under-sheathing

Updated: May 19, 2025

"I suppose he told you the famous story of the swordfish which charged a vessel and drove its sword through 'copper sheathing, an inch board under-sheathing, a three-inch plank of hard wood, the solid white oak timber twelve inches thick, then through another two and a half-inch hard-oak ceiling, and lastly penetrated the head of an oil cask, where it stuck, not a drop of the oil having escaped?"

Francis Rolt-Wheeler - The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries

For my part, on the subject of the demoniacal work of the swordfish, I regaled them with accounts of damage wrought to big ships; of how a bony sword had penetrated the hull of the Fortune, of Plymouth, cutting through copper, an inch of under-sheathing, a three-inch plank of hard wood, twelve inches of solid, white-oak timber, two and a half inches of hard oak ceiling, and the head of an oil cask; of the sloop Morning Star, which had to be convoyed to port with a leak through a hole in eight and a half inches of white oak; of the United States Fish Commission sloop, Red Hot, rammed and sunk; of the British dreadnaught, which was pumped to Colombo where the leak made by the fish was found, and 15,000 francs insurance paid.

Frederick O'Brien - White Shadows in the South Seas