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She was planked right up to her covering-board, and while one strong gang of workmen was busy fitting her bulwarks, another gang, upon stages, was hard at work caulking her, a third gang under her bottom, having apparently just commenced the operation of coppering.
Farther on, the dry docks, where large vessels were laid low on their sides till their yards dipped in the water; they were singed with thorn-bushes to free them of sea weed; there rose an odour of pitch, and the deafening clatter of the sheathers coppering the bottoms with broad sheets of yellow metal.
When to these we add, the coppering of ships, which was first practised about the year 1761, and other improvements in their built and rigging, we have enumerated the chief causes which enable a vessel to reach the East Indies in two-thirds of the time which was occupied in such a voyage half a century ago.
That day's work I considered the real starting point of something like a new existence. Having finished this job and got my pay for the same, I went next in pursuit of a job at calking. It so happened that Mr. Rodney French, late mayor of the city of New Bedford, had a ship fitting out for sea, and to which there was a large job of calking and coppering to be done.
The French ships, larger, deeper, and with better lines than their opponents, were naturally better sailers, and it may be inferred that even coppering had not entirely overcome this original disadvantage of the British.
The practice of coppering, though then fully adopted, had not yet been extended to all vessels. As an element of speed, it was an important factor on an occasion like this, when time pressed to get to the West Indies; as it also was in an engagement. The action on the 16th had been opened by the coppered ships of the line, which first overtook the retreating enemy and brought his rear to battle.
On his return he found that the instrument had lost only 1 minute, 54 and a half seconds. This year also the experiment for coppering ships' bottoms as a preservation against worms was introduced into the Royal Navy, and tried on the Alarm frigate, of 32 guns. Another act of humanity deserves to be recorded.
The remaining solution is the coppering solution; should it not be convenient to separate the yellow prussiate by crystallization, the presence of that salt in the solution does not deteriorate it nor interfere with its power of depositing copper.
Patteson had been left at Lifu, the vessel when entering Port-au-France, New Caledonia, had come upon a coral reef, and the damage done to her sheathing was so serious that though she returned to Auckland from that trip, she could not sail again without fresh coppering; and as copper had to be brought from Sydney for the purpose, there was considerable delay before she could set forth again, so that it was not till the last day of September that she gladdened Patteson's eyes, and brought the long- desired tidings from home.
Rodney French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen, distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ me, and I might go at once to the vessel.
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