launched with her three skysail yards across and colors flying, which attracted a multitude of people. They rather expected to see her capsize, and were no doubt highly delighted to find that nothing unusual happened as she glided swiftly down the ways, or at that critical instant when her hull was still partly supported on the land and partly on the waves, or when she swung to her anchors on even keel, with the beautiful skyline of Boston of half a century ago outlined in the distance.
Mr. Hall was a master ship-builder and had figured the weights, displacement, and stability of his ship with the same exactness with which an astronomer foretells the transit of a planet; yet with all the anxiety incident to experiments of this kind, he had found time for plans of a less serious nature. He had a pavilion erected in order that the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of the men who had built this beautiful ship might look with comfort upon the crowning scene of their kinsmen's labors, and after the ship was safely afloat, all were invited to a luxurious lunch served upon long tables in the mould loft, which was gaily decorated with flags. There the master foreman of the yard presided, while Mr. Hall entertained personal friends, whom he had asked to see the launch, at his own hospitable home.
The Surprise measured: length 190 feet, breadth 39 feet, depth 22 feet with 30 inches dead-rise at half floor. Her main-yard was 78 feet long from boom-iron to boom-iron, and her mainmast was 84 feet from heel to cap, with other spars in proportion. She was beautifully fitted throughout, was
