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Updated: May 20, 2025
It was a bright, sunny day, and the wind, though strong, was fair; and everything was in striking contrast with our experience in the same place two months before, when we were drifting off from a northwester under a fore and main spencer. ``Sail ho! cried a man who was rigging out a top-gallant studding-sail boom. ``Where away? ``Weather beam, sir! and in a few minutes a full-rigged brig was seen standing out from under Point Conception.
But without using their clumsy, though certainly very ingenious, machinery of turning men into handspikes, I think," said he, "we might construct our floating windlass in such a way that a set of small spars studding-sail booms, for instance might be inserted at right angles to its length, like the bars of a capstan, and these, if swifted together, could be worked from the boats, without the necessity of any one going into the water."
All hands make sail up with the helm square away the yards. Rig out the studding-sail booms, Mr Sherwin," he added, addressing the first mate as soon as the ship was before the wind. The boatswain sounded his whistle. "Be smart there, my sweet lads," he cried out. "Haul away, my lovely cherubs, on the starboard studding-sail halyards.
Wherever smoke was seen coming out, we calked and pasted, and, so far as we could, made the ship smoke tight. The captain and officers slept under the awning which was spread over the quarter-deck; and we stowed ourselves away under an old studding-sail, which we drew over one side of the forecastle.
Hynson refusing both offers, these men declared that then others might take their places, as they were resolved to abide in the wreck with him. Hynson and Powers were drowned. Nutter was saved. When the plunge was made into the sea, Sailing-Master Clemson seized a studding-sail boom, in company with five of the seamen.
Monday, February, 1st. After having been in port twenty-one days, we sailed for San Pedro, where we arrived on the following day, having gone ``all fluking, with the weather clew of the mainsail hauled up, the yards braced in a little, and the lower studding-sail just drawing; the wind hardly shifting a point during the passage.
The studding-sail halyards were let go, and the yards boom-ended, the after yards braced aback, and we waited her coming down. She rounded to, backed her main topsail, and showed her decks full of men, four guns on a side, hammock nettings, and everything man-of-war fashion, except that there was no boatswain's whistle, and no uniforms on the quarter-deck.
But she was provided with an abundance of "kites," including an immense gaff-topsail, which extended on poles far above the topmast head, and far beyond the peak, a balloon-jib, a jib-topsail, and a three-cornered studding-sail. The balloon-jib, or the jib-topsail, was bent on with snap-hooks when it was needed, for only one was used at the same time.
After great exertions I got it, or the remains of it, into the top, and was making it fast, when the captain, looking up, called out to me, ``Lay aloft there, Dana, and furl that main royal. Leaving the studding-sail, I went up to the cross-trees; and here it looked rather squally.
Some, indeed, looked as though they thought the ``old man'' was mad, but no one said a word. We had had a new topmast studding-sail made with a reef in it, a thing hardly ever heard of, and which the sailors had ridiculed a good deal, saying that when it was time to reef a studding-sail it was time to take it in.
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