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Captain Jonathan Haraden, the finest privateersman of the Revolution, made the rigging for the mainmast at his ropewalk in Brown Street. Joseph Vincent fitted out the foremast and Thomas Briggs the mizzenmast in their lofts at the foot of the Common. When the huge hemp cables were ready for the frigate, the workmen carried them to the shipyard on their shoulders, the parade led by fife and drum.
They were still more damaged in a succeeding tempest; in which the ship sprung her foremast. In this crippled state they had to traverse seven hundred leagues of a stormy ocean. Fortune continued to persecute Columbus to the end of this, his last and most disastrous expedition.
"Most surely it is," he replied, astonished at the question. "Then," pointing to the red ensign floating at the top of the foremast, "why does the Moltke fly the British colors?" "The British flag at our foremast indicates that this ship is bound for a port that belongs to Great Britain," explained the mate.
So Dick Sand prepared to put the "Pilgrim" under full sail. In a schooner brig-rigged, the foremast carries four square sails; the foresail, on the lower mast; above, the top-sail, on the topmast; then, on the top-gallant mast, a top-sail and a royal. The mainmast, on the contrary, has fewer sails. It only carries a brigantine below, and a fore-staffsail above.
And now the fore-part alone remained a piece of deck, the stump of the foremast, and five men clinging in a tangle of cordage, struggling up and toppling back as each successive sea soused over them.
We are busily engaged in clearing away the wreck of our foremast, and as soon as that is done and the ship is once more under command, I give you my word, upon the honour of a Spaniard, that we will return to the anchorage." "The honour of a Spaniard!" retorted George, contemptuously. "How much is that worth, after the specimen of it which you have given me this night?
But one day a schooner came drifting into Lewes harbor shattered, wounded, her forecastle splintered, her foremast shot half away, and three great tattered holes in her mainsail. The mate with one of the crew came ashore in the boat for help and a doctor. He reported that the captain and the cook were dead and there were three wounded men aboard.
My eyes swept from group to group the four toiling at the cover of the main hatch; the fellows racing toward the forecastle; and Watkins' squad driving straight into the grouped watch beyond the foremast.
The bowsprit was but little injured, and the cordage of that and of the foremast was there, and the shrouds all of which had been replaced by old Mugford, who, having made the wreck his residence by my father's wishes, restored to it some of the grace and order the good brig possessed before misfortune overtook her, and now it looked fit for either a sailor or a landsman a curious mongrel, half ship, half house.
His position at first was little better than that of a foremast hand, but it was not long before the captain noticed the lad's smartness and keen attention to his duties, and very soon he called him to the quarterdeck and made him fore-midshipman. The captain advised the first lieutenant to keep an eye on the boy and occasionally to let him have charge of manoeuvering the vessel.
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