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It is durable and if lost can be readily replaced from the forest by good men with axes and adzes. But, because of its great weight and low free-board, it is unsuitable as a freight carrier and by reason of the limitations of its construction is not of the correct form to successfully run the rapid and bad waters of many of the South American rivers.
The bay of Puno grows quantities of totoras, giant bulrushes sometimes twelve feet long. Ages ago the lake dwellers learned to dry the totoras, tie them securely in long bundles, fasten the bundles together, turn up the ends, fix smaller bundles along the sides as a free-board, and so construct a fishing-boat, or balsa.
The result was the Ann McKim, of nearly five hundred tons, the first Yankee clipper ship, and distinguished as such by her long, easy water-lines, low free-board, and raking stem. She was built and finished without regard to cost, copper-sheathed, the decks gleaming with brasswork and mahogany fittings.
Their free-board had been raised by planking-in the lower deck, and thus these frail vessels had sailed their long and stormy voyage truly a notable feat. It did not pay to hold goods very long. Eastern shippers seemed, by a curious unanimity, to send out many consignments of the same scarcity. The result was that the high prices of today would be utterly destroyed by an oversupply of tomorrow.
She also was schooner-rigged, a trifle larger than the Royal James, but without the latter's height of mast. Her low free-board indicated that she was heavily cargoed. No gunports could be seen along her sides.
There is no small free-board to Janet McPhee, nor is garance any subdued tint; and with all this unexplained pride and glory in the air I felt like watching fireworks without knowing the festival. McPhee gets it from a Dutchman in Java, and I think he doctors it with liqueurs. But the crown of the feast was some Madeira of the kind you can only come by if you know the wine and the man.
It had, however, been noticed by some that the vessel was about a foot and a half deeper in the water than she should have been that her free-board, in a word, instead of being eight feet above the water, as was designed, was only six feet six inches; and it needs but a very slight knowledge of marine matters to understand how this difference would materially prejudice the stability of such a vessel as the Captain.
There are many kinds of canoes, from the simple dug-out, with scarcely any free-board, to the pakerangan, a boat the construction of which is confined to only two rivers in North Borneo. It is built up of planks fastened together by wooden pegs, carvel fashion, on a small keel, or lunas. It is sharp at both ends, has very good lines, is a good sea boat and well adapted for crossing river bars.
But here and there, a long way off, little lines began to show, which were indeed broad spaces of ruffled water, seen edgeways from the low free-board of my boat. These joined and made a surface all the way out towards me, but a surface not yet revealed for what it was, nor showing the movement and life and grace of waves.
The free-board amidships is still higher, being at this point level with the platform on which the two turrets are placed. In the centre of the ship rises a circular iron erection, on the top of which is the hurricane-deck. Through this structure runs a passage, in which are situated the entrances to the hatchways and to the hurricane-deck overhead.
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