South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c9.s2.19

c9.s2.19

¹ At Surat they excel in the art of ship-building. Their bottoms and sides are composed of planks let into one another, in the nature, as I apprehend, of what is called rabbet-work, so that the beams are impenetrable. They have also a peculiar way of preserving their ships' bottoms, by occasionally rubbing into them an oil they call wood-oil, which the planks imbibe. 'There would be no exaggeration in asserting that they (the natives) build incomparably the best ships in the world for duration, and that of any size, even to a thousand tons and upwards. It is not uncommon for one of them to last a century.' Grose, Voyage to the East Indies, vol. i, pp. 107-8 (A.D. 1750-64).