You meet them down Channel somewhere with perhaps only staysails and jigger set and a powerful tug ahead at the end of a strong tow-rope. In a day or so they will have parted company. The tug will return whence she set out; the bigger ship will spread her canvas and begin her many-monthed voyage. [Illustration: THE OCEAN TUG “BLACKCOCK.” _From a Photograph. By permission of the Liverpool Screw Towing & Lighterage Co._] [Illustration: THE PASSENGER TENDER “SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.” _From a Photograph. By permission of the Great Western Railway Co._] It is possible that if you were not a sailorman, and your eyes chanced to fall upon such a ship as that illustrated opposite this page, whether in harbour or at sea, you might feel no more interest in her than in any other craft. And yet this is a little vessel which can go anywhere and tow almost anything from a great floating dock to a disabled liner. Her name is the _Blackcock_, and she is one of the famous, powerful tugs owned by the Liverpool Screw Towing and Lighterage Company. Captain G. B. Girard, who commands the _Blackcock_, has been aptly termed the “Grand Old Man” of deep-sea towing, and during the last quarter of a century has covered 200,000 miles over the seas at this work. Quite recently he took the _Blackcock_ to Fayal in mid-Atlantic to fetch over to Oporto a dismasted Portuguese barque. In spite of stiff breezes and heavy cross seas, the _Blackcock_ and her tow made an average of 160 miles per day. It was this same tug which set up an interesting record some years ago by steaming 2,600 miles from Barbados to Fayal without having to stop for coal anywhere. She was towing a 2,000-ton German ship, named the _Ostara_, from Barbados to Hamburg, a distance of 5,000 miles altogether. In 1894, the _Gamecock_, a sister of this tug, towed a disabled steamer from Port Said to Liverpool, a distance of 3,300 miles, in twenty-seven days. The _Blackcock_ took an important part in towing from Fayal to Liverpool the Cunard liner _Etruria_, which had been disabled, and caused the greatest anxiety in consequence of her being lost sight of for so long a period with hundreds of passengers aboard at the time. This towing voyage represented a distance of a couple of thousand miles, and there are many other equally wonderful incidents connected with these well-known “Cock” tugs. If the reader will bear in mind what we said some time back with reference to the origin of the bridge deck, he will be able to see the point well-illustrated in the illustration before us. The bridge deck and its sides are joined to the ship’s hull in such a way that in the case of the tug being attacked by a cross-sea she is not likely to founder through the water getting down below to the engines, as in the sad incident that we chronicled at an earlier stage. These tug-boats are necessarily exceptionally powerful, the _Blackcock_ having over 1,000 horse-power.