appliances. I wonder why only her anchors look small.
I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to see the
workshops where they make all the oars used in the British Navy. A
pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty long job! As
to the building, I am soon disappointed, because the work is all
done in one loft. And as to a long job – what is this? Two rather
large mangles with a swarm of butterflies hovering over them? What
can there be in the mangles that attracts butterflies?
Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but intricate
machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut such a depth, and
now miss cutting altogether, according to the predestined
requirements of the pieces of wood that are pushed on below them:
each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is roughly adapted to
that purpose before it takes its final leave of far-off forests,
and sails for England. Likewise I discern that the butterflies are
not true butterflies, but wooden shavings, which, being spirted up
from the wood by the violence of the machinery, and kept in rapid
and not equal movement by the impulse of its rotation on the air,
flutter and play, and rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like
butterflies as heart could wish. Suddenly the noise and motion
cease, and the butterflies drop dead. An oar has been made since I
came in, wanting the shaped handle. As quickly as I can follow it
with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried to a turning
lathe. A whirl and a Nick! Handle made. Oar finished.
The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need no
illustration, but happen to have a pointed illustration to-day. A
pair of oars of unusual size chance to be wanted for a special
purpose, and they have to be made by hand. Side by side with the
subtle and facile machine, and side by side with the fast-growing
pile of oars on the floor, a man shapes out these special oars with
an axe. Attended by no butterflies, and chipping and dinting, by
comparison as leisurely as if he were a labouring Pagan getting
them ready against his decease at threescore and ten, to take with
him as a present to Charon for his boat, the man (aged about
thirty) plies his task. The machine would make a regulation oar
while the man wipes his forehead. The man might be buried in a
mound made of the strips of thin, broad, wooden ribbon torn from
the wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall from the clock,
before he had done a forenoon’s work with his axe.
Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again – for my
heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are – I notice certain
unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks, pending the
solution of the merits of the wood and iron question, and having an
air of biding their time with surly confidence. The names of these
worthies are set up beside them, together with their capacity in
guns – a custom highly conducive to ease and satisfaction in social
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intercourse, if it could be adapted to mankind. By a plank more
gracefully pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a
transport ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor’s yard
to be inspected and passed. She is a very gratifying experience,
in the simplicity and humanity of her arrangements for troops, in
her provision for light and air and cleanliness, and in her care
for women and children. It occurs to me, as I explore her, that I
would require a handsome sum of money to go aboard her, at midnight
by the Dockyard bell, and stay aboard alone till morning; for
surely she must be haunted by a crowd of ghosts of obstinate old
martinets, mournfully flapping their cherubic epaulettes over the
changed times. Though still we may learn from the astounding ways