Ship's Skeleton

A ship’s frame functions much like a human skeleton, providing rigidity and structural support for the vessel’s body. Although ship’s ribs are often imagined as single pieces of steamed and bent wood, larger ships used frames made from several individual timbers called futtocks. Their overlapping seams added rigidity and strength while preventing twisting and splintering, and at times each futtock was made from an entire tree. Ships also used knees, fastened to the ship’s side inside the cargo hold to give extra deck support; carved from tree roots or branches that naturally formed right angles, they drew strength from the wood’s natural grain. The 137-ton, two-masted schooner C. Harrison, built by D. Eunlock and Thomas Davidson in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was loading lumber at the Whitefish Bay pier on October 31, 1898, when a gale drove it onto the beach, where it broke up.

Sevastopol, Wisconsin · United States