ABSTRACT
According to the last census the number of ''Ship-builders, Carpenters, and Wrights" (terms between which it is not easy to distinguish, the builder, carpenter, and wright being, according to my informants, one and the same individual), were in 1841 20,424 throughout Great Britain. Of these 17,498 were residents in England and Wales, and 2,926 in Scotland. The number located in the Metropolis - with whom I have more particularly to deal - was then 2,309. Since that period the number appears to have increased nearly one-fifth, for, according to the best-informed persons in connection with the trade, the following may be taken as a correct estimate of the hands belonging to the different branches of the business at the present time:
It is not my intention fully to describe the whole process of the important art of ship-building, nor would the limits of a newspaper admit of such description. To show the divisions of the trade, however, and so to render the statements I give more clear and intelligible, I will very briefly explain the process as it was described to me by working men, to whom I was referred as
being the most skilful and intelligent. Three classes of workmen are employed in the construction of a vessel, before it is "ready for rigging." These are the shipwrights, the ship-joiners, and the caulkers. The work (as regards the mechanical labour employed) commences with the shipwright; and he and the ship-joiner makes the whole "carcass" from "keel to gunal" (gunwale); the joiner's work being confmed principally to the formation of the cabins. Drafts and plans are given out by the foreman for the guidance of all the operatives. The shipwright begins with the keel, which is always made of elm - sometimes American, but chiefly English, timber being used. They then "put in the floors;" which are the timbers that constitute the bottom of the vessel and float upon the water. These "floors" consist of frrst, second, and third "futtocks" (fuddocks), the form of which I described in my letter on ship-timber sawing, and they are made so as to give, when put together by the skill of the workman, the form, the bend, and sweep of the hull. The perfect construction of this portion of the vessel is the high art of the shipwright. "Top-timber" is then placed above the floors for the purpose of binding and strengthening them by an interior as well as an exterior connection, and when that is done - English oak being used as the material -the ship is said to be "in frame." She - for I found the feminine appellative applied, no matter in what stage the vessel might be - is then ''ribanded;'' that is, pieces of timber, fiVe and six inches square, are affiXed fore and aft, as a temporary hold or binding to the timbers, so that they may "set" properly, for which a month is sometimes allowed. After this the ship is in a state to be "skinned," or planked, the wrights commencing with "the wale," or continuation of the bottom; and thus they work on to the completion of the "top sides" which surmount the upper deck.
