60 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANNETTE. 



Cliipp take the matter of stripping the ship into ad- 

 visement, and let me know your opinion with figm^es. 

 It is such Httle items as three hundred dollars here 

 and five hundred dollars there that run away with the 

 money, and I am more careful about spending money 

 belonging to Mr. Bennett than if it were my own." 



The general result of the work done upon the ship is 

 thus summed up in a letter to Mr. Bennett, written in 

 the hard-earned leisure which came after the Jeannette 

 left San Francisco : — 



" Let me go back a little to tell you what had been done to 

 the ship, and how I found things working at the navy yard 

 when I reached it on the 30th of May. The repairs, or rather 

 the alterations, were completed and the new boilers were in 

 place. The bow had been filled in solid for a distance of ten 

 feet from the stem, and for forty feet in length, and eight feet 

 in depth amidships ; the inside had been ceiled with oak planks 

 six inches thick. Exactly amidships a very heavy system of 

 kneed braces had been placed. An entirely new deck had been 

 laid in place of so much of the old deck as was necessarily 

 removed to hoist out the old sixteen foot boilers. The ship 

 had been docked, caulked, and painted. ^ The house for the 



1 In another account of the woi'k done to the ship, especially as regards 

 its strengthening, Captain De Long adds: "A steam-winch has been phiced 

 on deck forward of the smoke-stack, capable of lifting the screw, unship- 

 ping the rudder, and warping the ship ahead. The bow has been heavily 

 strengthened with oaken breast-hooks and transvei'se beams, and has been 

 filled in solid and caulked below the berth deck for a distance of ten feet 

 from the stem. Outside we have, of course, the original doubling of three 

 and a half inch American elm extending fore and aft, and down to the 

 floor heads, a distance of four feet nine inches from the keel. In the 

 spaces occupied by the engines, boilers, and coal bunkers, for a distance of 

 forty feet in length, and extending from the spar-deck shelf to the bilge 

 strakes on either side, the old ceiling and wooden trusses have been removed, 

 and six inch planks of Oregon pine in single lengths, with proper shifts, 

 have been substituted. Just forward of the boilers there is a series of beams 

 and braces to guard against dangers from severe nips, while the shape of the 

 hull with its great dead-rise will serve to aid the ship in rising to pressure. 

 The thickness of the vessel amidships is nineteen and a half inches. The 

 frames are on an average twelve inches apart from centre to centre." 



