The pictures explain some more words Jim had to learn. A pier or a wharf is a platform sticking out into the water. Ships tie up alongside it. Seamen sometimes call a pier a dock, but a dock is really the water between piers.
A hatch or hatchway is an opening in the deck of a vessel. People can go down a hatch, and so can cargo. Big strong poles called booms raise and lower cargo through hatches. Booms are attached to single masts on some ships; on others, to pairs of posts called king posts or Samson posts or goal posts. When seamen fasten heavy layers of canvas over the hatches, they say they “batten down the hatches.”
Backstay, stay and shroud are all wire ropes that brace the masts. The poop deck is a deck at the stern. Taffrail is the rail around the stern. The taffrail log is a kind of speedometer that tells how far the ship has travelled. It is made up of a line attached to a little propeller which measures miles as it is dragged through the water.
The beam is the widest part of a ship. The keel is the lowest part. The bilge is the low, rounded bottom of the ship. Any water that seeps into a ship collects there and has to be pumped out. Ballast is a weight of some sort, low in a ship to balance her or keep her down in the water so her propellers can work when she has no cargo. Draft is the depth of water needed to float a vessel. When Jim says his ship “draws twelve feet,” he means the keel is twelve feet under water when she is loaded.
OTHER JOBS
A sailor knows how to do many things besides stand lookout and steer. If a line breaks, he can mend it by splicing the ends together with a tool called a marlinspike. If lines wear thin, he puts in new ones—and lines are needed in a great many places on even the most modern ships.