United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All their Canoes are built after this plan, and few are less than 20 feet long. Some of the small ones we have seen with Outriggers, but this is not Common. In their War Canoes they generally have a quantity of Birds' feathers hung in Strings, and tied about the Head and stern as Additional Ornament.
This was the Vickers 'Gun-bus, a 'pusher' machine, with the propeller revolving behind the main planes between the outriggers carrying the tail, with a seat right in front for a gunner who was provided with a machine gun on a swivelling mount which had a free field of fire in every direction forward.
When it comes on to blow with any force, the Singalese boatmen may be observed standing out on their outriggers, to counteract the force of the wind on the high sails. The stronger the breeze the further out the men go. Their mode of expressing the intensity of a breeze is significant.
The dimensions of the Maria Theresa were: length, fourteen feet; beam, twenty-eight inches; depth, amidships, nine inches; height of bow from horizontal line, twenty-three inches; height of stern, twenty inches. The canoe was one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and weighed fifty-eight pounds. She was fitted with a pair of steel outriggers, which could be easily unshipped and stowed away.
Their canoes are very neat, formed of two thin planks sewn together, sharp-pointed at each end and provided with outriggers. In general they contain six or seven men. They always carry lances, not only as offensive weapons, but for striking fish. They seemed not to be unaccustomed to the sight of vessels.
My own particular water-sulky, a "skeleton" or "shell" race-boat, twenty- two feet long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten- foot sculls, alone, of course, as it holds but one, and tips him out, if he doesn't mind what he is about.
The five canoes were now sailing quickly over the smooth lagoon, with the streamers from their mat sails floating in the wind, and on the stages that ran from their sides to the outriggers were grouped parties of singers and dancers, with painted bodies and faces dyed scarlet with the juice of the mati berry, who sang and danced, and shouted, and made a brave show for the people who awaited their coming on the shore.
Four extra wheels were fitted to the machine on outriggers and so adjusted that, if the machine should lift one inch clear of the steel rails, the wheels at the ends of the outriggers would engage the under side of the pine trackway. The first fully loaded run was made in a dead calm with 150 lbs. steam pressure to the square inch, and there was no sign of the wheels leaving the steel track.
They paddled up alongside without the slightest suspicion of danger, and three or four of their number in the first canoe were clambering up the side when they suddenly sprang overboard, just as three or four grapnels with light chains were thrown from the bulwarks over the canoes so as to catch their outriggers, and capsize them.
She was kept from upsetting by outriggers projecting from the bow, middle, and stern, with a long piece of light wood secured to the extremity of each. On the upper part of the stem, which projected about two feet, was a carved head of some animal; while the after part also projected six feet or more beyond the actual stern, something like the shape of a Dutch skate.
Word Of The Day