The merchant vessel : a sailor boy's voyages around the world . day, returning on board from a race, a letter fromthe captain informed us that the ship was taken up. Where for ? was, of course, a question eagerly put. For Liverpool, was the answer, and the cotton to comedown next week. All was now bustle and preparation. Numberless matterswere to be attended to before the ship was really ready totake in cotton—the ballast was to be squared, dunnage pre-pared, the water-casks, provisions, and sails to be lugged ondeck, out of the way of cargo, the nicely painted decks coveredwith planks, on whi
The merchant vessel : a sailor boy's voyages around the world . day, returning on board from a race, a letter fromthe captain informed us that the ship was taken up. Where for ? was, of course, a question eagerly put. For Liverpool, was the answer, and the cotton to comedown next week. All was now bustle and preparation. Numberless matterswere to be attended to before the ship was really ready totake in cotton—the ballast was to be squared, dunnage pre-pared, the water-casks, provisions, and sails to be lugged ondeck, out of the way of cargo, the nicely painted decks coveredwith planks, on which to roll cotton, topgallant and royal yardscrossed, and tackles prepared for hoisting in our freight. Wehad scarcely gotten all things in proper trim, before a lighter-load of cotton came clown, and with it a stevedore and severalgangs of the screw men, whose business it is to load cotton-ships. Screwing cotton is a regular business, requiring, besidesimmense strength, considerable experience in the handling ofbales and the management of the LOADING A COTTON ST£ N A SOUTHERN RIVER. SCREWING COTTON. 35 Several other ships had taken up cargo at the sametime we did, and the Bay soon began to wear an appearanceof life—lighters and steamboats bringing down cotton, and thecheerful songs of the screw gangs resounding over the water, asthe bales were driven tightly into the hold. Freights had sud-denly risen, and the ships now loading were getting five eighthsof a penny per pound. It was therefore an object to get intothe ship as many pounds as she could be made to hold. Thehuge, unwieldy bales, brought to Mobile from the plantations upthe country, are first compressed in the cotton presses, on shore,which at once diminishes their size by half, squeezing the softfibre together, till a bale is as solid and almost as hard as alump of iron. In this condition they are brought on boardand stowed in the hold, where the stevedore makes a point ofgetting three bales into a
Size: 1808px × 1383px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., booksubjectvoyagesandtravels, booksubjectvoyagesaroundtheworld
