CHAP. VI. ] DEEP-SEA DREDGING. 249 
in ewts. an approximation at all events to the strain 
on the rope. 
A second derrick, nearly equally strong, was rigged 
over the stern, and we dredged sometimes from one 
and sometimes from the other. The stern derrick was, 
however, principally used for sounding; the letting- 
go board, &e., being fitted up in connection with it. 
We had an excellent arrangement for stowing the 
dredge-rope in the ‘ Porcupine ;’ an arrangement 
which made its. manipulation singularly easy, not- 
withstanding its great weight—about 5,500 lbs. A row 
of about twenty great iron pins, about two and a half 
feet in length, projected over one side of the quarter- 
deck, rising obliquely from the top of the bulwark. 
Each of these held a coil of from two to three hun- 
dred fathoms, and the rope was coiled continuously 
along the whole row (Fig. 46). When the dredge 
was going down, the rope was taken rapidly by the 
men from these pins—‘ Aunt Salles’ we called them, 
from their ending over the deck in smooth white 
balls—in succession, beginning with the one nearest 
the dredging derrick ; and in hauling up, a relay of 
men carried the rope along from the surging drum 
of the donkey engine and laid it in coils on the pins 
in inverse order. Thus, in letting go, the rope 
passed to the block of the derrick directly from the 
‘Aunt Sallies;’ in hauling up, it passed from the 
block to the surging drum of the donkey-engine, 
from which it was taken by the men, and coiled on 
the ‘ Aunt Sallies.’ 
The length of the dredge-rope was 3,000 fathoms, 
nearly three and a half statute miles. Of this, 2,000 
fathoms were ‘hawser-laid,’ of the best Nussian 
