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Updated: May 16, 2025
It was assumed, as late as 1840, that the wooden sailing ship would continue to be the supreme type of deep-water vessel because the United States possessed the greatest stores of timber, the most skillful builders and mechanics, and the ablest merchant navigators. No industry was ever more efficiently organized and conducted. American ships were most in demand and commanded the highest freights.
It is in form like a deep bowl whose outer rim is made by Georges Bank and Browns Bank, with a narrow, deep-water spillway between: its area is half encircled in the arms of the mainland, two conspicuous headlands reaching bodily seaward to mark its wide entrance at the opposite sides Cape Cod, Mass. on the western side, and Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, on the eastern flank, distant from each other about 230 miles.
The easternmost extremity of the island between which and the barrier reef the deep-water passage lay was a bold headland thickly overgrown with tall and stately forest trees, and terminating in a rocky cliff about one hundred and fifty feet high, that dipped sheer down into the sea; and beyond this, to the northward, the coast-line curved inward somewhat to the most northerly point on the island, forming what might almost be termed a shallow bay shallow, that is to say, in point of depth of itself, but not of its depth of water, for the whole north-easterly coast-line of the island consisted of precipitous cliffs averaging about a hundred feet in height, with water enough alongside to float the biggest ship that was ever launched, if one might judge from its colour.
Then some deep-water sailor, from the waist of the ship, lifted a rich tenor voice in the "Song of the Trade Wind": "Oh, I am the wind the seamen love I am steady, and strong, and true; They follow my track by the clouds above, O'er the fathomless tropic blue.
The greater part of this lagoon was evidently very shallow, for dotted about here and there were to be seen partially submerged trunks of trees and other debris that appeared to have been swept down into their present position by some bygone flood, and had ultimately grounded on the mud; but there was just sufficient current and wind to reveal a deep-water channel of about two hundred yards wide, running in a fairly straight line through the lagoon toward its most distant extremity.
Fort Vancouver, on the site of the old Hudson Bay trading post, is practically at the head of deep-water navigation upon the Columbia, but there seems to be no particular reason why trade should centre here, and this town also has been left behind in the march of progress.
Hence, he must actually guess his way, with something of the acquired sense of the blind, because the slight chance of ultimate escape for the ship and her occupants rested wholly on the assumption that some ocean by-way was leading her to a deep-water inlet, where it might be possible to drop the anchor. In eighteen minutes, or thereabouts, the needle moved slightly.
When she saw the strange man beside him she stopped short and averted her face, not before observing that Rackby might have passed for Peter's father. "Not so shy not so shy," murmured Deep-water Peter, as if she had been a wild filly coming up to his hand. "She cannot hear you," Rackby interposed. The gleam of triumph in his eye was plain. "Can't hear?" "Neither speak nor hear."
What a strange thing is the end of a deep-water voyage! Men who have been living together for months through suffering and hardship will go over the ship's side with a cheery farewell. They may meet for a few moments at the office to draw their pay, and then take a drink all around. That is all. They seldom see or hear of each other again.
All the work of rigging, sail-making, scraping, painting, and keeping a ship in perfect repair was done in port instead of at sea, as was the habit in the China and California clippers, and the lore and training of the real deep-water sailor became superfluous. The crew of a packet made sail or took it in with the two-fisted mates to show them how.
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