y put into the iron crutches always kept ready shipped, and so
placed that I could row comfortably while in the well and facing the bow.
The boat-hook had its handle-end always near my right hand, and this
saved me many a run forward in awkward times.

The tiller of iron-wood was well wedged into the rudder-head. Of course
any joggling or slackness here is like a broken front tooth, or a loose
steel pen. No plan that I heard of, or saw, or could devise yet, is
entirely satisfactory for enabling the tiller to be set fast in a moment,
at any angle, and yet to be _perfectly_ free in ordinary times. I used a
large piece of rough cork as a wedge to set the tiller, and a cord loop
at each side of the gunwale, to keep it "hard down" when going about. At
night, to stop the vibration of the rudder, I knocked in a brass wedge
between its head and the iron bushing of the rudder hole.

Every bit of iron above water was galvanized; but this operation weakens
small pieces of iron unless it is carefully done. However, the only part
which carried away was my small anchor-stock, and this took place at the
first cast of it into the Thames.

Such is the Rob Roy yawl, of 4 tons register, and the map (about 70 pages
farther on) shews the general course of her first sea voyage by a dotted
line, but many a long mile of zigzag had to be sailed besides.

CHAPTER XV.

Ducklings--Victoria Park--Yachtsmen--Cowes--Floating family--The
'Zara'--Lifeboats--Wrecked--Mop--An odd story--The law of
anchors--Experiments--The Royal yacht.

Medina Dock is the place to see all sorts of ships and boats for steam,
sailing, or rowing, lifeboats, rafts, and models. The basin is full of
broken-backed men-of-war whose old black bones are being disjointed and
dragged asunder here to make strong knees again, just because they are
black and well seasoned. Alongside the quay we had seen the three
American yachts, which came across the Atlantic amid many English cheers
for the vessels of two hundred tons crossing from New York, while we
scarcely record the voyages of our own hundred-ton vessels that have
often sailed to Australia.

In Mr. White's garden there are Chinese junks and catamarans afloat in a
pond, and even the walls around are not allowed to be quite of dry land,
being painted with sea soundings and charts of the neighbouring coasts.
This may indeed be called the Admiralty of the yacht fleet, and Cowes is
its Portsmouth.

"Nauta nasci