As every sailorman knows, wool is screwed into a ship’s hold like cotton; and a good captain in the old days would see that his ship was jammed so tight with bales that one would think her seams would open—indeed wood and composite ships always used to have their decks and topsides well caulked before loading wool. As showing how much the amount of wool loaded depended upon the captain, Captain Woodget used to get 1000 bales more into the _Cutty Sark_ than his predecessor. He made a habit of spending most of the day in the ship’s hold and thought nothing of having a tier or half longer pulled down and restowed if he was not satisfied with the number of bales got in. You can dunnage casks o’ tallow; you can handle hides an’ horn; You can carry frozen mutton; you can lumber sacks o’ corn; But the queerest kind o’ cargo that you’ve got to haul and pull Is Australia’s “staple product”—is her God-abandoned wool. For it’s greasy an’ it’s stinkin’, an’ them awkward, ugly bales Must be jammed as close as herrings in a ship afore she sails. For it’s twist the screw and turn it, And the bit you get you earn it; You can take the tip from me, sir, that it’s anything but play When you’re layin’ on the screw, When you’re draggin’ on the screw, In the summer, under hatches, in the middle o’ the day. So sings the Australian sailor’s poet Brady. In the sixties the bales of wool were pressed on shore by hydraulic power, then lashed with manila or New Zealand hemp, or hoop iron, at the ship’s expense. The bales were generally pressed on their flats, but sometimes, for the sake of stowage, on their ends, when they were called “dumps.” They had to be stowed immediately after being pressed, as if left for any time, especially in the sun, the wool would swell and carry away the lashings. There were from 8 to 12 lashings for each package of Sydney wool, which were called single dumps, doubles, trebles and fourbles, according to the number lashed together, trebles being the most common. [Illustration: House Flags.] The actual loading of a wool cargo was a slowish process, and sometimes attended with danger to the stowers if great care was not used, as wool bales have great elasticity. A description of the uses of screws, sampson posts, trunk planks, toms, shores, etc., would, I fear, be so technical as to be wearisome.