A good voice and a new and stirring
chorus are worth an extra man. And there is plenty of need of both.
I remember well one black night in the mid-Atlantic, when we were beating
up against a stiff breeze, coming on deck near midnight, just as the ship
was put about. When a ship is tacking, the tacks and sheets (ropes which
confine the clews or lower corners of the sails) are let run, in order
that the yards may be swung round to meet the altered position of the
ship. They must then be hauled taut again, and belayed, or secured, in
order to keep the sails in their place and to prevent them from shaking.
When the ship's head comes up in the wind, the sail is for a moment or two
edgewise to it, and then is the nice moment, as soon as the head-sails
fairly fill, when the main-yard and the yards above it can be swung
readily, and the tacks and sheets hauled in. If the crew are too few in
number, or too slow at their work, and the sails get fairly filled on the
new tack, it is a fatiguing piece of work enough to "board" the tacks and
sheets, as it is called. You are pulling at one end of the rope, but the
gale is tugging at the other. The advantages of lungs are all against you,
and perhaps the only thing to be done is to put the helm down a little,
and set the sails shaking again before they can be trimmed properly.
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