m the boats usually to be found on board ship. Captain
Staunton had, when quite a lad, been compelled, with the rest of the
ship's company of which he was then a junior and very unimportant
member, to abandon the ship and take to the boats in mid-ocean; and he
then learnt a lesson which he never forgot, and formed ideas with
respect to the fitting of boats which his nautical friends had been wont
to rather sneer at and stigmatise as "queer." But when the _Galatea_
was in process of fitting out he had, with some difficulty, succeeded in
persuading his owners to allow him to carry out these ideas, and the
boats were fitted up almost under his own eye.

The chief peculiarity of the boats lay in their keels. These were made
a trifle stouter than usual, and of ordinary depth. But they were so
shaped and finished that a false keel some eight or nine inches deep
could be securely fastened on below in a very few minutes. This was
managed by having the true keel bored in some half a dozen places along
its length, and the holes "bushed" with copper. The copper bushes
projected a quarter of an inch above the upper edge of the keel, and
were so finished as to allow of copper caps screwing on over them, thus
effectually preventing the flow of water up through the bolt-holes into
the interior of the boat. The false keel was made to accurately fit the
true keel, and was provided with stout copper bolts coinciding in number
and position with the bolt-holes in the true keel. To fix the false
keel all that was necessary was to unscrew the caps from the top of the
"bushes," apply the false to the true keel, pushing the bolts up through
their respective holes, and set them up tight by means of thumb-screws.
The whole operation could be performed in a couple of minutes, and the
boats were then fit to beat to windward to any extent.

As far as the gigs were concerned (with the exception of the whaleboat
gig, which was an exquisitely modelled boat, fitted with air-chambers so
as to render her self-righting and unsinkable), beyond greater attention
than usual to the model of the craft, this was the only difference which
Captain Staunton had thought it necessary to make between the boats of
the _Galatea_ and those of other ships; but in the cases of the launch
and pinnace he had gone a step further, by fitting them with movable
decks in sections, which covered in the boats forward and aft and for
about a foot wide right along each side.