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Updated: May 7, 2025
The fellows, by this time quite sober, and fully alive to the perils of their situation, needed no second bidding, but sprang about the deck with all the eager, impetuous haste of men fighting for their lives; and in less time than I could have believed possible they had bowsed out the reef-tackles and were in the fore rigging, on their way aloft to complete the operation of reefing the fore-topsail.
Having got everything secure again, we were promising ourselves some breakfast, for it was now nearly nine o'clock in the forenoon, when the main topsail showed evident signs of giving way. These we bent on very carefully, with strong robands and seizings, and, making tackles fast to the clews, bowsed them down to the water-ways.
It soon became evident that the anchor had fairly begun to rise off the ground, for the buoy-rope, which at first had been bowsed taught over the stern of our launch, became quite slack. I forget how many successive efforts were made by the natives before the anchor was lifted; but, in the end, it certainly was raised completely off the ground by their exertions alone.
In order to fill the contract at the time fixed, Samuel Peabody found it necessary to cruise the woods over a wide area selecting trees that grew not far from the banks of the streams which might be "bowsed in" by oxen with block and tackle. In consequence of the competition with Mr.
The breechings of the guns on each deck were bowsed up and the side tackle falls hove taut and frapped, with preventer tackles rigged and secured round the brackets at the after part of the carriages and hooked to the ring-bolts in the ship's side; all the guns' crews assisting in this task, and the marines and idlers tailing on to the falls and hauling away at the sound of the boatswain's pipe and only stopping pulling at the order being given "Avast heaving!"
I shan't have very wide swing with Peters over me, but I'll see that the boys don't get abused when he's bowsed up his jib. No right to speak before, but now I won't stand it. 'That sounds mysteriously awful; could I ask what nautical torture "bowsing jibs" is? asked Mrs Jo, in a tone of deep interest. 'Getting drunk.
When the men had dined, Spike brought one of his purchases to the windlass, and the other to the capstan, though not until each was bowsed taut by hand; a few minutes having brought the strain so far on everything, as to enable a seaman, like Spike, to form some judgment of the likelihood that his preventers and purchases would stand.
The English lieutenant, who was tolerably bowsed up, took his seat behind the cabin table, while the men came down, and stood in the companion-way passage, to be overhauled. Most of the foreigners had gone in the boat, but two of the Americans that remained were uncommonly fine-looking men, and were both prime seamen.
When this was arranged, and the ways greased upon which the book was to slide, the falls of the tackles were stretched forward, and all hands tallied on, and bowsed away upon them until the book was well entered, when these tackles were nippered, straps and toggles clapped upon the falls, and two more luff tackles hooked on, with dogs, in the same manner; and thus, by luff upon luff, the power was multiplied, until into a pile in which one hide more could not be crowded by hand a hundred or a hundred and fifty were often driven by this complication of purchases.
The ship shot handsomely up into the wind; and the word was given to "raise tacks and sheets," quickly followed by the other commands; and in a couple of minutes the Flying Cloud was round and heading well up for the wreck, whilst the crew bowsed down the fore and main tacks simultaneously with the aid of a couple of watch tackles.
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