SWORD-FISH. 
145 
to the length of twenty feet, and swims with such 
swiftness that its beak has been known to penetrate 
the stoutest plank. As a proof of this assertion we 
shall quote two instances. In the first, which is to 
be found in he forty-first volume of the Philoso- 
phical Transactions, Mr. Mortimer tells us, that his 
majesty’s ship Leopard, when she returned from the 
West-Indies and the coast of Guinea, was ordered, 
in 1725, to be cleaned and fitted for channel service. 
Accordingly she was put into the great stone-dock 
at Portsmouth, and in stripping off her sheathing 
the shipwrights found the beak of a sword-fish in 
her bottom, which had passed through a three-inch 
plank, together with its sheathing, and had pene- 
trated four inches apd a half further into the solid 
timber. The outside of the beak is described as 
rough, and not unlike seal-skin, and the end where 
it was broken off had the appearance of ivory. The 
fish is supposed to have followed the ship when 
under sail, as the sharp end of the beak pointed to- 
wards the bow. Some idea of the force requisite to 
accomplish this purpose may be collected from the 
opinion of the workmen engaged about the vessel, 
who declared that it would be impossible with a 
hammer of a quarter of a hundred weight, to drive 
an iron pin of the same form and size, to the same 
depth in the wood, in less than eight or nine strokes. 
The other account was from the captain of an 
East-Indiaman, who informed Sir Joseph Banks, in 
a letter, that the' bottom of his ship was pierced 
through by a ‘fish of this species, in such a manner 
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