Section III.—Improvements and Inventions.
We have had occasion, in the course of our memorial records, to describe several important inventions or improvements of my Father’s in connection with his professional occupations. There remain yet to be mentioned a variety of other contributions, of a like order, to Greenland apparatus or operations pertaining to the fishery, and also to objects of public consideration generally.
As to whale-fishing apparatus and operations, his contributions in the form of new contrivances and improvements were numerous, and, many of them, of considerable importance. These, we shall not attempt to describe in any measure of detail, but chiefly in the manner of notices.
In the stowage of his ship, for the economising of space and facilitating the depositing of cargo, his improvements were valuable.
His casks he had built on a plan adapted for the accurate filling of the space in the “hold,” comprising special deviations from the general size and form in the introduction of large “leagers” for the midships (on the kelson), adjusted, in length, to the exact spaces of the stantions of the hold beams, as also of narrow, short, or irregularly formed casks for the extremities of the hold, fore and aft.
The deck on the hold beams, instead of being laid, as usual, in a continuous series of planks, was cut up into hatches, and laid level betwixt the beams, so as, whilst forming a flat and even platform when laid down, to open out the hold, on the removal of the hatch-like planking, without other incumbrance against the stowing and filling of the casks beneath, except the naked beams and their essential fastenings.
In the suspension of the boats, with regard to facility in lowering or hoisting, as well as for safety, his improvements were of great importance.
It had been the practice in whale ships’ equipments, to suspend the boats, usually seven in number, in double tiers at both quarters, one at the “waist,” on each side, and one over the stern. The arrangements for these objects were at once clumsy and incommodious. In place of the huge lofty beams across the quarter-deck, from the extremities of which were suspended the four “quarter boats,” my Father substituted compact, but lofty oak “davits,” which, with their associate “skids” (upright timbers against which the sides of the boats press and slide), were removable when not required. For the double tier at the quarters, he substituted an additional length of boats over the main chains, thus constituting an even running series of three lengths of boats, having the advantage of great facility in being lowered or hoisted, as well as a much improved security against accidents in the passing of hummocks of ice, or from the sea in gales of wind, to which the lower quarter-boats, on the old plan of suspension, were frequently exposed.
In fishing and other apparatus, my Father made various improvements. In the harpoon, the improvement consisted mainly in the mode of keeping it in condition for use,—bright and clean as well as sharp; but in the lance he altered the form of the blade, which had usually been sharp-pointed and only moderately hardened, for a somewhat rounded point and a better quality of steel with greater hardness,—the advantage of which was, that if striking against a bone, the point was not liable to be fixed by its deep penetration, nor to be turned up or broken, as often happened, by the collision.
Some of the “flensing” apparatus, and one or two of the instruments used in “making-off” the blubber, he variously modified and improved, substituting for some very clumsy contrivances employed in the latter operation, compact and well-adapted instruments.