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Updated: May 13, 2025
The proceedings were inaugurated by Johnson, who, attired in the full uniform of a captain of the American navy, took up a position on one of the keel-blocks, and from thence made an animated address to his followers, in which he rapidly sketched the history of the band from the day on which they had entered upon their present career by taking from their officers the Amazon tea clipper, in which they had sailed from China for England, down to the present time.
Under this shed, secure on a row of keel-blocks, rested a small knockabout-rigged boat, stowed away from wind and weather, her single mast, boom, and gaff unshipped and slung to rafters, her sail and running gear folded and coiled and hung beyond the wood-rats' teeth. Beside this sailing craft lay a long blue dugout, also on blocks, half filled with water to keep it from checking.
Bob thereupon set off on his mission of destruction, while Lance and Poole with a couple of mauls began to knock out the wedges which Evelin, foreseeing from the very inception of the work some such emergency as the present, had introduced in the construction of the keel-blocks. In a few minutes both parties met near the middle of the vessel, and the last pair of wedges were knocked out.
There were no keel-blocks, for there was no keel or rather, the keel was a circular plate a yard in diameter, resting on a single block, the shape of the structure to be a perfect square, along the sides of which four battleships might lie like toy-boats: the bottom, from circular keel to upward bend, having the same shape as a battleship's seen in midship section, only with four faces instead of two.
It had been decided that the whole of the timber should be cut, sawn, and stacked in the ship- yard before even the keel-blocks were laid down, so that it might become at least partially seasoned before being worked into the hull, and this was accomplished in rather less than a couple of months.
This absorbing business of building wooden vessels was scattered in almost every bay and river of the indented coast from Nova Scotia to Buzzard's Bay and the sheltered waters of Long Island Sound. It was not restricted, as now, to well-equipped yards with crews of trained artisans. Hard by the huddled hamlet of log houses was the row of keel-blocks sloping to the tide.
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