The Chine
In boatbuilding, the chine is the line where the bottom of a hull meets the side. A hard chine is a sharp angle: plywood skiffs, aluminum workboats, flat-bottomed punts. The panels meet at a crease and the hull changes direction abruptly. A soft chine is a gentle curve: molded fiberglass, carvel planking shaped over steam-bent frames. Multi-chine hulls split the difference — three or four flat panels on each side, each meeting its neighbor at a slight angle, approximating a curve from straight stock. The chine determines how the boat moves through water: a hard-chine hull planes early and tracks predictably but slams in chop. A soft-chine hull parts the water more gently but is harder to build and harder to repair. The chine is where the hull decides what kind of boat it is.
In butchery, the chine is the backbone — the ridge of vertebrae that runs the length of the carcass. A chine of beef or pork includes several vertebrae with the meat still attached. To chine meat is to cut along the spine, separating the ribs from the vertebral column. The butcher's saw follows the bone, and what remains on one side is the chine piece — the structural center of the animal, the column that held it upright. In cooking, a standing rib roast with the chine bone left on is harder to carve at the table but holds its shape and heat during roasting, because the bone conducts heat slowly and acts as a thermal buffer. The bone that supported the animal in life supports the roast on the platter.
On the southern coast of England — the Isle of Wight, Dorset, Hampshire — a chine is a narrow, steep-sided ravine cut through soft coastal cliffs by a stream finding its way to the sea. The stream erodes faster than the cliff face retreats, slicing a deep notch in the chalk, sandstone, or clay. Shanklin Chine on the Isle of Wight drops forty-five feet through a fern-filled slot barely wide enough for a footpath. Blackgang Chine has been eroding for centuries and is still moving. The chine is the line where the land meets its own weakness: a joint in the geology, a seam in the strata, the place where water found the angle of least resistance and cut straight down.
Three chines: a hull angle, a backbone, a coastal ravine. Each marks the line where one surface meets another at an angle that defines the structure. The hull's chine determines how it rides. The carcass's chine determines how it's divided. The cliff's chine reveals where the rock was weakest. In each case the chine is not a surface but a transition — the crease, the ridge, the cut where two planes meet and the character of the whole is decided.