PLANS OF A SAIL-BOAT.
Now for the blacksmith. Make the rudder-post of iron three-quarters of an inch in diameter, running through gas-pipe, and fastened to the deck and the bottom with collars. (Fig. 7 gives details.) A steel pin through the rudder-post keeps it from falling through. This rests on the collar. The stay irons are screwed to the sides and inside of the oak ribbon; the traveller is fastened to the inside of the stern. Don't forget to put an iron ring on it before it is fastened down. That finishes the iron-work.
Your hull is now done, with the exception of a few minor details. The combing of the cockpit is to be made of half-inch oak three inches high. Nail to the edge of the deck inside. The bitt for the bowsprit to be stepped in runs through the deck and into the keelson. Calk the seams with oakum and white lead, and give the hull a priming coat of paint. Then go ahead and get out your spars. Take the measurements from the side elevation at the bottom of the page. Make the spars of yellow pine. Running rigging, three-eighth-inch Manila rope; standing rigging, half-inch Manila rope. Brass rings on masts; smaller ones on jib-stay. Sails of yacht drill. Two rows of reefing points. Jib-sheets to run through eyelets, then aft to cleats near the stern. Make a spreader for the topmast-stays three feet long; good stiff wire three-sixteenths of an inch will do. Turn an eye at either end, and run stay through it.
Paint the hull black, inside drab, oak ribbon dark red, and beading yellow. If you like, you may put on a water-line. Varnish spars, combing, and deck. As for the latter, you had better paint that buff.
[OUR NINE-POUNDER.]
BY GEORGE H. COOMER.
While I belonged to the whaling bark Hector, cruising in the Gulf of Guinea, and occasionally touching upon the coast, there would now and then come to our knowledge some incident connected with the slave-trade, and more than once our curiosity was excited by the sight of suspicious vessels.
We learned, among other things, that the most notorious craft of the slaver fleet was a Brazilian brig called the Dom Pedro, having a crew of seventy men, with a pivot twenty-four-pounder and four carronades.
Time after time this brig had been chased by the English cruisers, yet always escaped; and it was very evident that she must have poured golden fortunes into the hands of a number of unscrupulous individuals at Rio Janeiro.