I looked at my
companion in amazement. "I could not have believed it," I declared.
"No," he said. "You would not have thought she would have cracked an
egg--eh?"
I certainly wouldn't have thought that. He shook his head, and added:
"Ah! These great, big things, they want some handling."
Some months afterwards I was back in Sydney. The same pilot brought me
in from sea. And I found the same steamship, or else another as like her
as two peas, lying at anchor not far from us. The pilot told me she had
arrived the day before, and that he was to take her alongside to-morrow.
I reminded him jocularly of the damage to the quay. "Oh!" he said, "we
are not allowed now to bring them in under their own steam. We are using
tugs."
A very wise regulation. And this is my point--that size is to a certain
extent an element of weakness. The bigger the ship, the more delicately
she must be handled. Here is a contact which, in the pilot's own words,
you wouldn't think could have cracked an egg; with the astonishing result
of something like eighty feet of good strong wooden quay shaken loose,
iron bolts snapped, a baulk of stout timber splintered.
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