remony of
giving the ship her name; and paragraphs must go the round of the
newspapers. As the hour draws near, crowds of human beings, young and
old, male and female, must hurry to the spot to witness the great event,
and hundreds of little boys must beg leave from school (if they can); in
short, a great stir must be made, and a great day must dawn, before the
last shores are knocked away, and the noble structure be permitted to
rush down that inclined plane, and for the first time cleave the waves.

And now, having shown how the launching of our ship is accomplished, let
us turn to consider the next step towards completion; for there is yet
much to be done ere she is able to brave the tempest.

RIGGING A SHIP.

Although fitting-in the lower-masts of a ship cannot well be deemed a
part of the rigging, we will nevertheless describe the operation here.

As the lower-masts of a large ship are from five to six feet in
circumference, it is manifest that some powerful mechanical contrivance
is required to raise them over the bulwarks, and put them in an upright
position, into their appointed places. Such contrivances, in the form
of enormous cranes, are fixed in some of the larger docks; but the most
useful method is to have the masts put in by means of:

_The Shear Hulk_. This is a strongly built hull of a ship, moored in a
part of a river or harbour that will afford depth of water to float
vessels of any size alongside. It has one stout mast, with two immense
beams attached to it near the deck, and sloping outwards over the
bulwarks in such a way that their ends overhang the deck of the vessel
into which masts are to be placed. These sloping beams are prevented
from falling overboard altogether, and their slope is regulated, by
blocks and tackles from the mast of the hulk. By means of this
contrivance, which is just a gigantic floating crane, the ponderous
lower-masts of large ships are raised and lowered into their places.

When these are fixed, the rigging of the ship commences. The method of
putting it up cannot prove interesting to general readers; not even to
boys, for when they take to rigging model ships, they do not require the
mechanical contrivances that are necessary in rigging large vessels.
But all readers of sea stories and nautical history will find it of the
utmost advantage to their clear understanding of what they read, to have
a general idea of the names and uses of the principal parts of a s