Barrel manufacturing, showing completed barrels in the middle of the image and headers and staves to the right of the completed barrels and on the left side of the image. Barrels like these were used for carrying lime, in addition to other cargos.
Hauling up the yard with the halyard took a lot of strength and coordination on a large sailing ship. To help get everyone to haul together, sailors used sea shanties, or work songs of the sea. We demonstrate on Penobscot Marine Museum's Yard-in-the-Yard demonstration model how to raise the sail with the yard to which it is attached. We are assisted by the second grade class at Lincolnville Central School. Thanks!
Working at sea in the middle of a storm was hard and wet work. Nets were sometimes set outside of the bulwarks to catch seamen to keep them from being swept overboard in a big breaking sea.
The crew is heaving away at the capstan bars, turning the capstan to bring in or weigh anchor, at least this is what the photographer set up with the crew. The photograph is posed. Many of the crew are looking at the photographer, as is the gentleman on the right, likely the mate. There is no line wrapped around the capstan. The sailor nearest the camera needs some repair work on his trousers.
Sailmaking and sail repair were regular work aboard a sailing vessel. Here, Capt. Montgomery is working with a crew member repairing a sail. The big round wheels near the mast belong to the ship's pump. The photograph was taken by the captain's daughter, Ruth Montgomery, aboard the bark Carrie Winslow in 1898.
To be able to handle heavy weights, or tighten lines without winches, crew members had to pull together. Raising and reefing or shortening sails, trimming or hauling in control lines (sheets) to reef a sail, or hauling in some other of the hundreds of lines aboard a large sailing ship were all done by hand. A shanty sometimes helped coordinate the pulling.
The Hyde Windlass Company built ship's machinery, including windlasses, capstans, and steering gear, some steam powered, and some human powered. Hyde Windlass was the ancestral company of today's Bath Iron Works. They sent their machinery all over the world.
The images are from the Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics for the State of Maine, 1898, published in Augusta, Maine in 1899, facing p. 129. They would have been produced for a catalog.
