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Updated: June 25, 2025
We could hardly believe that some of the ships we saw were fit to go to sea. The most remarkable was the Devastation. Her free-board that is, the upper part of her sides is only a few feet above the water. Amidships rises a round structure supporting what is called "a hurricane-deck." This is the only spot where the officers and men can stand in a sea-way.
We were now heading about a point off the edge of the outer line of heavy breakers, and as the Bess had the least free-board of any ship of her size sailing the trades, she was soon carrying on her deck her full allowance of loose water. Amidships, when she lay quietly to anchor, a long-armed man could lean over her rail and all but touch his fingers in the sea.
Our nineteen-foot canvas-covered freight canoe, a type especially built for the purpose on deep, full lines with high free-board, weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds and would carry a ton of cargo with ease and also take it safely where the same cargo distributed among two or three native thirty or thirty-five foot canoes would be lost.
They played havoc with the frail canoes. Their solid construction, their higher free-board, that is, the height they were above the water-line, the armor of their crews and the fact that the wind happened to be favorable and they could sail instead of row that morning, all contributed to the utter and complete destruction of the Indian flotilla. Canoes were splintered and sunk.
In another instant the rowers shipped their oars and the gunwale scraped along the free-board of the schooner. "A guinea to the first man up!" cried Job, himself reaching up with powerful fingers for a grip by which to climb.
Because her mast was so far aft, her forefoot so deep and narrow, her helm so insufficient, that but for this gigantic sprit she would never come round, and even as it was she hung in stays and had to have her weather jib-sheet hauled in for about five minutes before she would come round. So much for the sprit. This is not all, nor nearly all. She had about six inches of free-board.
She drew about three feet of water, and they calculated that when they had got the ballast, stores, and water on board she would sink another foot, and would then have three feet of free-board. They had already laid in a large stock of pork, which they had salted, obtaining the salt by filling pools in the rock with salt water, which was replenished as fast as it evaporated.
The two days of working on the Good Turn were two days of fun. It was not necessary to caulk her lower seams for the dampness of the marsh had kept them tight, and the seams above were easy. They did not bother about following the water-line and painting her free-board white; a coat of copper paint over the whole hull sufficed.
So did, from to time, the barangayans, or native river-boats, huge, clumsy, ill-built, and generally with but four or five inches of free-board amidships on full load. These craft look as though they ought to sink by mere capillary attraction. However, people are born, live, and die aboard of them, so they must be safe enough.
Inside reigns the calm of untroubled water, whereon a canoe like ours can sail with no more than a couple of inches of free-board. We flew over the water. And such water! clear as the clearest spring-water, and crystalline in its clearness, all intershot with a maddening pageant of colours and rainbow ribbons more magnificently gorgeous than any rainbow.
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