I think she should certainly have a centreboard. Several of the smartest yachts' cutters use instead a half-moon-shaped keel of galvanised iron, clamped on to the keel of the boat. I cannot see that this contrivance, which makes a boat useless for anything but deep-water sailing, has any advantages of its own over a centreboard, and its disadvantages are serious. It makes it impossible to beach the boat, or to attempt any landing-place when the water may be shallow, and whenever the boat runs aground or hits a rock, as she is sure to do sometimes when fishing or exploring, it is nearly certain to get broken or bent; and whenever it is left behind, a boat of this kind will cease to be very weatherly, and may even miss stays. Moreover, it must be rather an awkward thing to put on and take off when the boat is in the davits. [Illustration: 'Black Pearl's' cutter, midship section.] A wooden false keel of more graduated shape, deep in the middle and tapering to nothing at the ends, is a better contrivance, but it is open to some of the same objections about landing, in a minor degree. It is hardly necessary at the present day to combat the prejudice against centreboards. But for many years there was a curious dislike and distrust of them among British boat-sailers and builders. They were excluded altogether from most regattas; and not one in twenty of the boats that would have been vastly improved by them were ever fitted with them. They were regarded, for some mysterious reason, as unseaworthy, unsportsmanlike, and unfair; and when the average boating man found his craft beaten out of sight in going to windward by a centreboard boat, he considered the discovery that she had a centreboard a satisfactory explanation of his defeat, and seldom drew the further conclusion that a centreboard was an excellent thing.