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Updated: June 19, 2025
This beautiful headpiece was placed on the broadest of shoulders. His body was somewhat short, but his legs were proportioned to bear the frame of an elephant. He was, as he used to boast, entirely Irish from truck to keelson, but certainly not of a high class type. The third lieutenant was an Englishman. This was fortunate.
During the process of its construction, suitable rabbets are cut to receive the lower keelson, the two inwales, and the bow and stern deadwoods, which, being put in position, are worked off so that their surfaces are flush with that of the model, and forming, as it were, an integral part of it.
Bless her old timbers, she's staunch and sound from truck to keelson, and the smartest clipper that ever sailed out of the London Docks when she has anything like decent weather!"
Let Mount Franklin smoke, groan, bellow, or spout forth fire and flame as much as it pleases, that is no reason why we should be idle! Come, Ayrton, Neb, Herbert, Captain Harding, Mr Spilett, every one of us must turn to at our work to-day! We are going to place the keelson, and a dozen pair of hands would not be too many.
A very `dewy' eve it was, too, if dampness made it so; but if one did feel wet and miserable, as I confess I was, the remembrance it brought back to my mind of my mother's house-cleaning at home being almost too vivid to be pleasant, still, everybody on board had the satisfaction of knowing that the ship was as smart as holystone and sand could make her, from upper deck to keelson, I verily believe!
They are thick timbers running continuously under and over the junctions of the deck beams with the ship's sides, to both of which they are securely fastened. The keelson was an old invention and shelf-pieces and waterways were soon in vogue. But fillings and trusses, both expensive improvements, were not much favoured in any mercantile marine.
And while I heartily wished the masts and yards, which added so much to the beauty of the ship, and of which I was so proud in port, fifty fathoms beneath the keelson, I hastened with my wonted alacrity aloft, and commenced the work of sending down the main-royal yard. Seasickness is an unwelcome malady at best.
I had on a red shirt and a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied in sailor fashion carelessly and loosely about my neck. My knowledge of ships and sailor's talk came much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from keelson to cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an "old salt."
Again the shrill whistling of the pipes was heard, followed by the deep tones of Bentley, which rolled and tumbled along the decks of the ship in the usual long-drawn monotonous cry, which could be heard, above the roar of the wind or the rush of the water or the straining of the timbers, from the truck to the keelson: "All hands lay aft, to the quarter-deck."
As I look back to this period, I am almost amazed that I was not murdered outright, in that ship yard, so murderous was the spirit which prevailed there. On two occasions, while there, I came near losing my life. I was driving bolts in the hold, through the keelson, with Hays. In its course, the bolt bent. Hays cursed me, and said that it was my blow which bent the bolt.
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