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There was a very pretty, airy cabin, with two state-rooms communicating with light quarter-galleries, and everything that is customary with such accommodations. Furniture had been made, with French dexterity and taste, and the paint was just dry to receive it.
In 1805 Sir Robert Seppings remedied this defect by constructing a solid circular bow right up to the main-deck, thus protecting the crew from raking shot. A dozen years later the same designer abolished the quarter-galleries, and introduced the neater and stronger circular stern.
All the quarter-boats were lost, the quarter-galleries washed away, and three of the dead lights stove. Fortunately her bottom was sound, but she broke much in the upper works; the bolts working themselves loose, and many of the knees giving way. Even the cabin bulkheads were thrown down.
The force of the sea may be guessed from the fact of the sheet-anchor, nearly a ton and a half in weight, being actually lifted on board, to say nothing of the forechain-plates' board broken, both gangways torn away, quarter-galleries stove in, &c. In short, on getting into port, the vessel was found to be loosened through all her frame, and leaking at every seam.
The Chrysolite was close-hauled on the starboard tack, and was making good headway under a clinking breeze. She was an old-fashioned, frigate-built, full-rigged ship, such as one seldom happens on now, her quarter-galleries, chain-plates, to' gallant bulwarks, and single topsail-yards being all out of date among the ship-builders of to-day.
Down went the mizzen topmast, in went the stern-windows and quarter-galleries; and as the smoke cleared away, the gorgeous painting of the Madre Dolorosa, with her heart full of seven swords, which, in a gilded frame, bedizened the Spanish stern, was shivered in splinters; while, most glorious of all, the golden flag of Spain, which the last moment flaunted above their heads, hung trailing in the water.
I shall round-to now; there's the men-of-war in the Medway. Why don't the fools look out, and they will see that they can't escape?" "They've only the stern windows to look out of: the quarter-galleries are boarded up." "Then, Tom, just look if they have not beat them out, for you know they may climb on deck by them."
Till the end of the eighteenth century the ships were flat-sterned with heavy "quarter-galleries" projecting from the side at the stern, while their bows below water were bluff with long projecting beak-heads which, to avoid weight, were but flimsy structures, affording no protection whatever to the crew.
The chains designates the small platform outside of the hull, at the base of the large shrouds leading down from the three mast-heads to the bulwarks. At present they seem to be getting out of vogue among merchant-vessels, along with the fine, old-fashioned quarter-galleries, little turret-like ap-purtenances, which, in the days of the old Admirals, set off the angles of an armed ship's stern.
The force of the sea may be guessed from the fact of the sheet-anchor, nearly a ton and a half in weight, being actually lifted on board, to say nothing of the forechain-plates' board broken, both gangways torn away, quarter-galleries stove in, &c. In short, on getting into port, the vessel was found to be loosened through all her frame, and leaking at every seam.
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