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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 1 (April 1, 1936.)

The Brig to the Rescue

The Brig to the Rescue.

“The bos'n's pipe, and the bos'n's mates', went again like birds, and there was the roar we were all ready for: ‘Hands unmoor ship!’ Both anchors were down. We manned the windlass, and the ship's fiddler couldn't fiddle fast enough for us, racing those hooks up. The fiddler was a Scot, and he played all the lively reels and strathspeys, ‘Miss McLeod's Reel,’ and all the rest of them. We got the ‘devil's claw’ to work—them two hooks that grappled the cable like grim death and kept it from slipping—and we manned the quarter-deck capstan too and rove messengers, and kept reeving new messengers, and the anchors were soon a-trip, the fiddler squatting on one of the guns sawing away like a wild fellow.

“Then it was ‘Hands make sail!’ That was a glorious job always. We made good quick work of it with our big crew, though everything had to be done by hand, of course—no mechanical labour-savers in those days. Our topsails—big three-reef sails—were loosed and hoisted, and then the others, and in less than half-an-hour from the time we got the first word we were standing out through the reef entrance
(Drawing by A. H. Messenger.) H. M. Brig “Elk” sailing out of Apia, Samoa.

(Drawing by A. H. Messenger.)
H. M. Brig “Elk” sailing out of Apia, Samoa.

page 18 page 19 under topgallant-sails, with a good fresh breeze.