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Updated: June 16, 2025
Shoals of albicore were darting across the bows of the different ships; and the seamen perched upon the cat-heads and spritsail-yard, had succeeded in piercing with their harpoons many, which were immediately cut up, and in the frying-pans for breakfast.
The masts had been lowered. On the cat-heads hung the anchors weighted with stone to fend off an enemy, astern towed the pinnace ready to drag alongside and break the force of the hostile ram. The heavy-armed marines stood with their long boarding spears, to lead an attack or cast off grappling-irons. But the true weapon of the Nausicaä was herself.
Her courses were again hauled up, and discovered her lee fore-rigging, bowsprit, cat-heads, and forecastle, crowded with men ready for the dash on board, as soon as the vessels should come in contact Newton stood on one of the forecastle guns surrounded by his men; not a word was spoken on board of the Windsor Castle, as they watched their advancing enemy.
At Yarmouth, foreign freights, berthing, rails, cat-heads, lower cheeks, wooden bolsters, and the crown, palm, and shank of anchors. At Shelburne, it is divided between fish, lumber, and the price of vessels. At Liverpool, ship-building, deals, and timber, knees, transums, and futtucks, pintles, keelsons, and moose lines.
I had a dim recollection of reading something in Cooper's novels about a ship's deadheads and cat's eyes, or cat-heads and deadeyes, I could not remember which, and, determined not to be ignored as an inexperienced landlubber, I gazed in a vague way into the rigging, and made a few very general observations upon the nature of deadeyes and spanker-booms.
To its perfection its size bears witness, for there is no other appliance so small for the great work it has to do. Look at the anchors hanging from the cat-heads of a big ship! How tiny they are in proportion to the great size of the hull! Were they made of gold they would look like trinkets, like ornamental toys, no bigger in proportion than a jewelled drop in a woman's ear.
The cat-heads had burned away, and the two red-hot anchors had gone to the bottom, tearing out after them two hundred fathom of red-hot chain. The ship trembled, the mass of flame swayed as if ready to collapse, and the fore top-gallant-mast fell.
But the Orpheus was in faded blue dungarees, and played a fiddle, and leaned against a rusty, red capstan saw it from the jib-boom of the Mjolna fishing bonita looked back, and there they all were, the same to-day as they were in olden days, I expect, men and boys, salt and sun-bitten sea-farers, lolling on the cat-heads and anchors.
Shoals of albicore were darting across the bows of the different ships; and the seamen perched upon the cat-heads and spritsail-yard, had succeeded in piercing with their harpoons many, which were immediately cut up, and in the frying-pans for breakfast.
As all our readers may not be familiar with ships, it may be well to say that vessels, as soon as they quit a coast on a long voyage, unbend their cables and send them all below, out of the way, while, at the same time, they stow their anchors, as it is called; that is to say, get them from under the cat-heads, from which they are usually suspended when ready to let go, and where they are necessarily altogether on the outside of the vessel, to positions more inboard, where they are safer from the force of the waves, and better secured.
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