The deck being cleared, and the main hatchway opened, a small iron wheel (called _gin_) was rigged out on a rope passing over the top of a spar (called _derrick_) at some 18 or 20 feet above the deck. Over this wheel a rope was passed, to which four other ropes were attached lower down. These were for the four whippers. At the other end of the wheel-rope was slung a basket. A second basket stood upon the coals, where four men also stood with shovels—two to fill each basket, one being always up and one down. The whippers had a stage raised above the deck, made of five rails, which they ascended for the pull, higher and higher as the coals got lower in the hold. The two baskets-full were the complement for one measure. The ‘measure’ was a black angular wooden box with its front placed close to the vessel’s side, just above a broad trough that slanted towards the lighter. Beside the measure stood the ‘meter,’ (an elderly personage with his head and jaws bound up in a bundle-handkerchief, to protect him from the draughts,) who had a piece of chalk in one hand, while with the other he was ready to raise a latch, and let all the coals burst out of the measure into the trough, by the fall of the front part of the box. The measure was suspended to one end of a balance, a weight being attached to the other, so that the weighing and measuring were performed by one process under the experienced, though rheumatic, eye of the meter. The whippers continued at their laborious work all day; and as the coals were taken out of the hold, (the basket descending lower and lower as the depth increased,) the ‘whippers’ who hauled up, gave their weight to the pull, and all swung down from their ricketty rails with a leap upon the deck, as the basket ran up; ascending again to their position while the basket was being emptied into the trough. The lighter had five compartments, called ‘rooms,’ each holding seven tons of coals; and when these were filled, the men sometimes heaped coals all over them from one end of the craft to the other, as high up as the combings, or side-ridges, would afford protection for the heap. By these means a lighter could carry forty-two tons, and upwards; and some of the craft having no separate ‘rooms,’ but an open hold, fore and aft, could carry between fifty and fifty-five tons.