In A Shipyard
When Bent To Shape
Keel and Haul
Launching A Ship
Fittingout The Hull
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LAUNCHING A SHIP

To get a true idea of the size of a ship, as a locomotive, one needs to view it from ground level. When in the water a ship has from 20 to 40 feet of her hull out of sight below the waterline. Here on a slipway we see her full stature, towering 50, 60 or 70 feet above us, and making the men who built her seem the merest pigmies.

The hull of a big ship is about the largest and heaviest thing that has to be moved in one piece. Getting it into the water is anxious work, requiring months of preparation.

On each side of the keel is built a wooden slide, 5 feet or 6 feet broad, running out into the water on rows of piles. These two "standing ways," as these slides are named, must be perfectly straight and parallel to one another. On them, uo to the bottom of the ship, the "sliding ways" are built. These rise into massive structures, the "cradles," at bow and stern, where the ship's sides draw together.

The sliding ways contain hundreds of wooden wedges in pairs. One wedge of a pair lies on its fellow, and their ends project on either side of the way. In order that the ship may slide freely, the standing ways are greased with tons of tallow and soft soap.

It is impossible to launch the ship till her weight has been taken off the blocks on which she was built. When the day of the launch approaches, hundreds of workmen with heavy hammers and weilding them in time together, strike the heads of the wedges and drive them in, forcing the cradles upwards. The vast bulk of the ship is now borne by the sliding ways and a number of shores, and the keel blocks and the other blocks can be removed. On the actual day of the launch the shores are knocked away, and the ship is prevented from moving only by a numberof enormous triggers.

The great moment has now arrived. The person - usually a lady - appointed to name the ship breaks a bottle of wine on her bows and presses an electric button. Hydraulic rams release the triggers and the ship bgins to move.

She quickly gathers speed, but as she slides stern- first into the water she is "kept in hand" by heavy drags, which come into operation one after another. The effect of these has been calculated so exactlythat she fetches up within a few yards of the spot where she ought to stop, while the parts of the sliding ways and cradles fall apart and cover the surface of the water. The huge berth that she has left looks strangely empty now.