Coulter -- The 4000-Ton Iron Ship Ditton -- May 20, 2024

San Francisco Call, 19-February-1895

William A Coulter did many maritime drawings for the San Francisco Call. Click on the image for a larger view.

SHE LOSES SAIL

AND FINDS RAIN.

Peculiar Characteristics of

the British Iron Ship

Ditton.

FATED FROM HER LAUNCHING

She Goes on Scattering Her

Canvas Around Over the

Oceans.

The 4000-ton British ship Ditton, Captain Stapp, which recently arrived from Newcastle, N. S. W., with a cargo of coal, is a ship that can't carry canvas. In nautical language this usually means a vessel that is cranky -- not in the sense now used -- and prone to turn turtle, topple over from being too lofty, too clumsily sparred or too heavily sailed.

But the Ditton is not built that way. Her slender yards and masts are in perfect proportion to her graceful body, and her bolt upon bolt of white cloth fit her with tailor-made symmetry.

Yet she can't carry her canvas, because it blows away from her upon the slightest breezy provocation. Every ship, like every other thing feminine, possesses peculiarities caught in her design and to which she adheres with the persistency of the sex.

The Ditton loses her sails. Never a spar goes out of her, no matter how hard the winds blow, but she has sown canvas all over the globe. Sometimes it would be a lofty royal swelling among the clouds that would rip from the bolt-ropes and go sailing away like a white gull to leeward. Then, again, it would be a topsail that would leave its mate, or a lower sail which would jump clear of the ponderous tacks and sheets, carry away the yardarm lashings and fly thunderously over the sea, leaving the gale to hum gleefully through the space it once occupied. And the light canvased staysails, they, seldom remained long enough on the vessel to get well stretched. A puff and then the stay would be bare.

Another fatality that seems to follow this fine and lucky ship, notwithstanding, is that she invariably has rainy trips. Her crew says she literally draws water, and a continuous winter has rained down on her broad decks since the day she slipped into the sea. In her last voyage of seventy-two days, she pulled the clouds along with her and received their downpour for sixty-one dreary wet days and nights. When the sails weren't going off her the showers, were coming on, and sometimes both conditions were prevailing, each in its own separate and peculiar way.

"I've been in her since she was pushed into the water at Melford Haven three years ago." said the old bo's'n, "and we've never had an accident, and never missed a rain; never lost a handspike, and never missed leaving a sail behind us when the breeze stiffened up. It's fate and nothing can keep the canvas on them sticks up there. But she can go. We just set the course, brace the yards, get up new sails ready for bending, and let her go."

The Ditton is 311 feet in length, 42 feet broad and 26 feet deep. She is a valuable and successful ship for her owners despite her strange rain-drawing and sail-losing characteristics. Captain Stapp, her commander, is an old-time seaman, thoroughly acquainted with, his calling, having been a ship-captain for thirty-five years.