What is Caulking?
If you watched The Terror and wondered what role Mr Hickey as a Caulker’s Mate would have brought to HMS Terror then fear not, I am here to assist.
In the age of sail and wooden warships there are several roles that are vitally important for ship building and maintenane and Caulking is one of them. No matter how close you nail wood together it is impossible to make it water tight and it doesn’t take much of a gap to allow tons of water in so the gaps had to be filled but with what?
The most readily available material in any dockyard is oakum which is made from old rope. It is a thankless and tedious job but rope had to be picked apart (by hand) back into the fibres. It was such a dire job that it would often be outsourced to prisons and workhouses ashore or to sailors during their down time whilst at sea. It is talked about in Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” and Melville as well as more modern stories like Sharpe but it also is talked about in older tomes such as the Bible in Ezekiel 27:8-9
Inhabitants of Sidon and Arvad were your oarsmen;
Your wise men, O Tyre, were in you;
They became your pilots.
Elders of Gebal and its wise men
Were in you to caulk your seams;
All the ships of the sea
And their oarsmen were in you
To market your merchandise
Once the Oakum has been teased apart it is packed and hammered into the gap using a mallet and a Caulking iron which looks like a blunt axe blade, with a flat top for the mallet to connect with, to help push it into the tight gap.
Once packed tightly it was covered in pitch and tar to seal it in and make it water proof. This would be inspected regularly in dock but the interiors would be inspected regular whilst at sea and repairs carried out by the crew’s caulkers. They would also work to make sure the decks are kept sealed as well so that rain doesn’t pour through the decks.
If you happen to be near Chatham Dockyard in the next couple of weeks you might be lucky to see some Caulking being carried out on HMS Gannet with the poop deck being worked upon to make the “Commander’s Cabin” more watertight and replacing some of the deck planking. The plan is to move down to do some areas of the main deck as well so conservation in action can be seen.