The Bow
Is Long, And Curves Into A Lofty Stem, Like That Of A Roman Galley,
Finished With A Beak Head, To Secure The Forestay Of The Mast.
This Beak Is Furnished With Two Large, Goggle Eyes.
The mast is a
ponderous spar, fifty feet high, composed of pieces of pine,
pegged, glued, and hooped together.
A heavy yard is hung
amidships. The sail is an oblong of widths of strong, white cotton
artistically "PUCKERED," not sewn together, but laced vertically,
leaving a decorative lacing six inches wide between each two
widths. Instead of reefing in a strong wind, a width is unlaced,
so as to reduce the canvas vertically, not horizontally. Two blue
spheres commonly adorn the sail. The mast is placed well abaft,
and to tack or veer it is only necessary to reverse the sheet.
When on a wind the long bow and nose serve as a head-sail. The
high, square, piled-up stern, with its antique carving, and the
sides with their lattice-work, are wonderful, together with the
extraordinary size and projection of the rudder, and the length of
the tiller. The anchors are of grapnel shape, and the larger junks
have from six to eight arranged on the fore-end, giving one an idea
of bad holding-ground along the coast. They really are much like
the shape of a Chinese "small-footed" woman's shoe, and look very
unmanageable. They are of unpainted wood, and have a wintry,
ghastly look about them. {22}
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 405 of 417
Words from 111505 to 111754
of 115002
