Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/307

 ABOUT ALL KINDS OF SHIPS

the great modern ship is the absence of hubbub clatter, rush of feet, roaring of orders. That is all gone by. The elaborate manceuvers necessary in working the vessel into her dock are conducted with out sounds; one sees nothing of the processes, hears no commands. A Sabbath stillness and solemnity reign, in place of the turmoil and racket of the earlier days. The modern ship has a spacious bridge fenced chin-high with sail-cloth and floored with wooden gratings ; and this bridge, with its fenced fore-and-aft annexes, could accommodate a seated audience of a hundred and fifty men. There are three steering equipments, each competent if the others should break. From the bridge the ship is steered, and also handled. The handling is not done by shout or whistle, but by signaling with patent automatic gongs. There are three telltales, with plainly let tered dials for steering, handling the engines, and for communicating orders to the invisible mates who are conducting the landing of the ship or casting off. The officer who is astern is out of sight and too far away to hear trumpet-calls; but the gongs near him tell him to haul in, pay out, make fast, let go, and so on; he hears, but the passengers do not, and so the ship seems to land herself without human help. This great bridge is thirty or forty feet above the water, but the sea climbs up there sometimes; so there is another bridge twelve or fifteen feet higher still, for use in these emergencies. The force of water is a strange thing. It slips between one s fingers like air, but upon occasion it acts like a solid body and will bend a thin iron rod. In the Havel

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