All Sail Set. Armstrong Sperry
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Название: All Sail Set
Автор: Armstrong Sperry
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Морские приключения
isbn: 9781567925739
isbn:
Every important timber in the ship—and there were more than two hundred—had been drawn in small scale on these plans. The draftsmen redrew them in chalk on the floor, some fifty times larger. Though the mold loft was 100 feet long by 150 feet deep, it was not vast enough to accommodate all these great drawings; they overlapped and crisscrossed until they would have seemed a Chinese puzzle to a landsman’s eye.
So the Flying Cloud took shape. First the seed which germinated in one man’s mind; then the model by which lesser men could catch the vision of her; then the mechanical drawings that put her into figures of geometry and conic sections. But as I labored there from daylight till dusk, bent over my drafting table and completely happy, those drawings became more in my sight than intersecting arcs and geometric trapezoids: they were the yards and spars of my ship, buffeted by the gales of the Roaring Forties, and I was athwart the t’gallant yard with my feet hooked into the lifts, fisting sail in the teeth of a heroic wind!
It was a great day when the converter was given the order to make his molds. It meant that at last the Flying Cloud was emerging from her chrysalis of drafting paper into tangible form. The converter and his men moved into the loft, puffed up with the sense of their own importance. First they cut thin deal boards into molds, each one of which followed exactly the shape of the chalk drawings on the loft floor. Then as fast as each mold was cut, it was carried off to the neighboring lumberyard where Donald McKay himself picked out timbers of the proper grain and size and marked each one with the number of its mold.
Pileheads had been driven deep into the slip to form a bed for the ship to rest upon. Timbers were laid horizontal-wise across the pileheads. On rugged blocks of oak along the center of the groundways the backbone of the vessel had its beginning. Of solid rock maple were her keel timbers; next, the upward thrust of her stempiece curved from its boxing into the keel; the sternpost was set in its mortise, while amidships the white-oak ribs swelled and rounded.
Fortunately it was a mild winter and no weather was so bad as to keep the men from their appointed jobs. From light till dark the yards hummed with activity. The saws whirred; the derrick groaned its complaint; adze and caulking iron kept up their resounding clamor, while the air was filled with the tang of fresh sawed oak and pine. Wood powder drifted like mist from the pits where the under-sawyers worked; the fires of the blacksmiths glowed in the wind.
In those days men took a pride in their work. The humblest apprentice in the yards seemed to feel that he was engaged upon a great, aye, even a sacred undertaking. For them the Flying Cloud was not just one more ship; she was timber and iron springing into life under their hands. Funny thing—that sense of the reality of a ship which impresses itself upon those who have a hand in her shaping. There was not a workman in the yards who doubted that a living spirit was housed within his handiwork. Just so the sailor believes that it’s the soul of a ship which makes an individual of her. And who can declare that they’re wrong? It is a fact that two ships built after the same plans, in the same yards, by the identical builder, will display wide-differing qualities when they take to sea. The one will prove herself in a gale; the other in light airs. One will be a killer of men on every passage while the other will never start a sheet or lose a spar. No one can deny that such differences exist. Your landsman will declare that it is some slight variation in line of hull or rake of mast or hang of canvas. But the landsman knows naught about these things. The sailor, living close to the elements, understands much that never meets the eye.
The winter months passed. Spring made itself felt in the mildness of the air. Now we could throw open the windows of the drafting room, and the water in the harbor was softer to the eye. The Flying Cloud lay on her strait bed at the water’s edge, grown past all recognition of her beginnings. Nigh a million feet of splendid white oak with scantlings of southern pine had gone into her frame, and over fifty tons of copper, exclusive of sheathing. She was seasoned with salt and “tuned” like a Stradivarius. Duncan MacLane wrote in the Boston Atlas: “Hers is the sharpest bow we have ever seen on any ship.” Men were laying bets on her potential speed, investing their life savings in her cargo. A ship built by Donald McKay to better the record of the Staghound—they couldn’t lose!
Each night on my way homeward I would stop in for a chat with Messina Clarke. While the old man pretended indifference to McKay’s newfangled methods of building, he was consumed by curiosity. I know now, too, that he resented this new world of mine in which he could not wholly share.
After devious circlings, old Messina would arrive at the point he wanted to know. Clearing his throat, he would ask:
“And what might the rake of her masts be, lubber?”
“Alike they’re one-and-one-quarter inches to the foot,” I would answer.
“Humph!” came his snort. “She’ll lose her sticks in the first good blow, mark my words!”
Silence. Then: “And what might the finish of her great-cabin be?” he would question.
“She’s wainscoted with satinwood, mahogany, and rosewood, set off with enameled pilasters, and cornices of gilt work.”
“By the horns o’ Satan!” he roared. His indignation was boundless. “Plain pine with a coat o’ white lead was good enough for my day! Ships was meant to be ships, as men was meant to be men. Whoever did see a man with his hair curled and scent to his coat what was worth a chip on a millrace? Dressin’ a ship up like that! It’s—it’s indecent!”
But despite his scorn, no part of the development of the Flying Cloud escaped his attention or comment. Together we had watched her grow from a tadpole into a whale; keel and rib, floor plank and monkey rail, stem and steering post. I, from the drafting room, where I could see every stick and timber as it swung into place on the stocks, and old Messina seeing it all in my accounts of each day’s activity. For us both the Flying Cloud stood for much more than a ship: for me she was a symbol of romance and eager venture; of the mysterious lands that lay beyond the ocean’s rim; of things longed for and hopes fulfilled. For the old man she was all that the sea stood for in his salty mind; his boyhood; the vasty ventures of his middle years; sunlight and whistling gale.
It was with a feeling of sorrow that we watched each day bringing her nearer completion, as one regrets seeing a babe emerge into a child, child into man. Every handspike hammered into her hull came to echo dully in our ears. We resented the cocky air of the workmen who acted as if the Cloud were their ship when we knew her to be ours alone.
Inevitably there came a day when the last trunnel had been driven, when the whang of mallet and adze was silent, and the whir of the saws had stilled. The figurehead, wrapped about in cotton swathings, was hoisted to its mortise and bolted into place. There was a hush, like a portent. So it might be in the moment before a giant awakes. The Flying Cloud, all glistening black and copper, lay at the water’s edge, alive, eager, straining for the sea. It was her time to go. Her destiny must be fulfilled.
On April 15, 1851, she was launched. Not long ago I came across a yellowed clipping in my sea chest that will give you a better picture of the event than words of mine:
“The ceremony of introducing the СКАЧАТЬ