The keel-blocks have been set to meet the general lines of the vessels, with only a marginal allowance for the contour of damaged plating. To remedy any error divers, with their gear and escort, are ready on the dockside, and they go below with first fall in the water-level. The carpenters straggle out from sheltered corners and bear a hand. Riggers and dockmen have placed the ships, and it remains for the 'tradesmen' to bed them down and prop against a list by shores and blocks. They are ill content with the vile weather and their job in the open, where the rain lashes down pitilessly, soaking their working clothes. Doubtless they envy the dry divers their suits of proofed rubber, when they are called on to manhandle the heavy timber shores from the mud and litter of the dockside and launch them out towards the steel sides of the settling vessels. There the tide-workers on deck secure them by lanyards, and the spars hang in even order, sighted on doublings of the plates, ready to pin the ships on a steady keel when the water drains away. With the timbers held in place, the carpenters split up to small parties and stand by to set a further locking strain by prise of block and wedge. The dockmaster blows a whistle signal at the far end of the basin, and casts up his hand as though arresting movement; the thrust of the main pump stills, and he swings his arm. At the sign, the carpenters ram home . . . the thunder of their forehammers on the hardwood wedges rings out in chorus that draws a quavering echo from the empty, hard-pressed hulls. Settled and bedded and pinned, the ships are left till the water drains away and to await the coming of the shipwrights and repairing gangs. The carpenters shoulder their long-handled top-mauls and scatter to a shelter from the steady, continuous downpour. Up from the floors with their work completed, the divers doff their heavy head-gear and sit a while, _resting_ comfortably under the thrash of the same persistent rain. Anon, their awkward garb discarded, they walk off, striding with a crook at the knees, like farmer folk on ploughed land. The great pumps now pulsate at full speed, drawing water to their sluices in an eddying current that spins the flotsam and bares ledge after ledge of the solid dock masonry. From gaping wounds of the crippled vessels a full tide of seawater gushes and spurts to join the troubled wash below. The beams and side-planking, and temporary measures of the salvage section, uncover and come to sight, showing with what patience and laborious care the divers have striven to stem an inrush.