Careen
There is a word that I am sure you have heard on many a pirate movie that you most likely don’t understand or know the definition of: careen.
Careen means to lean or tilt a ship over. This sounds like a really bad idea but it was a process developed to keep the bottom of the boat clean and in good repair. Here is a brief and concise history of why we careen boats… ships.
The bottom of the boat sits in water. Boats back in the age of sail were made of wood. Go soak some wood in water from the ocean and you are going to find that wood in water tends to rot and things grow on it. Things like, barnacles grow on the wood. Barnacles are living organisms. These living organisms would find their way through the bottom of the ship and work holes through the wood. Again, this is a very valuable piece of wood because if it has holes in it, you are going to sink. And sinking is bad. But how do you get to the bottom of the ship with the boat in the water. And remember this is a big ship and scuba gear had not been invented yet. Thus was invented the dry dock.
Modern boat in a modern drydock
A dry dock works like a one-sided lock (ie- lock and dam). The ship would come into the dry dock and the end they sailed through would be closed. As the tide went out the ship would be left in the dock on a platform with no water around it. This left the underside of the ship exposed to be cleaned. But how do you care for the bottom of the ship when there is no dry dock around and you have to affect repairs. For example, you are in the New World, circa 1493, and your ship has sprung a leak. Thus, careening became a practice employed by not only pirates but also by navies of every country.
To careen a ship you simply ground it on shore. Seeing as the bottom of the boat has a keel, your ship is going to tip one way or the other. With the boat on its side, or careened, you now have the ability to reach those hard to scratch areas of the ship. Once you are finished cleaning and repairing one side of the ship, you can use pulleys and rope and flip the ship to its other side. When the ship has been completely cleaned and new boards have been used to replace the ones that were too damaged, you have the fun task of wrenching the ship out of the sand and getting it back into the water. Of course, the tide will help you in this task. With your ship seaworthy once again you are ready to pillage and plunder once more (assuming of course that you are a pirate).
- Bobaganush the Pirate
