Word: decking
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...historical minutiae he fans a rich dust of authenticity over his scenes. In The Black Swan and The Sea Hawk, when a sailing ship fires off a broadside, Sabatini draws on his vast vocabulary of sailor latin to inform the reader that a battery of sakers on the gun deck of a galleass is bombarding a galliot with langrel that has collapsed its topgallants and smashed a few slush lamps. He is just as sure-footed ashore. When Sabatini finishes describing Captain Blood's hangout, the pirate fortress at Tortuga, any attentive reader could build a scale model...
...shot out of the water just astern of it. Then the submarine surfaced, black and wet, but with no identification marks whatsoever. Skipper Hamnen and his 40 crewmen reckoned that it was a Soviet sub, but tried shouting in Norwegian anyway to the seamen who began appearing on its deck. There was no response. Said Hamnen: "I guess they weren't too eager to talk with us. After all, it's pretty dumb when a modern submarine gets caught up in a fish net. It's supposed to carry instruments that can spot a trawler, cables...
Aloft, El Al planes are veritable flying fortresses. Cabin walls have been strengthened to resist bullets and grenade fragments; flight-deck doors are armored and locked. Crews can survey passengers over closed-circuit TV; pilots are trained to flip their planes into violent maneuvers to knock a skyjacker off his feet. Lavatories are periodically checked. To keep potential skyjackers from becoming familiar with routines, however, security arrangements are also periodically changed...
What is life like below those graceful, billowing sails, aboard the tall training ships that helped the U.S. celebrate its Bicentennial? It can be most unromantic, or at least uncomfortable. The below-decks area reeks of a mixture of boiled cabbage, floor cleaner, diesel fumes and sweat. Quarters are often hot and always crowded, as human comforts give way to the need for stowing rope, extra sails, vital blocks and rigging. Aboard the Irish Phoenix (left), caged chickens provide fresh eggs for meals that are generally good, if not graciously served. Gently swaying hammocks on the Norwegian Christian Radich (below...
...theater, it comes as a surprise that the engineers in charge have twiddled the dials on their mixing console with a delicacy that would do credit to a concert pianist fingering his way through some Chopin filigree. Especially impressive is the handling of an aircraft carrier's flight-deck operation -from the first cough of the first motor to the roar of an entire squadron...