V2nd - epilogue - ah, the guy's a poet!

[Michael Bailey]

"He kept near the stern, rained on, bird-frame wrapped in oilskin,
sheltering his pipe's match from the wind."


so, not word one about the trio's boat ride from Nueva York to Yurp a
couple chapters ago (although the chapter begins with a quick mention
of it, it flashes back posthaste and never flashes forward again!)
but this earlier voyage is limned beautifully...

"holystoning to work off this morning's chill" - what the heck is holystoning?

http://www.starclippersblog.com/2009/12/sailing-lingo-holystone-2/
Yesterday we asked, what does “holystone” mean and where did the term originate?

A holystone is a soft and brittle sandstone that was formerly used for
scouring and whitening the wooden decks of a ship.

The term may have come from the fact that ‘holystoning the deck’ was
originally done on one’s knees, as if in prayer. Another widely quoted
legend attributes the name to the story that such pieces of stone were
taken for use from St. Nicholas Church in Great Yarmouth. More
plausible is the theory that “holy” stones were taken from the ruined
church of St. Helens on the Isle of Wight, where tall ships would
often anchor and take on provisions before setting off on a voyage.

A few other interesting tidbits:

John Huston’s 1956 film “Moby Dick” and most recently Peter Weir’s
2003 film “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” depict
sailors scrubbing the deck with holystones.

The U.S. Navy’s Iowa-class battleships (New Jersey, Wisconsin,
Missouri and Iowa) all had wooden decks (over steel decks) and were
holystoned regularly until the ships were decommissioned during the
1990s.

Holystoning in the modern navy was not generally done on the knees but
with a stick resting in a depression in the flat side of the stone.
One source claims holystoning was banned in the U.S. Navy in 1931, as
it wore down the deck, however, a photo on the U.S. Navy’s Navsource
photo archive shows Navy Midshipmen holystoning the deck of the USS
Missouri in 1951.

-- 
"The general agreement is that language should be a kind of honey.  I
like it to be a kind of speed." - Michael Moorcock