Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
One, and the largest of these isolated settlements, was in the Whaling Bight, quite near to Blubber Islano, where a village had sprung up, containing the houses and shops of coopers, rope-makers, boat-builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, &c.; men employed in making casks, whaling gear, and boats.
When we came to set close to this work we found it very laborious and difficult, having but few tools, no ironwork, no cordage, no sails; so that, in short, whatever we built, we were obliged to be our own smiths, rope-makers, sail-makers, and indeed to practise twenty trades that we knew little or nothing of.
The crews were at once directed to learn the arts of carpenters, rope-makers, caulkers, blacksmiths, and plank-makers, receiving additional pay as an encouragement, while they were furnished with all the tools necessary for their crafts.
Of course, in equipping ships, as in all other business, specialization had come in with progress; there were rope-makers, there were riggers who took the ropes ready-made and fitted them for the ship, and there were stevedores to stow holds, etc.; but the tradition ran that the seaman should be able on a pinch to do all this himself, and the tradition kept alive the practice, which derived from the days not yet wholly passed away when he might, and often did, have to refit his vessel in scenes far distant from any help other than his own, and without any resources save those which his ready wit could adapt from materials meant for quite different uses.
Finally Marcos passed through the wide Calle de San Ignacio to the drawbridges across the double fosse, where the rope-makers are always at work, walking backwards with an ever decreasing bundle of hemp at their waists and one eye cocked upwards towards the roadway so that they know all who come and go better even than the sentry at the gate.
The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, and cypress-wood; the artisans that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters, moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-masters by sea; and by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoe-makers and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners.
Since then a considerable number of Unions have been formed among match-makers, dressmakers, milliners, mantle-makers, upholstresses, rope-makers, confectioners, box-makers, shirt-makers, umbrella-makers, brush-makers and others.
Boat builders had their yards along the bank; mastmakers, sail-makers, rope-makers, block-makers; there were repairing docks dotted about all down the river, each able to hold one ship at a time, like one or two still remaining at Rotherhithe, there were ship-building yards of considerable importance; all these places employed a vast number of workmen carpenters, caulkers, painters, riggers, carvers of figure-heads, block-makers, stevedores, lightermen, watermen, victuallers, tavern-keepers, and all the roguery and ribauderie that always gather round mercantile Jack ashore.
Masters, or Masons, and Stone-cutters, xiii. Vintners, xiv. Innkeepers, xv. Oilsellers, Pork-butchers, and Rope-makers, xvi. Hosiers, xvii. Armorers, xviii. Locksmiths, xix. Saddlers, xx. Carpenters, xxi. Bakers. Each art had, as may still be seen, a house or mansion, large and noble, where they assembled, appointed officers, and gave account of debit and credit to all the members of the guild.
The shipyards shut down, the boats ready to launch were filled with water "for their preservation," and ship-carpenters, calkers, rope-makers, and sailmakers were thrown out of work. Much misery to the unemployed would have been the result but for the forethought of the patriot leaders. These men, early realizing the threatened hardship, called for help from the rest of the country.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking