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Updated: June 6, 2025
Did they founder in one of the sudden and fierce storms which sometimes swept that coast? Did the deadly teredo bore the ship's timbers full of holes, until she went down with all on board? Were they cast on shore to become the prey of Indians whose enmity they had provoked by their own conduct? No one ever knew.
P.C. Asserson, Civil Engineer, U.S.N., to test the effect of various substances as a protection against the Teredo navalis.
Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of the table, there were forty grains of the wood." The teredo, so destructive to shipping, has been carried by the vessels whose wooden walls it mines to almost every part of the globe. See Quatrefaces, Souvenirs d'un naturaliste, ii., pp. 400, 542, 543. The white ant has lately appeared at St.
At Puerto Bello he was obliged to leave another vessel, for she had been riddled by the teredo. The two which he had were in wretched condition. "They were as full of holes as a honey-comb." On the southern coast of Cuba, Columbus was obliged to supply them with cassava bread. The leaks increased. The ships' pumps were insufficient, and the men bailed out the water with buckets and kettles.
Of the trees which have a wide range over the country, especially near the sea-coast, the lignum vitae is of great value. As from its hard nature it turns the edge of the best-tempered tools, it serves for the construction of wharves, as well as for the keels of ships, the attacks of the teredo, or sea-worm, being futile upon the iron network of its fibres.
However, in my own behalf I think it only fair to say that I am not yet entirely cured. The Spray was hauled out on the marine railway at Devonport and examined carefully top and bottom, but was found absolutely free from the destructive teredo, and sound in all respects.
His vessels being nearly destroyed by the teredo, or worm which abounds in those seas, he had great difficulty in reaching Xaragua in Hispaniola, where he lost his two caravels, and proceeded with his crew by land to San Domingo. Such was the swarm of Spanish expeditions immediately resulting from the enterprises of Columbus; but others were also undertaken by foreign nations.
The situation of the ships was itself a matter of extreme solicitude. Feebly manned, crazed by storms, and ready to fall to pieces from the ravages of the teredo, they were anchored on a lee shore, with a boisterous wind and sea, in a climate subject to tempests, and where the least augmentation of the weather might drive them among the breakers.
By the end of April, with a favourable wind, Columbus left the disastrous shores of Veragua; but his ships, honeycombed by the teredo, could with difficulty be kept afloat.
Beaten, crazed, falling apart. On the Eve of Saint John we came to Jamaica. The ships were riddled by the teredo. We could not keep afloat to go to Hispaniola. At Santa Gloria we ran them in quiet water side by side upon the sand. They partly filled, they settled down, only forecastle and poop above the blue mirror. We built shelters upon them and bridged the space between.
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