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Updated: May 16, 2025
"And if you should want to see a main-deck fought as a main-deck should be fought, why, sir, be good enough to take a seat." He kicked a powder-monkey off his box, and offered it with a bow. "Can't," said Kit, turning. "No time. See you again later." The other stooped and peered out of a port. "Doobious, I should say," he replied, picking his teeth. "Vairy doobious. Ah!
The Glatton, one of the purchased Indiamen, of 1256 tons, commanded by Captain Henry Trollope, and fitted on the main-deck with 28 carronades, 68-pounders, the rest of her guns being 32-pounders, making altogether 54 guns; but, as the ports were too small to allow the larger guns to traverse properly, and she had no bow or stern chasers, they could only be pointed right abeam.
A two-decked ship has no middle-deck, but possesses only a main and lower-deck, besides the before-mentioned quarter-deck, gangway, and forecastle. The deck on which a frigate's single battery is carried is always called her main-deck, because the sailors are wont to denominate the upper-deck of every ship carrying guns the main-deck.
Linstock in hand the brawny gunner on the poop stood ready to answer them when the word should be given. From below came the gunner's mate to report himself ready for action on the main-deck and to receive his orders. Came another shot from the Spaniard, again across the bows of the Swallow. "'Tis a clear invitation to heave to," said Sir Oliver. The skipper snarled in his fiery beard.
The main-deck, between the low after-cabin and the high forecastle, had not been washed down, apparently, in a week; piles of dirty dishes and cooking-utensils of strange, unfamiliar shapes lay here and there around the little galley forward; coils of running rigging were kicking about under-foot instead of hanging on the belaying-pins; a pig-pen, which had apparently gone adrift in a gale, blocked up the gangway to the forecastle on the port side between the high bulwark and a big boat which had been lashed in V-shaped supports amidships; and a large part of the space between the cabin and the forecastle on the starboard side was a chaos of chain-cable, lumber, spare spars, pots, pans, earthen water-jars, and chicken-coops.
"She wants some after sail to steady her," roared the captain bending over the poop rail, although he held on tightly enough to it the while, and calling out to Mr Mackay, who remained with me just below him on the main-deck. "We must try and get some sort of rag up."
During this talk, Israel's curiosity had prompted him to dart up the ladder from the main-deck, and stand right in the gangway above, looking out on the strange craft. Meantime the order had been given to drop a boat.
In the foremost part of the main-deck of a line-of-battle ship, in a square room, strongly bulk-headed, and receiving light from one of the ports, as firmly secured with an iron grating with no other furniture than a long wooden form his legs in shackles, that ran upon a heavy iron bar lying on the deck sat the unfortunate prisoner, in company with three other individuals his wife, his child, and old Adams, the quartermaster.
This movement seemed to be expected all round and it certainly had been delayed to the very last moment for the leading French ship fell off three or four points, and as the frigate was exactly end-on to her, let fly the contents of all the guns on her forecastle, as well as of those on her main-deck, as far aft as they could be brought to bear.
And those that were taken on board this morning, every one of them, slept on the main-deck, and every one of them, too, was in fear of the fever, whereby I judge two things, Keep as high as you can, and fear nothing but God, and we're all safe yet." "But the fog was up to our round-tops at sunrise this morning," said Cary.
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