A sheer hulk (or shear hulk), in the days of sailing ships, was used in shipbuilding and repair as a floating crane, primarily to place the lower masts of a ship under construction or repair. The masts of the hulk (known as sheers) would be at an angle, and the ends could be effectively raised or lowered by rotating the hulk's hull, either by pulling on ropes attached to the hull, or by shifting the ballast within the hull. The lower masts were the largest and most massive single timbers aboard a ship, and erecting these masts was extremely difficult without the assistance of either a sheer hulk or land-based masting sheer.
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Famous quotes containing the words sheer and/or hulk:
“I never understood exactly why people get engaged—The only time I ever did the most disastrous things happened—but I feel that there’s a great deal to be said for immediate matrimony always. If I once got started I’d probably have to become a mormon to cover my confusion. What I mean is that if he and she are crazy about each other it is sheer tempting God to stay apart, come what may. And if people arent crazy about each other being engaged wont help them.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“To anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson’s Victory, seems to float there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but also as a poetic approach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)