There is many an item in Lightbody’s work which is worth our notice. He tells us that can buoys were employed in those days “for shewing of danger,” and stuns’ls were already in use on board ship. They still used the word “davids” for “davits,” and employed a drabler to lace below the bonnet of the squaresails. “Drift-sail” was the name still given to a species of sea-anchor, which was used for riding by in heavy weather. The “sail” was veered right ahead by sheets, he says, to keep her head right upon the sea. Old hawsers were made up into fend-offs. The heavy guns were hauled out by means of a guy from the foremast to the capstan. A ship’s bottom was graved with a mixture of tallow, soap, and brimstone, which preserved her caulking and made her fast. There was a rope called a horse which was made fast to the foremast shrouds and spritsail sheets to keep the latter clear of the anchor-flukes, for in those days, as one can see from old prints, the anchor was stowed at the side of the ship close to the foremast shrouds. [Illustration: EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH EAST INDIAMEN. By a Contemporary Artist. On the left of the picture the ship is still being built. Her hull is being caulked and her decks not yet finished. On the right a fully rigged ship has been careened so as to allow of her bottom being painted.] Monson’s “Naval Tracts” are full of information regarding the seaman’s life at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He tells us that there were shipyards in his time at Chatham, Deptford, Woolwich, and Portsmouth; and that every time a ship returned from sea the Surveyor’s duty was “to view and examine what defects happen’d in the hull or masts.” The Grand Pilot was “chosen for his long experience as a pilot on a coast, especially to carry the King’s great ships through the King’s channel, from Chatham to the narrow seas: as also for his knowledge to pass through the channel called the Black Deeps.” As to the life on shipboard, “first and above all things you are to take care that all the officers and company of ships do offer their best devotion unto God twice a day, according to the usual practice and liturgy of the Church of England.” During a fight, if a ship chanced to receive damage near her bilge the leak was to be stopped with salt hides, sheet lead, plugs, “or whatsoever may be fit.” To guard against the worm eating into the wood, one way was to sheathe the hull with an outer plank and then burn the upper plank “till it come to be like a very coal in every place, and after to pitch it.” Ships of 400 tons were built of 4-inch planking; ships of 300 tons had 3-inch; small ships had 2-inch, “but no less.”