'GANS AT SEA cont'd...
by Lucille D'ecoupage
The heavily modified brigantine Rotund sat dockside along with her sister ship, Persephone at the Naval Academy at Greenwich, east of London. Sir Richard Farthing and his senoir officers had arrived the morning after the Vice Admiral's reception - all seemed somewhat worse for wear but they did manage to participate in the naval tradition of throwing their shoes aboard the ship before they themselves embarked. Each were successful in this task, thereby ensuring the smiling countenance of marine serpents and other dangers of the deep.
The Rotund was originally commissioned in 1798 at Buckler's Hard and saw service, though limited and as a supply vessel, in the war of 1812. Her gun deck had long since been sealed and a keel of quarter-inch steel was retro-fitted in order to help her cleave the northern ice. As well, she had been bolstered amidships to counter torsion and the crushing advance of the winter months. Extra frameworks had been built to fit and then disassembled and stored on deck to provide support for the sails which would be used to creat an air pocket around the ship as it sat ice-bound and immovable. A heating system incorporating a steam engine and pump would circulate heated water through lead pipes installed throughout the ship. Fuel, or more precisely storage for it had become an issue and as a solution some of the original ballast was removed and replaced with sacks of coal. These in turn would be replaced by river rock as use determined.
Damp, as usual, would become an issue and few had considered a system of drying the fuel over the months it had been in storage and visions of the crew huddled around a sputtering steam engine had visited more than once. Most of the ornamentation on the exterior of the ship had been stripped in honour of efficiency and a lack of funds. The sale of souvenirs proved to be worthwhile. The two ships bore a striking similarity in that they had each been clad in steel and sported many interchangable components. There had been a number of voyages to the north and west in search of a passage to the east and this was not to be the last. Garlands of cut flowers at the top of each gangway were the only decoration in anticipation of their departure.
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