92 CAPE CHELYUSKIN 



was in no small degree due to this man." Plan after 

 plan did he make of the projected ship, model after 

 model did he prepare and abandon before he was 

 satisfied : and never was a ship more honestly built. 

 With her double-ended deck plan, with a side of such 

 curve and slope that under ice pressure she would be 

 lifted instead of crushed between the floes, and with 

 bow, stern, and keel so rounded off that she would slip 

 like an eel from the embrace of the ice, she was of 

 such solidity as to withstand any pressure from any 

 direction. Her stem of three stout oak beams, one 

 inside the other, was four feet in thickness, protected 

 with iron ; her rudder-post and propeller-post, two feet 

 across, had on either side a stout oak counter-timber 

 following the curvature upwards and forming a double 

 stern-post, with the planking cased with heavy iron 

 plates ; and between these timbers was a well for the 

 screw and another for the rudder, so that each could 

 be hoisted on deck, the rudder with the help of the 

 capstan coming up in a few minutes. Her frames, 

 ten inches thick and twenty-one wide, stood close 

 together, carrying three layers of planking, giving 

 altogether a side of two feet or more of solid wood, 

 so shored and stayed for strength that the hold looked 

 like a thicket of balks, joists, and stanchions. With 

 a length of 128 feet over all, a breadth of thirty-six, a 

 depth of seventeen, and a displacement of 800 tons, 

 she was quite a multum-in-parvo engined with a 

 220 horse-power triple expansion, so contrived that in 

 case of accident or for any other cause the cylinders 

 could be used singly or two together. Rigged as a three- 

 masted fore-and-aft schooner, with the mainmast much 



