- Section of First-rate Man-of-War
I will now give you a sectional division of a first-rate line-of-battle ship. Such a ship, carrying 120 or more guns, has four decks on which her guns are placed. The highest is open to the air, and is called the UPPER DECK At the after part, extending a little way beyond the mizen-mast, there is a raised platform, called the POOP. It has no guns on it. On the main deck is the steering-wheel, with the binnacle in front of it. The after part of this deck between the poop and the main-mast is called the quarter-deck, and is the place where the officers especially walk. The part under the poop is divided into cabins, appropriated to the use of the captain. Here, also, is a clerk's office and a pantry. Between the main and fore-mast the large boats are stowed, and on either side are the gangways at which sentries are stationed. The next deck under this is called the MAIN DECK. In the after part is the admiral's cabin. Immediately under the boats is a pen for the officers' live-stock ; and just abaft the fore-mast is the galley, or kitchen. The third deck from the upper is called the MIDDLE DECK. The after part is fitted up for the lieutenants, chaplain, surgeon, paymaster, marine officers, &c., and called the WARD-ROOM. In the fore part of the deck is placed the sick-bay, a compartment fitted up as a hospital ; about the centre of this deck is one of the capstans. The fourth from the upper is called the LOWER or GUN DECK. In the after part is the GUN-ROOM, where the midshipmen, and other junior officers, mess. The tiller of the rudder works through the gun-room just above their heads. A second capstan is placed on this deck ; and forward are the riding-bitts for securing the cables. It is the lowest deck on which guns are carried. The ORLOP DECK is the fifth deck from the upper. It has no guns or ports, though lighted up by bull's eyes or scuttles. In the after part is the purser's issue-room ; next to it is the after cockpit, where the midshipmen and other junior officers sleep in hammocks. Before it again will be found the sail-room, where the sails are kept, and the cable-tiers, where the cables are stowed. Before it again, just abaft the fore-mast, is the fore cockpit, and the warrant officers' cabins, while right in the head of the ship are the carpenter's and boatswain's stores. Low as we have got, we have still further to go down to the HOLD, which, if it may be so called, is the sixth deck from the highest. It is often divided into two decks for the greater convenience of stowage. Here are the FORE AND AFTER MAGAZINES, WATER TANKS, WINE AND SPIRIT ROOM, CHAIN CABLE LOCKERS, SHOT LOCKERS, BREAD ROOM, SHELL ROOM, GUNNER'S STORE ROOM, DRY PROVISION, and BEEF AND PORK IN CASKS. Since the introduction of auxiliary steam-power into ships of war, a large portion of the hold is devoted to the steam-engine and boilers, coal bunkers, and the shaft of the screw, while the funnel runs up through all the decks ; but it is wonderful, comparatively, how little space these are allowed to occupy, considering the great aid the steam-engine affords to the movements of the ship. - The 'Minotaur'
Launched in 1863 Among the numerous huge monsters constituting the iron-clad fleet of England, the Minotaur, is one of the most gigantic and formidable; and the sister ships, the Agincourt and Northumberland, all of precisely the same tonnage, power, rig, and equipment, are the largest and most powerful ships in the navy. The Minotaur was built at Blackwall, by the Thames Ship Building company and the engines were constructed by Messrs. Penn, of Deptford. She is 6,621 ton's measurement, and propelled by screw engins of 1,350 horsepower, with a speed of 15 knots an hour. She is 400 feet in length by 59 in width, and carries in all thirty-four of the heaviest guns used afloat. Among these which form her chief batter on the main deck are four 300-pounder Armstrongs. - a ship in the reign of William the Conqueror
- A ship of the reign of Henry VIII
- a ship of the reign of Edward IV
- A Ship in the time of King Alfred
- A ship in the time of Henry III
- Section of the Goubet Submarine Boat
The Goubet class are of iron, sixteen feet long, three feet wide, and about six feet deep. The motive power is a Siemens motor driven by storage batteries. Fifty of these boats were purchased by the Russian government. They have no rudder, but a universal joint in the screw shaft permits of the screw being moved through an arc of ninety degrees. The torpedo is carried outside the boat, secured by a catch worked from inside. On arriving under the enemy, the torpedo is released, and striking the ship's bottom, is held there by spikes. The boat then withdraws, unreeling a connecting wire; and when at a safe distance, fires. The absence of a rudder, however, causes erratic steering, and the spikes with which the torpedo is fitted might fail to stick in steel-bottomed ships. - The Great Harry
Some of the earliest three-deckers, or, as we may almost call them, five-deckers, were built at this dockyard; and of these the most famous was the Great Harry, so named after the king, which was launched here in 1514. For the period, the ship was a large one, being of a thousand tons burden; though we should not think much of her size now, when we have ironclads of over eleven thousand tons. There are models of her in the Greenwich Naval Museum, which is not far from Woolwich; and a curious lofty wooden castle she is, rising far up above the water-line, and offering a fair target, if the cannon of those days had any accuracy. - La France
One of the largest sailing-ships afloat is the French five-master, La France, launched in 1890 on the Clyde, and owned by Messrs A. D. Bordes et Fils, who possess a large fleet of sailing-vessels. In 1891 she came from Iquique to Dunkirk in one hundred and five days with 6000 tons of nitrate; yet she was stopped on the Tyne when proceeding to sea with 5500 tons of coal, and compelled to take out 500 tons on the ground that she was overladen. - Revenue Cutter
- Schooner rigged Sharpie
Schooner rigged Sharpie For the fisheries a multitude of smaller types were constructed—such as the lugger, the shallop, the sharpie, the bug-eye, the smack. - The Ketch
The ketch was a two-master, sometimes rigged with lanteen sails, but more often with the foremast square-rigged, like a ship's foremast, and the mainmast like the mizzen of a modern bark, with a square topsail surmounting a fore-and-aft mainsail. The foremast was set very much aft—often nearly amidships. - The Shallop
- Rot at Mouldering Wharves
The old-fashioned whaling tubs kept the seas, while the growing scarcity of the whales and the blow to the demand for oil dealt by the discovery of petroleum, checked the development of the industry. Now the rows of whalers rotting at New Bedford's wharves, and the somnolence of Nantucket, tell of its virtual demise. - Striving to reach her decks
Americans on board "General Armstrong" repelling attempts to board her while in a Portugese harbour. - Taking it in his jaws
Taking it in his jaws - The Bug-Eye
For the fisheries a multitude of smaller types were constructed—such as the lugger, the shallop, the sharpie, the bug-eye, the smack. - The Dreadnaught
The Dreadnaught - The Gun was disharged
Piracy was an everyday occurence for the sailors. - The Prison Ship 'Jersey'
The "Jersey" prison-ship was not an uncommon lot for the bold privateersman, who, when once consigned to it, found that the reward of a sea-rover was not always wealth and pleasure. The "Jersey," which had been originally a 74-gun ship, then cut down to a hulk and moored at the Wallabout, at that time a lonely and deserted place on the Long Island shore, now about the center of the Brooklyn river front. - The Snow. an obsolete type
The Snow. an obsolete type - The Treachourous Kayak
The Treachourous Kayak Mastering all the literature of the Arctic, he (Charles Hall) determined to undertake himself the arduous work of the explorer. Taking passage on a whaler, he spent several years among the Esquimaux, living in their crowded and fetid igloos, devouring the blubber and uncooked fish that form their staple articles of diet, wearing their garb of furs, learning to navigate the treacherous kayak in tossing seas, to direct the yelping, quarreling team of dogs over fields of ice as rugged as the edge of some monstrous saw, studying the geography so far as known of the Arctic regions, perfecting himself in all the arts by which man has contested the supremacy of that land with the ice-king. - The Whaleback
The Whaleback Another form of lake vessel of which great things were expected, but which disappointed its promotors, is the "whaleback," commonly called by the sailors "pigs." These are cigar-shaped craft, built of steel, their decks, from the bridge aft to the engine-house, rounded like the back of a whale, and carried only a few feet above the water. In a sea, the greater part of the deck is all awash, and a trip from the bridge to the engine-house means not only repeated duckings, but a fair chance of being swept overboard. - Waterfront
The Waterfront of New York - Whale sending boat flying
Whale sending boat flying While the right whale usually takes the steel sullenly, and dies like an overgrown seal, the cachalot fights fiercely, now diving with such a rush that he has been known to break his jaw by the fury with which he strikes the bottom at the depth of 200 fathoms; now raising his enormous bulk in air, to fall with an all-obliterating crash upon the boat which holds his tormentors, or sending boat and men flying into the air with a furious blow of his gristly flukes, or turning on his back and crunching his assailants between his cavernous jaws. - Whistling bouy
Whistling bouy Less picturesque than lighthouses and lightships, and with far less of human interest about them, are the buoys of various sorts of which the Lighthouse Board has more than one thousand in place, and under constant supervision. Yet, among the sailor's safeguards, they `rank` near the head. They point out for him the tortuous pathway into different harbors; with clanging bell or dismal whistle, they warn him away from menacing shallows and sunken wrecks. The resources of science and inventive genius have been drawn upon to devise ways for making them more effective. At night they shine with electric lights fed from a submarine cable, or with steady gas drawn from a reservoir that needs refilling only three or four times a year. If sound is to be trusted rather than light, recourse is had to a bell-buoy which tolls mournfully as the waves toss it about above the danger spot, or to a whistling buoy which toots unceasingly a locomotive whistle, with air compressed by the Page 355action of the waves. The whistling buoy is the giant of his family, for the necessity for providing a heavy charge of compressed air compels the attachment to the buoy of a tube thirty-two feet or more deep, which reaches straight down into the water. The sea rising and falling in this, as the buoy tosses on the waves, acts as a sort of piston, driving out the air through the whistle, as the water rises, admitting more air as it falls. - A Pink
A pink was rigged like a schooner, but without a bowsprit or jib. - A vanishing type on the lakes
A vanishing type on the lakes - Adrift on an ice-floe
Adrift on an ice-floe DeLong caught in the ice-pack, was carried past its northern end, thus proving it to be an island, indeed, but making the discovery at heavy cost. Winter in the pack was attended with severe hardships and grave perils. Under the influence of the ocean currents and the tides, the ice was continually breaking up and shifting, and each time the ship was in imminent danger of being crushed. In his journal DeLong tries to describe the terrifying clamor of Page 209a shifting pack. "I know of no sound on shore that can be compared with it," he writes. "A rumble, a shriek, a groan, and the crash of a falling house all combined, might serve to convey an idea of the noise with which this motion of the ice-floe is accompanied." - An Armed Cutter
An Armed Cutter - Early type of Smack
Early type of Smack For the fisheries a multitude of smaller types were constructed—such as the lugger, the shallop, the sharpie, the bug-eye, the smack. - Fleeing Slaver
A favorite trick of the slaver, fleeing from a man-of-war, was to throw over slaves a few at a time in the hope that the humanity of the pursuers would impel them to stop and rescue the struggling negroes, thus giving the slave-ship a better chance of escape. Sometimes these hapless blacks thus thrown out, as legend has it Siberian peasants sometimes throw out their children as ransom to pursuing wolves, were furnished with spars or barrels to keep them afloat until the pursuer should come up; and occasionally they were even set adrift by boat-loads. It was hard on the men of the navy to steel their hearts to the cries of these castaways as the ship sped by them; but if the great evil was to be broken up it could not be by rescuing here and there a slave, but by capturing and punishing the traders. - A deckload of cotton
A deckload of cotton - A sailing ship
- The American Frigate Constitution
- A British Line-of-Battle Ship, 1790
This awkward ship is one of the type that made up the great fleets that fought, for instance, at Trafalgar. Nelson’s flagship, the Victory, is of this type. - A Cargo Liner
A cargo liner is a freight ship that sails on scheduled dates and routes, and is different in this from a “tramp” which takes what cargoes it can at any time and to any port. - A European Side-wheeler
These steamers are often seen in European waters and are widely used as excursion boats. - A Few Types of Sailing Boats to Be Found Around the World
- A Few Types of Sailing Ships Common in European and American Waters
- A Floating Dry Dock
And a ship undergoing repairs. - A Battle Cruiser
A ship carrying the heaviest of guns but lacking the heavy armour of the dreadnaughts. Its speed is greatly superior to that of dreadnaughts. - Using a Cross Staff
This crude instrument was used in an attempt to work out problems in latitude. After holding one end of the staff to the eye and sliding the cross staff along until the observer sighted over one end at the sun and under the other at the horizon, the instrument was placed on a circle marked in degrees, and the angle was determined. - Using a Pelorus
This apparatus consists of a movable plate marked with compass bearings, set in a stand. The observer sets the plate to correspond to the standard compass, and then sights across it in determining the compass bearings of points ashore from which he wishes to learn his exact position. - Using an Astrolabe
This instrument was meant to improve on the cross staff. One man held it, when it was supposed to hang with the horizon line horizontal. Another man sighted at the sun or the stars, and a third read and recorded the angle. Needless to say the instrument was very inaccurate. - The Savannah
The first steamship to cross the Atlantic. - The Spray
In which Captain Joshua Slocum circumnavigated the globe. - The Steamship Oceanic
This ship may be said to be the first of the transatlantic liners, for in her, for the first time, great concessions were made for the comfort and convenience of the passengers. - The Tillamook Rock Light Station
This great rock, which lies about a mile off the coast of Oregon, was formerly a spot of terrible danger to ships. Great difficulties had to be overcome in order to erect this lighthouse, but now its 160,000-candle-power light is visible, in clear weather, for eighteen miles. - The Paris
The greatest French Merchant ship, operated by the French Line. - The Pharos at Alexandria
One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and one of the first great lighthouses. - The Rigging of a Three-masted Ship
(1) Foremast; (2) Mainmast; (3) Mizzenmast; (4) Fore, main, and mizzen-topmasts; (5) Fore, main, and mizzen topgallant masts; (6) Fore, main, and mizzen royal and skysail masts; (7) Fore yard; (8) Main yard; (9) Crossjack yard; (10) Fore, main, and mizzen lower topsail yards; (11) Fore, main, and mizzen upper topsail yards; (12) Fore, main, and mizzen lower topgallant yards; (13) Fore, main, and mizzen upper topgallant yards; (14) Fore, main, and mizzen royal yards; (15) Fore, main, and mizzen skysail yards; (16) Spanker gaff; (17) Fore and main trysail gaffs; (18) Lower shrouds; (19) Topmast shrouds; (20) Back stays; (21) Fore skysail stay; (22) Fore royal stay; (23) Flying jib stay; (24) Fore topgallant stay; (25) Jib stay; (26) Fore topmast stays; (27) Fore stays; (28) Main skysail stay; (29) Main topgallant stay; (30) Main topmast stay; (31) Mizzen skysail stay; (32) Fore and main lifts; (33) Topsail lifts; (34) Topgallant lifts; (35) Spanker boom; (36) Bowsprit; (37) Jib boom; (38) Flying jib-boom; (39) Martingale or dolphin striker; (40) Braces (named from the yard to which they are attached); (41) Bobstays; (42) Martingale stays. - The Sails of a Four-masted Ship
(1) Foresail; (2) Mainsail; (3) Crossjack; (4) Jigger; (5) Lower foretopsail; (6) Lower main topsail; (7) Lower mizzen topsail; (8) Lower jigger topsail; (9) Upper fore topsail; (10) Upper main topsail; (11) Upper mizzen topsail; (12) Upper jigger topsail; (13) Fore topgallant sail; (14) Main topgallant sail; (15) Mizzen topgallant sail; (16) Jigger topgallant sail; (17) Fore royal; (18) Main royal; (19) Mizzen royal; (20) Jigger royal; (21) Fore skysail; (22) Main skysail; (23) Mizzen skysail; (24) Jigger skysail; (25) Flying jib; (26) Outer jib; (27) Jib; (28) Fore topmast staysail; (29) Spanker; (30) Buntlines; (31) Leechlines; (32) Reeftackles; (33) Braces; (34) Foresheet; (35) Fore topmast staysail sheet; (36) Jib-sheet; (37) Outer jib-sheet; (38) Flying jib-sheet. - The Mauretania
A British liner of the Cunard Line. - The Merrimac
An ironclad built by the Confederates during the American Civil War. This ship proved how superior to wooden ships armoured ships could be. She was armed with a ram with which she sank the Cumberland, and her armour amply protected her from the enemy’s guns. - The Monitor
The first armoured ship to mount a turret. This is the ship that fought with the Merrimac the first battle between armoured ships. - The Olympic
A sister ship of the ill-fated Titanic, and operated by the White Star Line. - The Great Eastern
A ship that was built half a century too early. This huge vessel, built in 1857, was designed to make the voyage from England to Australia without refuelling. She never made the voyage to Australia, but was used to lay the Atlantic cable. She was ahead of her time, for engines had not developed to the point where she could be properly propelled. - The Great Republic
The greatest clipper ship ever built. Unfortunately, before she made her first voyage she caught fire and had to be sunk. She was refloated and refitted, but never made a voyage in her original rig. When new masts were put in her they were made smaller than the first ones. Still she turned out to be one of the very fastest of the clippers.