I was greatly amused, therefore,
by the flat assertions of an expert that it could not be done.
[Illustration: Plan of the after cabin of the _Spray._]
The _Spray_, as I sailed her, was entirely a new boat, built over from
a sloop which bore the same name, and which, tradition said, had first
served as an oysterman, about a hundred years ago, on the coast of
Delaware. There was no record in the custom-house of where she was
built. She was once owned at Noank, Connecticut, afterward in New
Bedford and when Captain Eben Pierce presented her to me, at the end
of her natural life, she stood, as I have already described, propped
up in a field at Fairhaven. Her lines were supposed to be those of a
North Sea fisherman. In rebuilding timber by timber and plank by
plank, I added to her free-board twelve inches amidships, eighteen
inches forward, and fourteen inches aft, thereby increasing her sheer,
and making her, as I thought, a better deep-water ship. I will not
repeat the history of the rebuilding of the _Spray_, which I have
detailed in my first chapter, except to say that, when finished, her
dimensions were thirty-six feet nine inches over all, fourteen feet
two inches wide, and four feet two inches deep in the hold, her
tonnage being nine tons net, and twelve and seventy one-hundredths
tons gross.
I gladly produce the lines of the _Spray_, with such hints as my
really limited fore-and-aft sailing will allow, my seafaring life
having been spent mostly in barks and ships.
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