United States or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The news that an expedition was at hand was soon circulated through the ship, and all the men had taken their cutlasses from the capstan to get them ready for action. The fighting boats' crews, without orders, were busy with their boats, some cutting up old blankets to muffle the oars, others making new grummets.
By the time he was ready, Bob returned with a load of loam, and, on the next outward voyage, the raft was taken as well as the dingui. Mark had fitted pins and grummets, by which the raft was rowed, he and Bob impelling it, when light, very easily at the rate of two miles in the hour. Mark found Betts's deposit of decayed vegetable matter even larger and more accessible than he had hoped for.
The shut were put into the bottom of the boats; and so far they were all ready. The oars of the boats were fitted to pull with grummets upon iron thole-pins, that they might make little noise, and might swing fore and aft without falling overboard, when the boats pulled alongside the privateer.
The rowers sit upon high thwarts and their oars are held by grummets, or rings made of rope, to pins inserted in the gunwale, so that they can be let go and resumed at pleasure, without risk of being lost.
The able seamen, or oldest and most experienced hands, did duty about the decks and guns, in the setting up and preservation of the rigging, and in the trimming of the braces, sheets, and bowlines. The ordinary seamen, younkers, grummets, and ship-boys, did the work aloft, furled and loosed the sails, and did the ordinary, never-ceasing work of sailors.
The news that an expedition was at hand was soon circulated through the ship, and all the men had taken their cutlasses from the capstern to get them ready for action. The lighting boats' crews, without orders, were busy with their boats, some cutting up old blankets to muffle the oars, other making new grummets.
The inside of the boat was hollowed out by fire, with the help of the Indians, who were very expert at the management of the flame. For oars they had paddles made of ash or cedar plank, spliced to the tough and straight-growing lance wood, or to the less tough, but equally straight, white mangrove. Thwarts they made of cedar plank. Tholes or grummets for the oars they twisted out of manatee hide.
In like manner, when the occasion for their use has passed, the raising of the boom will cause the nets to come alongside, when they can either be brailed up through the grummets or disconnected for future use. The action of the gear is so simple and rapid that the torpedo protection can be always ready without arresting the way of the ship.
I had been apprehensive of this accident, and had in some measure prepared for it, by having grummets fixed on each quarter of the boat for oars; but our utmost readiness in using them would not probably have saved us.
But the wind increasing next day and the place being unsafe, he lost his anchors and was obliged to stand out to sea towards the island of St Michael; resolving, in case he might be unable to come to anchor there, to stand out to sea notwithstanding the danger, and that he now had only three able seamen left and some grummets, all the rest of the crew being landsmen and Indians who knew nothing of sea affairs.
Word Of The Day