The ships were getting slightly more habitable and better built, though no very great change was taking place. How unseaworthy were some of the Company’s best vessels may be seen from a letter sent on 10th June 1614 by Robert Larkin, who murmurs bitterly of his craft, the _Darling_. “The _Darling_,” he writes, “complaineth sore, but I hope to God she will carry us well to Puttam, and further tediousness I omit. But I wish to God I were well rid of my captainship, or the _Darling_ a sounder vessel to carry me in.” So also that big East Indiaman, the _Royal James_, during the year 1617 sprang a serious leak, and the way in which this was stopped makes most interesting reading to all lovers of ships. Her commander at that time, Captain Martin Pring, wrote to the Company on the 12th of November of the year mentioned that about a fortnight before the _Royal James_ had reached Swally—the port of Surat—“we had a great leak broke upon us in the _James_, which in four hours increased six foot water in hold, and after we had freed it and made the pumps suck, it would rise thirteen inches in half-an-hour. It was a great blessing of God that it fell out in such weather, by which means we had the help of all the fleet, otherwise all our company had been tired in a very short time. The 9th, we made many trials with a bonnet stitched with oakum under the bulge of the ship, but it did no good. The 11th, we basted our spritsail with oakum and let it down before the stem of the ship and so brought it aft by degrees: in which action it pleased God so to direct us that we brought the sail right under the place where the oakum was presently sucked into the leak: which stopped it in such sort that the ship made less water the day following than she had done any day before from the time of our departure out of England.”
The device here employed was well known to the old-fashioned sailor, and designated “fothering.” Briefly the idea was as follows. In order to stop the leak a sail was fastened at the four corners and then let down under the ship’s bottom, a quantity of chopped rope-yarns, oakum, cotton, wool—anything in the least serviceable for the job—being also put in. If you were lucky you would find that after the first few attempts the leak would have sucked up some of the oakum or whatever was put into the sail, and so the water would not pour in as badly. This device certainly saved Captain Cook during one of his voyages after his ship had struck a rock and the sea poured in so quickly that the pumps were unable to cope with it. In the description given above by Captain Pring you will notice that he used his spritsail for this purpose. This was a quadrilateral sail set at the end of the bowsprit, but was abolished from East Indiamen and other ships in the early part of the nineteenth century. At first, you will observe, the bonnet—doubtless the bonnet of the mainsail—the use of which we described on an earlier page, was tried and lowered under the “bulge” (or, as we now say, the “bilge”) of the ship. “Stitched with oakum” means that the little tufts of oakum were lightly stitched to the canvas just to keep them in position until the suction of the leak drew them up the hole away from the canvas. When he says he “basted” the spritsail with oakum he means again that the latter was sewn with light stitches. This spritsail was lowered down at the bows till it got below the ship’s forefoot and then brought gradually aft till the position of the leak was reached, and then the oakum was sucked up with the happy result noted. This all reads much simpler than it was in actuality: and you can imagine that it was no easy matter getting this sail into its exact position while the ship was plunging and rolling in a seaway.