Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1892 — Knows a Ship at Sight. [ARTICLE]

Knows a Ship at Sight.

To a sailor, every vessel Is nal. No two vessels, even of the same class, are alike to him. The man who keeps a lookout in the Portland Observatory can recognize over 100 different vessels that belong to that port the minute he sees them twenty miles away through his telescope. He says there are not two vessels that ever were alike in shape or rig. “You see the back of a friend on the street some distance away, and you know him by the cut of his jib, ” he says. This is almost literally true in the case of vessels. An old sailor sees the difference without always being able to explain just wherein It lies.