Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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To take a typical instance: the 5000 ton four-masted sailing ship Coryphæna, laden with general merchandise for Melbourne, reached the latitude of Cape Frio on the thirty-fifth day from London. Like all of her class, she was but weakly manned, but as if to provide against any possible emergencies of sail-carrying, her enormous masts of mild steel were quadruply stayed with steel cables, until they were almost like an integral part of the massive fabric herself. From truck to mast-coat not a shaking of hemp was used for cordage where steel wire rope or chain could be made available. Neither were any old-time lashings, lanyards, or seizings to be seen. Their places were filled by screws and levers, whereby one man could exert more power on a shroud or a guy than was formerly possible to a dozen, aided by a complicated web of tackles. And the sails, those vast breadths of canvas that, when set, made the mighty hull appear but a trivial thing beneath their superb spread, were of the heaviest quality woven, their seams, leaches, and roaches fortified by all the devices known to the sailmaker.