"Oakum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... front of me, very different from the yellow glimmer which had aided me down the same passage only twelve days before. As I ran, I saw the great beast lurching along before me, its huge bulk filling up the whole space from wall to wall. Its hair looked like coarse faded oakum, and hung down in long, dense masses which swayed as it moved. It was like an enormous unclipped sheep in its fleece, but in size it was far larger than the largest elephant, and its breadth seemed to be nearly as great as its ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... substituted, and only the upper part of the body was exposed. The tramp question was as troublesome in the seventeenth century as it is to-day. We confine them in workhouse-cells and make them break stones or pick oakum; whipping was the solution adopted by our forefathers. We have seen John Savidge wielding his whip, which still exists among the curiosities at Hungerford. At Barnsley in 1632 Edward Wood was paid iiijd. "for whiping of three wanderers." Ten years earlier Richard White received ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... got over by making another case, No. 1, of a triangular form with a bulkhead running across, to which I nailed my side timbers, so as to give them an outward curve. These streaks I put on clinker-wise—that is, overlapping, and thoroughly caulked them with oakum soaked in grease. ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... And as treadmills and oakum picking can be dismissed in the one case, so can much of the theological machinery for the discipline and punishment of sinners against spiritual laws be dispensed with, in the case of those who are, spiritually ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... pointed out a spot just below the waterline, and the man, standing a yard or two away, fired at it, the ball making a hole through both sides of the boat. Another shot was fired two or three inches higher, and the four holes were then plugged up with oakum. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... burnt oakum had excoriated his nose, and a certain quantity of the cold salt-water from alongside had wetted through his bedclothes, Mr Vanslyperken was completely recovered, and was able to speak and look about him. Corporal Van Spitter trembled a little as his commandant ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... part. But this was no independent, self-respecting member of the Wind-wafted sisterhood. Far out in the offing lay a steamer of the same line that was to TOW the Meteor to the Golden Gate! How is the breed of sailors fallen! The few laborers aboard would take an occasional wheel, pick oakum, and yarn their unadventurous yarns. As we drew near, a boat was lowered to set me aboard the steamer, to the rail-crowding surprise of her passengers, who fancied they had hours since seen the last of Zone and "Zoners." The captain asserted ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... it would be worth pickin' oakum for a year jist to take down his blamed consate. Did ye iver see such a banty rooster as the young wasp was? The little sailor chap wasn't half bad. And, say, Scot, did ye hear him say he was a Canadian ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... arms crossed, brilliantly lit up by the flames, while her attendant prayed. The fire did not last long: the house was wooden, with the crevices filled with oakum, like all those of Russian peasants, so that the flames, creeping out at the four corners, soon made great headway, and, fanned by the wind, spread rapidly to all parts of the building. Vaninka followed the progress of the fire with blazing eyes, fearing to see ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and captains think that the sailors have not earned their twelve dollars a month (out of which they clothe themselves), and their salt beef and hard bread, they keep them picking oakum— ad infinitum. This is the usual resource upon a rainy day, for then it will not do to work upon rigging; and when it is pouring down in floods, instead of letting the sailors stand about in sheltered places, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... hope. The child, with curly hair and a brown face, like the angels in a fifteenth-century picture, seemed to be in breeches, for his trousers ended at the knee in a ragged fringe of brambles and dead leaves. This necessary garment was fastened upon him by cords of tarred oakum in guise of braces. A shirt of the same burlap which made the old man's trousers, thickened, however, by many darns, open in front showed a sun-burnt little breast. In short, the attire of the being called ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... quite correct, hemp, old nets, and the fibre of a certain creeper being used for oakum. The wood-oil is derived from a tree called Tong-shu, I do not know if identical with the wood-oil trees of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... were kept in ignorance until Neptune came on board, which he did with one of his wives. It was my morning watch, when the frigate was hailed and desired to heave to, which was done. The cooper, a black man, personated the sea-god. His head was graced with a large wig and beard made of tarred oakum. His shoulders and waist were adorned by thrumbed mats; on his feet were a pair of Greenland snow-shoes. In his right hand he held the grains (an instrument something resembling a trident, and used for striking fish). He was seated on a match tub placed on a grating, with ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... was not overtaking us—yet Falmouth, when we reached it, was best of all; Falmouth, with its narrow streets and crowd of sailors, postmen, 'longshoremen, porters with wheelbarrows, and passengers hurrying to and from the packets, its smells of pitch and oakum and canvas, its shops full of seamen's outfits and instruments and marine curiosities, its upper windows where parrots screamed in cages, its alleys and quay-doors giving peeps of the splendid harbour, thronged—to quote Miss Plinlimmon again—"with varieties of gallant ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... had tried to burn the ship by rather an extraordinary stratagem. They took the hide of a horse, blew it up till it floated like a great bladder, and upon it put a man who paddled himself under the stern of the ship. Here he crammed oakum, brimstone and other combustibles between the rudder and the sternpost, and set the whole on fire. In a few moments the vessel was covered with smoke, and in the confusion the Spaniard escaped. However, his plot was not successful, for the pirates had the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... his profession; the old lady's money had fallen in during the voyage of the Gleaner, and he was now, as soon as the smoke of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow; clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner; when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... misshapen, badly calved and crudely articulated, even for a woman. If she has a good torso, she is almost sure to be bow-legged. If she has good legs, she is almost sure to have bad teeth. If she has good teeth, she is almost sure to have scrawny hands, or muddy eyes, or hair like oakum, or no chin. A woman who meets fair tests all 'round is so uncommon that she becomes a sort of marvel, and usually gains a livelihood by exhibiting herself as such, either on the stage, in the half-world, or as the private jewel ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... till the ends and edges were made smooth. He collected lumber from all available sources for the ends and bottom, fastening them on with a miscellaneous collection of nails and springs. Then he patiently picked an old piece of tarred rope into oakum, and caulked it into the seams with a sharpened gate-hinge. He notched a pine tree, gathered the gum and boiled it into pitch to make the joints tight. That extraordinary pair of oars he sawed, chopped, and whittled ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... months without the option in another minute, but I had the good luck to remember how much money I had paid my witnesses. The thought of paying that for nothing—worse than nothing, for six months in jail!—in an English jail!—pick oakum!—eat skilly!—that thought brought me to my senses. 'By Gassharamminy,' I said, 'I may be mad, but I'm sober! If it's a crime to desire to be English, then punish me, but let me first commit the offense!' So he laughed, and didn't question my witnesses very carefully—one was ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... have a boost. It's just GOT to. If it doesn't, there'll be a bust up that may end in fitting out a high-toned promoter or so in a striped yellow-and-black Jersey suit and set him to breaking rocks or playing with oakum. I'll tell you, poor old Palliser gets the Willies sometimes after he's read his mail. He turns the color of ecru baby Irish. That's a kind of lace I got a dressmaker to tell me about when I wrote up receptions and dances for the Sunday ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pavement of the street. The streets were all narrow, and most of them crooked, in that quarter of the town; but at the end of one the spars of a vessel pencilled themselves delicately against the cool blue of the afternoon sky. The air was full of a smell pleasantly compounded of oakum, of leather, and of oil. It was not the busy season, and they met only two or three trucks heavily straggling toward the wharf with their long string teams; but the cobble-stones of the pavement were worn with the dint of ponderous ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her afore the sea works up, she'll go down under us inside the next two hours. There's the pumps, too: for if she don't take in water like a basket I was never born in Wendron parish an' taught blastin'. Why, master, you must ha' blown the very oakum out ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... on the floor, tightly bound hand and foot, a gag of oakum stuck in his mouth and securely held there by cloth ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... insert tamping. In the improved form of hole the tamping should not he put directly upon the powder, but an air space should be left, as shown at B, Fig. 8. The best way to tamp, leaving an air space, is first to insert a wad, which may be of oakum, hay, grass, paper or other similar material. The tamping should be placed from 6 to 12 in. below the mouth of the hole. In some kinds of stone a less distance will suffice, and as much air space as practicable should intervene between the explosive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... heavy drum-taps. Chains clanked, a ship's dog barked incessantly from a companionway, ropes creaked in complaining pulleys, blocks rattled, hoisting-engines coughed and strangled, while all the air was redolent of oakum, of pitch, of paint, of spices, of ripe fruit, of clean cool lumber, of coffee, of tar, of bilge, and the brisk, nimble odor ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... began to leak considerably, but we prevented it as well as we could, by stuffing the largest holes with oakum, which an old sailor had had the precaution to take before quitting the frigate. At noon the heat became so strong—so intolerable, that several of us believed we had reached our last moments. The hot winds of the Desert even reached us; and the fine sand with which they were loaded, had ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... sergeant was tramping a country lane in tatters; or even to argue that he must have pretermitted some while ago his labours for the general defence, and (in the interval) possibly turned his attention to oakum. But there was no Greek chorus present; and the man of war went on to contend that drinking was one thing and a friendly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... queen and tell her all about it; and ax her if she's de mist'ess of England and lets sich goings on as dese go on in her kingdom. And if I can't get speech of the queen, I going to tell de fust magistet I can find—dere! And you, too, you whited salt-peter! you ought dis minute to be pickin' of oakum in a crash gown and cropped hair! And you shall be, too, afore many days, ef eber I lives to get out'n dis house alive!" shrieked Katie, shaking her fist first at one culprit and then at the other, and glaring inextinguishable hatred and defiance upon both. For ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... may be produced by holding in the mouth a sponge saturated with the purest gasoline. When the breath is exhaled sharply it can be lighted from a torch or a candle. Closing the lips firmly will extinguish the flame. A wad of oakum will give better results than ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... coil of rope in a desert he could at least think of all the things that can be done with a coil of rope; and some of them might even be practical. He could tow a boat or lasso a horse. He could play cat's-cradle, or pick oakum. He could construct a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress, or cord her boxes for a travelling maiden aunt. He could learn to tie a bow, or he could hang himself. Far otherwise with the unfortunate traveller who should find a telephone in the desert. You can telephone with ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Nationalists in the sure and certain hope that under an Irish Parliament business would revive, that the old place would be re-opened, that its venerable walls would again re-echo the songs of happy criminals, that the oakum-picking industry would revive and flourish, and that the treadwheel (which they identify with the weal of the country) would continuously revolve. Meanwhile, Armagh extends hospitality to stray wrong-doers and Monaghan boards them out ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... out a small piece of rope into oakum, and mixed it with fat from the intestines of my dogs. Alas, my match-box, which was always chained to me, had leaked, and my matches were in pulp. Had I been able to make a light, it would have looked so unearthly ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... thought might be successful. We had on board a small fire engine, mounted on wheels, with a hose and jet attached, and a tank capable of containing some fifty gallons. This engine I now ordered to be uncovered, and prepared for action by securely lashing a small loose mop-head of oakum round the nozzle of the hose, taking especial care that the aperture of the jet should be left perfectly free. Roberts, who seemed at once to divine and understand my plan even before I had explained it to him, undertook this part of the work in person; and in about ten minutes ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... but is very slow in his descent—the consequence was that I had plenty of time for my arrangements. I ran below, and lighting a torch of oakum, which I had prepared in readiness, placed it to his hinder quarters as he descended. The effect was exactly what I had anticipated; his thick fur, covered in every part with oil, was immediately in ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... execution; and, moreover, it could be performed as well inside the hut as in the largest room of a paper-mill. All they had to do was to pick the bark to shreds. This occupied them the whole evening—during which there was much conversation of a cheerful kind, with a joke or two about oakum-picking in a prison; and of this, not only the task in which they were engaged, but the situation in which they were executing it, did not fail ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... the cow on board; and another were filling the icehouses to the very throat with fresh provisions; with butchers'-meat and garden-stuff, pale sucking-pigs, calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poultry out of all proportion; and others were coiling ropes and busy with oakum yarns; and others were lowering heavy packages into the hold; and the purser's head was barely visible as it loomed in a state, of exquisite perplexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers' luggage; and there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere, or uppermost in the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... hold at the main-hatch, all the other hatchways having their coamings above the element. The carpenter proposed, therefore, that the main-hatches, which had been off when the tornado occurred, but which had been found on deck when the vessel righted, should now be put on, oakum being first laid along in their rabbetings, and that the cracks should be stuffed with additional oakum, to exclude as much water as possible. He thought that two or three men, by using caulking irons for ten minutes, would make the hatch-way ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... are broad, and vary in thickness from two to four inches. They form the outer skin of the ship, and are fastened to the ribs, keel, stem-post, and stern-post by means of innumerable pins of wood or iron, called tree-nails. The spaces between the planks are caulked—that is, stuffed with oakum; which substance is simply the untwisted tow of old and tarry ropes. A figure-head of some ornamental kind having been placed on the top and front of the stem-post, just above the cutwater, and a flat, ornamental stern, with windows in it to light the cabin, the hull ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... he replied, "I'll be caught and get a month. I'll have to eat skilly, you know, and pick oakum, and get ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... of boards, planks, and scantling for framing to build his home. It is soon ready. A scow, or flatboat, about twenty feet long by ten or twelve wide, is roughly constructed. It is made of two-inch planks spiked together. These scows are calked with oakum and rags, and the seams are made water-tight with pitch or tar. A small, low house is built upon the boat, and covers about two- thirds of it, leaving a cockpit at each end, in which the crews work the sweeps, or oars, which govern the motions ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... eighteen to twenty-four seeds, which are so beautifully packed in the shell that when once removed it is found impossible to replace them. A bland oil is pressed from the seeds, which is used by artists, and at Para the fibrous bark of the tree is used for calking ships, as a substitute for oakum. ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... protruded; though the guns that seemed so formidable were really only logs of wood. Two high smoke-stacks, built of empty pork-barrels, rose from the centre of this strange craft; and at the bottom of each stack was an iron pot, in which was a heap of tar and oakum that sent forth volumes of black smoke when lighted. One dark night the fires in this sham monster were lighted, and she was towed down to the Confederate batteries, and set drifting down the river. She was quickly discovered, and the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... second day had enough timber for their raft. It would have been much preferable could they have constructed a good, stout boat; but it was not feasible, though Jeff and Tim would have built it had they possessed the necessary planking and boards. They had provided themselves with oakum, pitch, and other material; but the labor of sawing out the right kind of stuff would have taken weeks. The Irishman had learned from his late experience; as a result of which a double-decker, as it may be termed, was planned. This consisted first of a substantial framework of buoyant ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... roadside cooling his blistered heels in a little runnel of clear water, and crying quietly to himself as he tried to rid his fingers of the tar which stuck to them after his workhouse morning's experience of oakum picking. I sat down beside him and offered him a fill of tobacco, and by and by got into talk with him. He was a man of some intelligence and education, and had begun life as a journeyman watchmaker. He had risen to be an employer, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... leaves: moss: lichen, and wild cotton; stalks or bark, broken up and rubbed small between the fingers; peat or cattle-dung pulverised; paper that has been doubled up in many folds and then cut with a sharp knife into the finest possible shavings; tow, or what is the same thing, oakum, made by unravelling rope or string; and scrapings and fine shavings from a log of wood. The shreds that are intended to touch the live spark should be reduced to the finest fibre; the outside of the nest may be of coarser, but still of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... gave him an order to scuttle that swift little ship in the middle of the second watch, or two in the morning. He was "to go down secretly into the well of the ship, and with a spike-gimlet to bore three holes, as near the keel as he could, and lay something against it [oakum or the like] that the force of the water entering, might make no great noise, nor be discovered by a boiling up." Thomas Moone "at the hearing hereof" was utterly dismayed, for to him the project seemed flat burglary as ever ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... in the forecastle and got some tools, a piece of old sailcloth, and a large bundle of oakum; and then made his way with the two sailors down into the after hold. The way in which the upper tier of cargo lay heaped against the sides showed that it would, as the captain said, have been impossible to enter while the motion was at its worst. The rolling, however, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... mast, and their ends brought to the capstan through snatch blocks. Planks were then strapped loosely on the lines and allowed to run along them freely, being weighted sufficiently to cause them to sink. After they were slung clear of the ship, they were held in position until a pad of canvas and oakum was inserted between them ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... property with a couple of tubs, one to catch rain-water and t'other filled with garden mould. If the sea rots 'em, I'll have the whole estate careened, and its bottom pitched and its seams stopped with oakum. I'll rig up a battery here, and if the water-butt runs dry you shall blaze away at the guns till you fetch the rain down, as I've seen it fetched down before now by a cannonade. But I mean to have a garden here, and ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brought over, as the country in which it grows is as cold as Britain, and it is reckoned the most valuable timber of that country both for beauty and duration. The bark of this tree makes excellent oakum for that part of ships which is under water, but does not answer when exposed to the sun and air. They export also the wood of a tree named luma, for axle-trees and the poles of carriages; of a particular kind of hazle for ship-building, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... light; and, when they had done so much, they thought proper to save the remainder of their flour for similar purposes. As they had carefully collected whatever happened to be cast on shore, to supply them with fuel, they had found amongst the wrecks of vessels some cordage and a small quantity of oakum (a kind of hemp used for caulking ships), which served them to make wicks for their lamps. When these stores began to fail, their shirts and their drawers (which are worn by almost all the Russian peasants) were employed to make good the deficiency. By these means they kept their lamp burning ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... sources of the scurvy, was therefore more particularly attended to, in order to its removal. The fires were the powerful instrument for that purpose, and whilst they burned, some men were employed in rubbing hard, with canvass or oakum, every part of the inside of the ship that was damp and accessible. But the advantage of fire appears no where so manifest as in cleansing the well; for this being in the lowest part of the hold, the whole leakage runs into it, whether of the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... well at the age of eight. The next time I met them was in a 5s. one-volume edition of the dramatic works of William Shakespeare, read in Falmouth, at odd moments of the day, to the noisy accompaniment of calkers' mallets driving oakum into the deck-seams of a ship in dry-dock. We had run in, in a sinking condition and with the crew refusing duty after a month of weary battling with the gales of the North Atlantic. Books are an integral part of one's life, and my Shakespearian associations ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... fruit is like green hazel-nuts in taste, and better; and there is a serum for many ills and infirmities, which is called whey, as it looks much like that of milk. It is there called tuba. They make honey from this tree; also oakum with which to calk ships, which lasts in the water, when that from here would rot. Likewise they make rigging, which they call cayro; and they make an excellent match for arquebuses, which, without any other attention, is never extinguished. The shoots resemble ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... telescope for the unsophisticated 'really to see the line,' and many firmly believed they did see it, and discussed its appearance at some length. Jim Allen, one of our tallest sailors, and coxswain of the gig, dressed in blue, with long oakum wig and beard, gilt paper crown, and trident and fish impaled in one hand, was seated on a gun-carriage, and made a capital Father Neptune. Our somewhat portly engineer, Mr. Rowbotham, with fur-trimmed dressing gown and cap, and bent form, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... mandible of the bill, till it appears to be free from smell; then hang it in the sun, or near a fire: after it is well dried, clean out what remains loose of the mixture, and fill the cavity of the body with wood, oakum, or any soft substance, and pack it smooth ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... company where the shape of the earth was disputed, said, "Why look ye, gentlemen, they pretend to say the earth is round; now I have been all round it, and I, Jack Oakum, assure you it is as flat as ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... ended. She received a good character in the governor's books; she had picked her daily quantity of oakum, had never deserved the extra punishment of the treadmill, and had been civil and decorous in her language. And once more she was out of prison. The door closed behind her with a ponderous clang, and in her desolation she felt as if shut ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... there no end o' cordage swashin' about the Water Wagtail ever since she went ashore? An' haven't we got fingers? Can't we undo the strands an' make small cord? Surely some of ye have picked oakum enough ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... disturbed for at least three days and may be left in place for a week. In cases in which it is necessary to keep the dressing on for a week, or in cases where the patient is, through necessity, kept in quarters that are wet or unclean, the first bandage is covered with a layer of oakum which has been saturated in oil of tar and this in turn is held in place by means of several layers of bandages. The bandages are also saturated ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... and his wife Oakum; they spent all evening at Mrs. B———'s. The Captain is a Marblehead man by birth, not far from sixty years old; very talkative and anecdotic in regard to his adventures; funny, good-humored, and full of various nautical experience. Oakum (it is a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no end of pardons, chevalier, for having made you balance things on your nose, and for having led you to chew oakum in order to spit fire during the voyage. But as true as we are in sight of the coast of France, I did not know that you were the proprietor ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... it was another story. 'Stead o' keep talkin' about German culture and what rotters all the rest o' the world was, their heads had plenty o' time to cool while they picked their oakum or what not—resultin' in quite a fairly decent lot o' men, as I say. Yes, it's very interesting and instructive. I believe it's the solution of the question, 'How to cure the Bosch,' I do. If you could keep 'em all apart ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... altogether. At 9 a.m., after pumping ship, the engineer reported a leak in the way of the propeller-shaft aft near the stern-post on the port side. The carpenter cut part of the lining and filled the space between the timbers with Stockholm tar, cement, and oakum. He could not get at the actual leak, but his makeshift made a little difference. I am anxious about the propeller. This pack is a dangerous place for a ship now; it seems miraculous that the old ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Yank Tate appeared at the captain's elbow, and suggested, in a low voice, that he examine the treasure-chests in the 'tween-deck. "I was down stowing away some oakum," he said, "an' I was sure I heard the lid close; but nobody answered me, an' I couldn't ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... space between the hub and the pipe is first packed with oakum and then the other half filled with cement of the same proportions ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... grenades, handspikes, shaftings, lubricants, wire coils, rope, sea chests, life preservers, spar varnish, copper paint, pulleys, ensigns, twine, clasp knives, boat hooks, chronometers, ship clocks, rubber boots, fur caps, splicing compounds, friction tape, cement, wrenches, hinges, screws, oakum, oars, anchors—it was no wonder that the force quailed at sight of the work ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... Bark. In Lieu of a Gunnel, they have a small Pole fastned with Thongs, sticks across & Ribs of Bark, and they deposit Sheets of Bark in her Bottom to prevent Breaches there. These vessels are very light, each broken and often patched with Pieces of Bark as well as corked with Oakum ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... boat would wrench it to atoms, but if any part had given way it was not apparent. Harry, who sat nearest the housed structure, suddenly sprang up, and pointing down, cried out: "It is leaking; look how it boils!" It was forethought on the part of the Professor to put in a supply of the oakum used for caulking purposes. Harry sprang for it, and George grasped the bailing pan. After a struggle a sufficient amount was driven into interstices to keep out at least a portion of the seepage. This knowledge was most oppressive. When ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... boards, raised to a sufficient height above the spring-tides, and rendered water-tight by pitch and oakum, was placed above the mouth of the shaft. Its sides were supported by stout props in an inclined direction. At the top of this wooden construction, which was twenty feet in height, a platform of boards was secured, on which a windlass was placed. The water ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... sea anchor," declared Ben, "but in the first place, Frank, get below and empty your canvas clothes bags, stuff 'em with oakum and pour all the lubricating oil you can spare in on top of the oakum and then make a lot of holes in the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... carpenter and his crew distributed some bundles of oakum and shavings in different parts of the vessel, and, setting them on fire, quickly climbed out of her, when Jack shouted, "Turn ahead!" and the Gauntlet steamed on, leaving the dhow enveloped in flames. The whole ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Sylvia. "It would make a nice excitement for the special constables to come and arrest us, as they most certainly would. What a heading it would make for the newspaper—'A Ladies' School in Prison. No Bail Allowed'! Would they set us to pick oakum?" ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... liquorish a fashion, you might well think they even had Jamaiky, in 'em. No, potaties is the essence of lobscous; and a very good thing is a potatie, Sir Jarvy, when a ship's company has been on salted oakum for a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... spinning wool and flax, in sewing, knitting, or winding silk, or making their clothes or shoes, and are taught to write, read, and cast accounts. The grown vagrants brought here for a time only are employed in washing, beating hemp, and picking oakum, and have no more to keep them than they earn, unless they are sick; and the boys are put out apprentices to seafaring men or artificers, at a certain age, and in the meantime have their diet, clothes, physic, and other necessaries provided for them ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... found portions of tobacco-pipe, pieces of china and glass, brass buttons, copper coins, nails, and what most likely caused the death of the bird, a large quantity apparently of the head of a woollen mop, with portions of oakum, which from its size and quantity had proved too much for the bird to digest. It would appear, however, that many substances remain for years in the folds of the stomach, without injury; as on opening an Ostrich ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... it would be like him. Baker's boy is the famine-breeder of the ship. He is always hungry. They say he goes about the state-rooms when the passengers are out, and eats up all the soap. And they say he eats oakum. They say he will eat any thing he can get between meals, but he prefers oakum. He does not like oakum for dinner, but he likes it for a lunch, at odd hours, or any thing that way. It makes him very disagreeable, because it makes his breath bad, and keeps his teeth all stuck up with tar. Baker's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up the helm! Sling a man overboard to stop the leaks, that is, truss him up around the middle in a piece of canvas and a rope, with his arms at liberty, with a mallet and plugs lapped in oakum and well tarred, and a tar-pauling clout, which he will quickly beat into ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... he has made blunders as well as another man. Go, mix me a glass of just what I love when I've not had a drop all day. Gentlemen, will any of you honour me, by sharing in a cut? This beef is not indigestible, and here is a real Marylander, in the way of a ham. No want of oakum to fill up ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of oakum and salt-fish was in the air, and "O," sighed Kitty, "doesn't it make you long for distant seas? Shouldn't you like to be shipwrecked for half a ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... next month he tholed the cold of that same punishment- cell; and during the next was in his old cell, but in chains, picking oakum. All this time, if he was aware of high winds by night, he was in an agony, till the next day the great ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... they thrill, The brave two hundred scars You got in the River-Wars? That were leeched with clamorous skill, (Surgery savage and hard), Splinted with bolt and beam, Probed in scarfing and seam, Rudely linted and tarred With oakum and boiling pitch, And sutured with splice and hitch ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... 'em out. Awful lookin' critters they be, you may depend, when they do come out; for all the world like half-drowned kittens—all slinkey slimey, with their great long tails glued up like a swab of oakum dipped in tar. If they don't look foolish it's a pity! Well, they have to nurse these critters all winter, with hot mashes, warm covering, and what not, and when spring comes, they mostly die, and if ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... left in the ship was the commander, the carpenter, one midshipman, and myself. After the boats left us we had two chances—either to jump or sink. We cold just get into the sailroom and got up a new forecourse and stuck it full of oakum and rags, and put itt under the ship's bottom; this is called fothering the ship. We found some benefit by itt for pumping and bailing we gained on hur; that gave us a little hope of saving our lives. We was in this terable situation for nine weeks before we got ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... casks, and fill that up with powder—it will hold ten or twelve of the little barrels—and then we might bung it up, and make a hole in its head. Over the hole we might fix a wine bottle, with the bottom knocked out; and so fastened, with tow and oakum, that the water won't get in. Then we might shove down through the mouth of the bottle, and through the hole below it into the powder, a long strip of paper dipped in saltpetre, to make touch paper of it. I don't know ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... to be sure! What can Mr. Grey mean? There was Mrs. Oakum's gray and silver brocade, and Mrs. Cotton's point-de-Venice mantle, and Miss Prime and Miss Messe and Miss Middlings, who always dress exquisitely, and Mrs. Shinnurs Sharcke with that superb India shawl that must have cost two thousand dollars! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... building a vessel large enough to carry the baggage and the men too weak to walk. Timber was superabundant. The shoes of horses that had died or had been killed for food were wrought into nails. Pitch was obtained from gum-yielding trees. In place of oakum the tattered garments of the soldiers were used. It took two months to complete the difficult task, at the end of which time a rude but strong brigantine was ready, the first vessel larger than an Indian canoe that ever floated on the mighty waters of Brazil. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... ship? He's the devil, I say. The reason why you don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries it .. coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots. He sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging. No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... hair, capillament^, cilium, cilia, pilus, pili; tendril, gossamer; hair stroke; veinlet^, venula^, venule^. wire, string, thread, packthread, cotton, sewing silk, twine, twist, whipcord, tape, ribbon, cord, rope, yarn, hemp, oakum, jute. strip, shred, slip, spill, list, band, fillet, fascia, ribbon, riband, roll, lath, splinter, shiver, shaving. beard &c (roughness) 256; ramification; strand. Adj. filamentous, filamentiferous^, filaceous^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... made candles in my African adventure; but I had none of that now; the only remedy I had was, that when I had killed a goat, I saved the tallow; and with a little dish made of clay, which I baked in the sun, to which I added a wick of some oakum, I made me a lamp; and this gave me light, though not a clear steady light like a candle. In the middle of all my labours it happened, that in rummaging my things, I found a little bag; which, as I hinted before, had been filled with corn, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... some little similarity between the two, for the man was a towsy-headed fellow with a great mop of yellow hair and a straggling beard, while the dog was of the long-haired, unkempt breed looking like an animated bundle of oakum. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that time, "I want Will to come with me to make a little search for that old boat we were told could be found hidden under a shelving rock near the shore. It hasn't been used for some years, and is apt to be in poor shape, but I've got some oakum and a calking tool. With those, I hope to put it in condition, so with frequent baling we can use it ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... demeanour and vexation of the beetles that inhabit the diarodal (diarhomal) climate of an hypocritical ape on horseback, bending a crossbow backwards, the plaintiff truly had just cause to calfet, or with oakum to stop the chinks of the galleon which the good woman blew up with wind, having one foot shod and the other bare, reimbursing and restoring to him, low and stiff in his conscience, as many bladder-nuts and wild pistaches as there is of hair in eighteen cows, with ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of old tarry ropes sundered by teasing, and employed in caulking the seams between planks in ships; the teasing of oakum is an occupation for ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Oakum to me, {156} ye sailors bold, Wot plows upon the sea; To you I mean for to unfold My mournful historie. So pay attention to my song, And quick-el-ly shall appear, How innocently, all along, I was ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... them down with black paint. He would sometimes get outside of the port-holes and peer into their muzzles, as a monkey into a bottle. Or, like a dentist, he seemed intent upon examining their teeth. Quite as often, he would be brushing out their touch-holes with a little wisp of oakum, like a Chinese barber in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... exiles were able to construct small but comfortable houses of their own on South Charles Street, giving to that quarter of the city the name of French Town. Many of them found employment on the waterside and in navigation. The old and infirm picked oakum. ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... from the other side of the world, from Africa and China. They spent nights on the sea on an open boat, and when they played truant it was always to go fishing. The cleverest of them had their own fishing-tackle and little flat-bottomed prams, that they had built themselves and caulked with oakum. They fished on their own account and caught pike, eels, and tench, which they sold to the wealthier people ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the emolument and the honour of the republic. This is also the place of confinement for disobedient and idle apprentices. They are kept separate, in airy cells, and have an allotted task to be performed in a certain time. They, the men and women, are employed in beating hemp, picking oakum, and packing of goods, and are said to earn ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... on the stocks, and then set about to find materials to mend her. Tools were all too few—a hammer, a saw, and an adze were all we had. A piece of board or a nail were treasures then, and when the timbers of the craft were covered, for oakum we had resort to tree-gum. For caulking, one spared a handkerchief, another a stocking, and another a piece of shirt, till she was stuffed in all her fissures. In this labour we passed eight days, and then were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... off. No less than twenty-two did this in 1874. Of course, the object was to get out of the mud. When once a man's leg or arm was off he would no longer be able to handle a shovel, and would necessarily be placed in an inside or cripples party and set to work picking oakum or breaking stones, with the result that, being free from severe toil and sheltered from the storms, they would not be so hungry. Then, again, they could more easily escape being reported, and ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... stood a few moments and thought, and then he went to work. From the useless little vessel which, had belonged to the Rackbirds he gathered some bits of old rope, and having cut these into short pieces, he proceeded to pick them into what sailors call oakum. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... master with regard to the truth of this account, owned that every circumstance was justly represented; saying, he did not value their cheese-toasters a pinch of oakum; and that if the gentleman had not shot in betwixt them, he would have trimmed them to such a tune, that they should not have had a whole yard to square. Peregrine reprimanded him sharply for his unmannerly behaviour, and insisted upon his ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... especially in watching a gang of caulkers knocking away at the seams of an immense coal steamer. He sat upon a great iron clamped pile, spitting into the yellow water below. The air was full of the smell of bilge and oakum and fish; the thousands of masts made a gray maze against the sky; occasionally an empty truck trundled over the hollow docks with a sound of distant cannon. A weakness, a little trembling that seemed to come from the pit of his stomach, began ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... up his head and looked at me. Then he banged it down upon his pillow, which was one of those gooseberry-shaped rope nets, stuffed full of oakum, and called a fender, while we went forward once more to talk to the doctor about his chart, for Jack Penny was comporting himself exactly as if he had become one of the party, though I had made up my mind that he ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... death. At length he became a pleasant companion among us. I gave him a new suit of frieze after the English fashion, because I saw he could not endure the cold, of which he was very joyful; he trimmed up his darts, and all his fishing tools, and would make oakum, and set his hand to a rope's end upon occasion. He lived with the dry caplin that I took when I was searching in the pinnace, and did ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... and then forcing in quartered pieces of small logs and nailing them or spiking them in position. If your logs are straight spruce logs and fit snugly, the cracks may be calked up with swamp moss (Sphagnum), or like a boat, with oakum, or the larger spaces may be filled with flat stones and covered with mud. This mud will last from one to seven or eight years; I have some on my own log cabin that has been there even a ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... ship, richly laden, was beset off Marblehead by English pirates, who killed every person on board, at the time of the capture, except a beautiful English lady, a passenger on the ship, who was brought ashore at night and brutally murdered at a ledge of rocks near Oakum Bay. As the fishermen who lived near were absent in their boats, the women and children, who were startled from their sleep by her piercing shrieks, dared not attempt a rescue. Taking her a little ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... dependent on one lamp, of which some accident might deprive them, they made another. In collecting such wood as had been cast on shore for fuel, they had fortunately found some cordage and a little oakum (the sort of hemp used for calking ships), which they turned to great account as wicks for their lamps. When this store was consumed, they had recourse to their shirts and drawers—a part of dress worn by almost all Russian peasants—to supply the want. Like the sacred ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... which had been heated, contrary to orders, on the fore part of the main deck, caught fire, and the people, instead of damping it out, most imprudently attempted to extinguish it with buckets of water. The steam blew the flaming pitch all around; the oakum caught fire, and the ship was immediately in a blaze. Many of the crew jumped overboard, and others were preparing to hurry out of her, when the presence and authority of the Admiral allayed the panic. He ordered to beat ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... or pipe conveying water from the flume to the wheel, should be constructed of liberal size, and substantially, of two-inch chestnut planking, with joints caulked with oakum, and the whole well bound together to resist the pressure of the water. Means should be provided near the bottom for an opening through which to remove any obstructions that may by accident pass by the rack. Many wheels have plates provided in their ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... refuge from a fierce north-easterly gale, and here they remained for many days, so that the woman and children might gain strength and the seams of the leaking boat be payed with tallow—their only substitute for oakum. Then onward they sailed or rowed, for long, long weary weeks, landing here and there on the coast to seek for water and shell-fish, harried and chased by cannibal savages, suffering all the agonies that could be suffered on such a wild venture, until they reached Timor, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Oakum to me[3], ye sailors bold, Wot plows upon the sea; To you I mean for to unfold My mournful histo-ree. So pay attention to my song, And quick-el-ly shall appear, How innocently, all along, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... They know. But he has not said. Therefore he goes in safety when he should be picking oakum in the jail khana. They are cunning as ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... and pasteboard could work. As there are six of us, I propose to put a false neck over each of our heads, and I'll manage to paint in a quarter less than no time, six as ugly faces as you ever saw, on as many balls of canvas, which I'll stuff with oakum. So each of us will have a head to hold in his hand. Unless some accident happens, we certainly can manage to keep ahead of the rover till nightfall. Then we'll just mix up a number of lumps of gunpowder and sulphur, and place them about the deck before each of us. As soon as the rover ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... a leaf out of modern warfare, and show them not only that we are top-dog (a favourite phrase of the mate), but why we are top-dog. It is simple—night illumination. As I write I work opt the idea—gasoline, balls of oakum, caps and gunpowder from a few cartridges, Roman candles, and flares blue, red, and green, shallow metal receptacles to carry the explosive and inflammable stuff; and a trigger-like arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are exploded in the gunpowder and fire set to the gasoline-soaked ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... am not free," she repeated, and again the italics were her very own. After much to-do, it came out that what she meant was that she had a brother who oughtn't to be free; ought, if justice were done, to be picking oakum or whatever else they pick in their leisure hours way back in U.S.A. And this was the whole and the sole fatal obstacle! Hemingway took it as it came; Mr. DAVIS seemed quite pleased about it; but I felt that I had been wantonly deceived. Baffle me by all means, said I, but do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... and racked the little house: "I should not dare to say how many pounds' weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak—but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked." At the beginning of the paragraph he says that he and his philosopher sat down each with "some shingles of thoughts well dried," which they whittled, trying their knives and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. In a twinkling ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... board, made it necessary for me to earn at least six dollars per week, to keep even with the world. All who are acquainted with calking, know how uncertain and irregular that employment is. It can be done to advantage only in dry weather, for it is useless to put wet oakum into a seam. Rain or shine, however, work or no work, at the end of each week the money ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... and his men had in the meantime pried the battens from the hatch and thrown it open. The hold was about half full of cotton bales, railroad ties, oakum, resin, and the like, and they descended to them by means of a scaling ladder, clambering thence toward the forward bulkhead. One of the men had a lantern which cast a pallid glow about the immediate vicinity, bringing into vague relief the well-ordered ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... breasted the billows of time, and sails the seas today because of its own inherent grace and strength, shall we, therefore, cling to crazy old crafts that can with difficulty be towed out of harbor, and must be kept afloat by constant application of tar and oakum? As I read the Bible and the world, gray hairs are a crown unto a man only when they are found in the way of righteousness. Laden with guilt and heavy woes, behold the AGED SINNER goes. A seemly old age is fair and beautiful, and to be had in honor ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... all were soon at work. The children picked over the oakum, the Captain fitted the rigging, and the Indian and Mrs. Godfrey tried their hands at ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... said that while the Claimant was on board his ship he amused himself by picking oakum and reading "The Garden of ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... what a particular thing is at a particular moment to oneself, so it is also in the ethical evolution of one's character. I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one's finger-tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... maps; party employed in preparations for the journey to the Gulf of Carpentaria, camp duties, and preparing oakum for the schooner. Having found that the pork had been so much reduced in weight during the late journey, I made some experiments in the preparation of meat biscuits by mixing the preserved fresh beef with flour in equal proportions, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... only—the construction of a working hypothesis of Life, that would favour peace on earth and good-will towards men; that would establish a modus vivendi, and enable us to be jolly with these reprobates—at any rate, as soon as they had served their time and picked their oakum. We are not intruding on the province of the Theologian—merely discussing the problem of how we can make ourselves pleasant to one another all round, until that final separation of the sheep from the goats, when, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... to be a bloodhound. Anyhow, I'd spend MY declining years nestled up to a rock-pile, with a mallet in my mit, and a low-browed gentleman scowling at me from the top of a wall. He'd lean on his shotgun and say, 'Hurry up, Fatty; it's getting late and there's a ton of oakum to pick.' It just goes to show that some of us is born behind the game and never get even, while others, like Gordon, quit winner no matter how much they lose." Having relieved himself of this fervid homily, "Happy Tom" unrolled a package of gum and thrust three sticks into ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... But the action of the fire on the flanks of the ship had been of a much more serious character; a long portion of the inside boarding had been burned away, and the very ribs of the vessel were con- siderably damaged; the oakum caulkings had all started away from the butt-ends and seams; so much so that it was little short of a miracle that the whole ship had not long since gaped ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... three, or even four, of these luscious birds, cooked with the artistic accuracy of the Maxwell Point cuisine, would leave a cat but sorry pickings, especially when the bottle passes freely, and jovial friends cheer you on. Of course, I do not allude to such people as enjoy that "soaked oakum," called "bouilli." To offer a well-cooked canvas-back duck to them, would, indeed, be casting pearls before—something. Neither would it suit the fastidious taste of those who, not being able to discern the difference between juice and blood, cook all flavour and nourishment ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... is, her planking runs fore and aft," Uncle Ben explained, using gestures to indicate the direction. "Planking may mean boards or thinner stuff. The planks are jointed at the edges so as to fit close, and the spaces between are stuffed with oakum, which is called calking. A clinker-built boat is put together in the same way, but one plank laps over another; and we generally call this kind of boat a lap-streak. Now, youngsters, we are going to take the oars—not yet, till you ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... her son the marquis is proprietor. Each year adds to his acres or his stock. An able-bodied wife, whose industry and English are equal to his own, sits near him at the door on a summer evening, while he smokes his pipe, takes an oakum-headed child upon his knee, and gazes quietly in the direction of the spring and across the grain-fields where once he saw—or rather heard, without waiting to see—a forest swept down in a moment. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... had been kept tight by the rock that had caused it. It was necessary to close this leak at once. An iron bolt, which was screwed for a nut at one end, was obtained and passed through a strong piece of wood about 2 feet square. The inside of this board was cushioned with canvas and oakum, and it was taken down outside the ship by the diver and placed over the hole, with the feathered end of the bolt sticking through the hole; the diver was then sent down inside the hold, and with a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... other, so that if, by the blow of a whale, or by touching on a rock, water should get into one of these divisions, it can go no farther, and the leak being found, is soon stopped. They are all built double, or have two courses of boards, one within the other, both of which are well caulked with oakum, and nailed with iron; but they are not pitched, as they have no pitch in Mangi, instead of which they are payed all over with the oil of a certain tree, mixed up with lime and chopped hemp which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... honestly at country work; but you don't like the sight of human beings in your fields; you like better to see a smoking kettle. You pay, as an amateur, for that pleasure, and you employ your fifty men in picking oakum, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Schultz came along ten minutes later he found Mr. Reardon very busy calking with oakum the cracks round the door and window of his state-room, through which little wisps of yellow smoke were curling. Mr. Schultz was so completely deceived that he hurried round to his own quarters and pawed over his own mattress and bedding in ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... She was almost mortally stabbed; her assailant withdrawing his blade. And it was only by keeping the pumps clanging, that she managed to swim into a Tahitian harbor, "heave down," and have her wound dressed by a ship-surgeon with tar and oakum. This ship I met with at ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... The speaker was savagely oblivious. The Hon. Slote will add much to the gaiety of nations. The distinctive articles of his attire were a red cravat, a coat of the vintage of '49, a tobacco-stained shirt-front and a whisp of oakum- colored chin beard. As a bit of bric-a-brac, or a curio from one of the oldest portions of the unhallowed west, he will be of value in the interior decoration of the Capitol, but it is to be feared that ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... staid, stiff—rumped, wall—eyed, old first lieutenantish—looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and standup collar, over which dangled either a queue, or a marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it,—it would have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal—skuttle tops of which served as scuppers ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott |
