Identifier: merchantvesselsa1884nord (find matches)
Title: The merchant vessel : a sailor boy's voyages around the world
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: Nordhoff, Charles, 1830-1901 LaPlante, Charles. egr Wyllie, W. L. (William Lionel), 1851-1931. ill Dodd, Mead & Company. pbl
Subjects: Boys Conduct of life Voyages and travels Voyages around the world Merchant ships Seafaring life Sailing Slavery
Publisher: New York : Dodd, Mead & Co.
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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day, returning on board from a race, a letter from the 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 matters were to be attended to before the ship was really ready to take in cotton—the ballast was to be squared, dunnage prepared, the water-casks, provisions, and sails to be lugged on deck, out of the way of cargo, the nicely painted decks covered with planks, on which to roll cotton, top gallant and royal yards crossed, and tackles prepared for hoisting in our freight. We had scarcely gotten all things in proper trim, before a lighter-load of cotton came clown, and with it a stevedore and several gangs of the screw men, whose business it is to load cotton-ships. Screwing cotton is a regular business, requiring, besides immense strength, considerable experience in the handling of bales and the management of the jack-screws.
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LOADING A COTTON STEAMER IN A SOUTHERN RIVER. SCREWING COTTON. 35 Several other ships had taken up cargo at the same time we did, and the Bay soon began to wear an appearance of life—lighters and steamboats bringing down cotton, and the cheerful songs of the screw gangs resounding over the water, as the bales were driven tightly into the hold. Freights had suddenly risen, and the ships now loading were getting five eighths of a penny per pound. It was therefore an object to get into the ship as many pounds as she could be made to hold. The huge, unwieldy bales, brought to Mobile from the plantations up the country, are first compressed in the cotton presses, on shore,which at once diminishes their size by half, squeezing the soft fibre together, till a bale is as solid and almost as hard as a lump of iron. In this condition they are brought on board and stowed in the hold, where the stevedore makes a point of getting three bales into a space in which two could be barely put by hand. It is for this

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