The ship model builder's assistan

The ship model builder's assistan - book 45 mb.

PACKET ships and clipper ships had distinctive
characteristics by which they could be recognized
at a glance from that little heard of but
more numerous type of plain, common, everyday merchantman
that constituted the bulk of the American
tonnage. Packets and clippers had a pedigree of their
own, as it were, and the newspapers gave long, glowing
descriptions of them and their records were given
columns in the newspapers, while the rank-and-file
would be dismissed in a line in the marine column,
reading-"Ship Betsy, Sharp, from Madeira." But
there were dozens of Betsies and Sallies to one clipper.
They were the common wall-sided, flat-floored, bluffbowed
and heavy, square-transomed ships with which
everyone was so familiar that they were just ships and
nothing more.
Today, looking back and reviewing all the different
types of ships, those little, three hundred ton ships, of
about 1820, with their decks laid out with the same
simplicity that characterized the schooners and brigs,
are a novelty. They had one big, main-cargo hatch just
forward of the mainmast. Fiferails, of course, were
around each mast, at the deck, for belaying the gear. A
fore-scuttle was forward of the foremast and a cuddy,
aft, giving access to the after quarters. A log windlass
lay across the decks, just abaft the foremast, with a pair
of stout bitts at the heel of the bowsprit.