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Updated: June 9, 2025
Having scrutinised the exterior of my new command to my heart's content, we went alongside and boarded her. Her gangway was open; and so little freeboard did she show at this point Carline measured it and found it to be exactly four-feet that we were able to spring from the boat's gunwale to the schooner's deck without difficulty, and without the need for a side-ladder.
One of them was her own, a heavy white boat, carvel built, with high freeboard. Four men sat in her, resting on their oars. The other seven were island boats, gaily painted red and green, high prowed, high sterned. The biggest of them had a mast stepped right forward, a mast which raked steeply aft, across which lay the yard of a lateen sail. Six oarsmen sat in her.
She was flush-decked, and sat high in the water, with a freeboard of nearly five feet. A little forward of amidships was a small deck cabin containing a brass wheel and binnacle. Aft of the cabin, in the middle of the open space of the deck, was a skylight, the top of which formed two short seats placed back to back.
She was designed by Captain Schanck, one of the naval transport commissioners, and when she sailed from Portsmouth to begin her survey service in Australia, she was so deeply laden for her size that she had less than three feet of freeboard. He has much to say on the subject of sliding keels, for which see his Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery.
It is said that if you wanted a bunch of men to run a little river steamer, with a freeboard of six inches, out to Delagoa Bay, you could engage them all at this corner, or at the taverns just up the turning. The suggestion of such a voyage, in such a ship, would turn us to look on these men in wonder, for it is the way of all but the wise to expect appearance to betray admirable qualities.
Turtle being wanted, the blacks voyage out each in a bark canoe, which weighs about 40 lbs., is 8 feet long, 2 feet beam and 1 foot deep midships, where the sides are much depressed, leaving little more than an inch of freeboard. There is a good sheer forward and a slight tilt at the stern, while the bottom is level. Occasionally two men fit themselves into a canoe of the dimensions given.
Nearer in, a cargo boat was standing out upon the long trail, the white of riven waters showing clearly against her unclean freeboard. Out to east a little covey of fishing-smacks, red sails well reefed, were scudding before the wind like strange affrighted water-fowl, and bearing down past a heavy-laden river barge.
This night a palpable cloud had settled upon the face of the waters and I could not even see the foam on the crests of the waves, save where they ran past the sloop's freeboard. I had left the broken slide open, however, and the rain was beating down into the cabin.
And away we went. The wind had increased, and with slacked sheets we ran off before it. The freeboard of the canoe was no more than two and a half inches, and the little waves continually lapped over the side. This required bailing. Now bailing is one of the principal functions of the vahine.
The alacrity with which the order to stow sails and raise the funnel was obeyed every one lending a hand and the delight expressed on every countenance, must have assured him of at least the popularity of his decision. Whilst we were waiting for steam to be got up, Tom took Muriel and me for a row in the 'Flash, his own particular little boat, with about four inches of freeboard.
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