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Updated: June 8, 2025
This may have been due to lack of proper appliances, and to our rough but by no means ready methods of nursing. I remember the case of a friend of mine whose leg got horribly crushed at Waterfall Creek and had to be amputated. Mortification set in and he died. One of my mates was the celebrated Charlie Durnan. "Reefing Charlie" was the name he was usually known by.
A grog is now served out, and we go below, to sleep out the rest of our four hours, one of which we have been deprived of by this reefing job. Sometimes it happens, however, that we lose three, or all four, when there is absolute necessity for all hands on deck. Here, we pause a moment, to say a word on the serving of grog a composition of rum and water.
"Now," thought I, "look out for squalls." And as the thought passed through my mind the squall came, in the shape of a hail from the skipper himself. "Mizzen topsail-yard, there!" he shouted, "what are you about, you lazy lubbers? Do you intend to spend the remainder of the watch in reefing that topsail?
Both are much out of place and time. Days of the past! Certainly a watch spent reefing topsails in the rain was less tedious than that everlasting bridge of to-day: Tramp! Tramp! or stand still, facing the wind blowing the teeth down your throat. Nothing to do requiring effort; the engine does all that; but still a perpetual strain of attention due to the rapid motion of vessels under steam.
I obeyed the order to lay aloft with the rest, and found the reefing a very exciting scene; for one watch reefed the fore-topsail, and the other the main, and every one did his utmost to get his topsail hoisted first.
From the same place Van der Kemp had drawn a small triangular foresail, which he proceeded to attach to the bow of the canoe running its point out by means of tackle laid along the deck while Moses was busy reefing the mainsail.
One might have imagined that he was taking in all possible sails; close reefing the others; battening down the hatches; and preparing to run before a storm; and yet his demeanor did not indicate that he expected any violent commotion of the elements. On the contrary, his friends and acquaintances thought him particularly blithe and gay. He told them he was going to be married.
It is fifteen miles to the mouth; drab, dreary miles like the dullest reaches of the lower Thames; but scenery was of no concern to us, and a south-westerly breeze blowing out of a grey sky kept us constantly on the verge of reefing.
The word is used to signify any line of men standing directly behind one another. In ordinary two-deep formations a file consists of two men, one in the front rank and one in the rear rank. To strengthen or mend a mast by fastening strips of wood or iron along a weak or broken place. Foot-rope. A rope stretched under a yard arm for sailors to stand on while reefing or furling sails. Fore-cap.
But "the more hurry the less speed" is an old adage; and so it proved in the present case, the men on the mizzen topsail-yard managing so to bungle matters that when, on the expiration of two and a half minutes the outside limit of time allowed by the skipper for reefing a topsail Captain Pigot closed his watch with a snap and replaced it smartly in his pocket, several of the reef-points still remained to be tied.
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