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Updated: June 4, 2025
The fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of a ship; while the same causes, united with its great strength and buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.
In a few weeks this ice became several feet thick; and the snow drifted up her hull so much that it seemed as if she were resting on the land, and had taken final leave of her native element. Strong hawsers were then secured to Store Island, in order to guard against the possibility of her being carried away by any sudden disruption of the ice.
There were boatswain's stores to be purchased, wire hawsers, canvas for sail-making, fireworks for signalling, whale boats and whaling gear, flags, logs, paint, tar, carpenter's stores, blacksmith's outfit, lubricating oils, engineer's stores, and a multitude of necessities to be thought of, selected, and not paid for if we could help it.
The distant rise of land was veiled; the brown expanse of logs became slippery and glistening; the river below the booms was picked into staccato points by the drops; distant Superior turned lead color and seemed to tumble strangely athwart the horizon. Solly, the tug captain, looked at his mooring hawsers and then at the nearest crib.
Cutlass in hand, head over heels went Hawkins into the sea. The hell of smoke, of flaming mast poles, of blazing musketry, of churning waters hid him. Then a rope's end flung out by some friend gave handhold. He was up the sides of a ship, that had cut hawsers and off before the fire-rafts came! Sails were hoisted to the seaward breeze.
With respect to the dimensions of the ice through which we had now scrambled our way, principally by warping and towing a distance of between three and four hundred miles, I remarked that it for the most part increased, as well in the thickness as the extent of the floes, as we advanced westward about the parallel of 71°. During our subsequent progress to the north, we also met with some of enormous dimensions, several of the floes, to which we applied our hawsers and the power of the improved capstan, being at their margin more than twenty feet above the level of the sea, and over some of these we could not see from the mast-head.
In doing this, it was next to impossible to avoid exposing the men to very great risk from the frequent breaking of the hawsers.
Owing to the river being in flood, it was open, that is, the middle section had been floated out, for fear that the hawsers would not stand the strain and the only road across was the Maude Bridge lower down. Brown was delighted. The rain had stopped and he anticipated adventure.
The Success had now remained fifty hours as a fair mark for the enemy to fire at, during which they lost both their bower-anchors and cables, with the stern and kedge-anchors, four hawsers, four lower-deck guns, nineteen barrels of powder, two men killed and six wounded; and had they not now got off, it was believed they must have been sunk before morning.
But he felt his way instead, following the flow of the stream, day after day, past great bridges, past boats and barges, past the great town, with its wharfs, and mills, and tall smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at anchor in the stream; and now and then he ran against their hawsers, and wondered what they were, and peeped out, and saw the sailors lounging on board smoking their pipes; and ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid of being caught by man and turned into a chimney-sweep once more.
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