to the middle of the plank. The plank when once wetted began to rot, and the shrunken tree-nail rotted with it, till at last the wooden bolt dropped from its hole, and the water obtained free admission. In those ships in which American oak had been used the decay set in more quickly than in other cases. These ships used to strain their seams or timbers open, ever so slightly, in heavy weather, admitting water to the cracks. The wood so wetted began to develop dry-rot or fungus from the moment the water penetrated its fibres. Both fungus and dry-rot spread with strange rapidity when once it had established itself, and a ship so attacked had either to be pulled to pieces, so that the rotting oak could be removed, or broken up as useless.

To build a 74-gun ship, or third-rate (the most general rate employed in our navy), of about 1700 tons, nearly 2000 oak-trees were needed. Half of this number—perhaps a little more than half—were English grown. The other moiety was foreign oak, “very good for the ship bottoms, under water,” but less lasting than the English kind. The foreign oak was sometimes American—and very subject to dry-rot—and sometimes from Silesia and Dantzic. An attempt was made to introduce cedar and scarlet logwood from Honduras, but the project failed, through the bankruptcy of the contractor. Fir was tried, at one time, for small ships of war, but it was too weak, and too little lasting, to be used for great ships. It was reckoned that a ship could be built for from £25 to £30 per ton, the actual cost of the oak being, on an average, about £7 per ton—a price much exceeded in the years subsequent to the death of Nelson.

When the ship was planked over and caulked she was sheathed below her water-line, to protect her timber from the teredo worm. Oak was very subject to the teredo, and many ships were practically eaten through, year after year, until 1758. In that year, a 32-gun frigate, H.M.S. Alarm, was sheathed with thin sheets of copper, against which the teredo worm was powerless. It was found that the copper also prevented the formation of barnacles and other filth which used to accumulate, many inches thick, on the bottoms of ships not coppered, impeding their way through the sea by several knots an hour. The first experiments with copper were not wholly satisfactory, for the copper corroded the heads of all the iron bolts with which it came in contact. This was remedied to some extent by the use of a thin sheath of fir wood, which kept the copper from direct contact with the oak and the iron bolts. In 1783 iron bolts were abolished, and copper bolts, or bolts with copper heads, were substituted. After this, copper-sheathing became general throughout the navy and the merchant-service. The copper of condemned ships was stripped from the hulks at Portsmouth, and melted in a furnace, to clean it. It was then hammered out into sheets and used again. As a rule, brown paper was inserted between the oak of the ship’s bottom and the sheets of copper.

Before the introduction of copper many experiments had been tried to keep out the teredo worm. Sheet-lead had been found too heavy, and not very efficacious. A layer of pitch, covered with successive layers of brown paper, tar, short hair, and thin deal plank, had been found effectual, if costly. A thin sheath of deal over the oak was better than nothing, for it took the worms some little while to get through to the oak, as they cared less for deal than for any other wood they attacked. A packing of lime, or a thorough washing with lime, was found to keep them away. There were also preparations of tar and tallow, and arrangements of hides and chemicals, which had their merits and demerits. Copper replaced all of these, though there was some little grumbling at the cost at the time of its first introduction.

As soon as a ship was built, sheathed, and launched, she was brought alongside a sheer-hulk, an old man-of-war cut down to her lower gun-deck. A sheer-hulk was fitted with a single mast in midships, to which was attached “an apparatus consisting of sheers, tackles, etc., to heave out or in the lower masts of His Majesty’s ships.” The “Establishment,” or Admiralty scale, gave minute instructions as to the length and size of every spar to be supplied to each rate. A stock of masts was kept at each dockyard in a vat of pickle known as a mast-pond. For great ships, and indeed for nearly all the rates in the navy, the lower masts were “built,” or “made,” of two or more pieces of fir strongly hooped together with iron hoops. When a ship came alongside a sheer-hulk her lower masts and bowsprit were hoisted into her and stepped. The fore-mast was stepped at a distance of one-ninth the length of the lower gun-deck from the stem of the ship. The main-mast was stepped in the centre of the ship, or a little abaft the centre. The mizzen-mast was distant from the bow about seventeen-twentieths of the length of the lower gun-deck. The heels of all three masts were stepped or fixed in strong wooden sockets, or mortises, known as tenons, at the bottom of the ship’s hold. These mortises or tenons were of oak, and the timbers which formed them lay across the keelson, or inner part of the keel. The bowsprit “steeved” or raked upwards at an angle of about thirty-six degrees with the horizon. The masts, as a rule, raked or inclined slightly aft, but the rake of a ship’s mast was sometimes altered to suit her sailing. Some ships sailed better with their masts stayed forward, or stayed plumb, without rake.

When the lower masts and bowsprit were stepped and secured the ship received her rigging from the rigging-loft. Her lower rigging was then set up by master-riggers, helped by the marines and standing officers. The shrouds and stays which secured the masts were made of hempen rope, “three-strand shroud laid,” tarred on the outside, but not within the lay of the rope. Wire rope, which is now used for nearly all standing rigging, was then unknown. When the lower rigging was all set up, and the rigging of the bowsprit finished, the jibboom and top-masts were sent aloft and rigged. When these were finished the flying jibboom and topgallant and royal masts were sent up and rigged, after which the ship’s standing rigging was complete. The stays, the strong ropes which supported the masts forward, were always doubled.

When the standing rigging was complete, the yards, on which the square-sails set, were crossed on their respective masts. The yards were of fir, the lower yards being “made,” or built, of more than one piece of timber. The upper yards were fashioned from single trees. Some captains of Nelson’s time slung their lower yards with chain, a custom which in time became general. As a rule, however, the lower yards were slung with stout rope. The rig was practically that in use at the time of the abolition of sailing ships in the Royal Navy in the early sixties. There were, however, various differences. The sprit-sail, a square-sail on the bowsprit, setting from a yard underneath that spar, was still in use. The sail was not abolished until about 1810, while the yard, or a relic of it, remained for many years later, though no sail was set upon it. On the mizzen-mast the spanker or driver was not set upon a gaff and boom, but on a great lateen yard, pointing fore and aft, its lower and forward arm reaching down to a little above the wheel. Ships with these lateen “cross-jacks” were to be seen almost at the end of the eighteenth century. No ships carried sails above their royals, the fourth square-sail from the deck. Stay-sails were set between the masts, and studding-sails at the extremities of the yards. Perhaps the last change in rigging which Nelson saw was the introduction of the flying jib, and its boom, at the extremity of the bowsprit.