JLH wrote:
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 21:02:46 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

JLH wrote:
On Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:03:40 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

An irregular ongoing series of interesting facts related to boating.

Toredo Worm:

The Toredo worm (ship worm)has been the bane of wooden ships, boats,
pilings and retaining walls since man has ventured to the sea. A type of
clam, the Toredo worm has two shells, enclosing only the front end of
the body which function as a tool rather than a protective covering -
they are a boring clam.

Each shell has toothed ridges which shave away bits of wood into smaller
pieces and then those are ingested. Toredo worms have been known to
achieve a length of up to 2 ft long, although the shells remain only
about a foot long.

The British and Spanish navies estimated that a wooden hull in the
Carribean in the age of sail was ten years.

Mariners as early as 500 BC tried to protect their wooden ships by
various combinations of arsenic, sulfur, tars and oils. The British Navy
experimented with a sacrificial covering of wood covering tar, but it
wasn't successful. It wasn't until the invention of copper hull plating
that the Toredo worm became less of a problem.

Sounds like you're reading the Patrick O'Brian series. Great!
Already have.

They sucked.

It's a shame. Did you come to that conclusion after reading all 21? It took
me about three books to really get into it. It takes about that long to
learn all the terminology, unless one memorizes each term.

I never cared for the Aubrey series. Just not as interesting as the others.