The Garboard

The garboard strake is the first plank of a ship's hull — the one that sits in the rabbet, a groove cut along each side of the keel. Every other plank is fastened to the one below it, working upward from the garboard to the sheer strake at the rail. The garboard is the foundation of the planking. It is also the most abused: closest to the ground when the ship takes the beach, closest to the ballast stones when she is loaded, first to flood if the keel joint opens. Replacing a garboard strake on an old vessel means removing every plank above it far enough to pull the garboard free — peeling the hull open like a wound to reach the one plank that was laid first.

The garboard seam is the joint between the garboard strake and the keel. It is the deepest seam in the hull: the lowest point, the least accessible, the hardest to inspect and the hardest to repair. Caulked with oakum — tarred hemp fibers driven into the seam with a caulking iron — and sealed with hot pitch or marine compound. A leaking garboard seam is difficult to detect early because the water enters at the lowest point and collects in the bilge before it is noticed. When the boat heels under sail, the seam on the low side opens slightly as the hull flexes, and the leak accelerates. The garboard seam leaks most when the boat is working hardest.

The devil was a name sailors gave to the most difficult seam to reach and caulk — variously identified as the garboard seam or the outboard plank nearest the waterline. To pay a seam meant to fill it with hot pitch after the oakum was driven home. "The devil to pay and no pitch hot" was the full expression: the worst job on the ship needed doing and the material was not ready. Common usage shortened it to "the devil to pay" — meaning an impossible or unavoidable task, the cost of something that must be done. The phrase carries the original despair: not the difficulty of the work but the position. The devil is the seam at the very bottom, where the water is deepest, the space tightest, and the consequences of failure the most certain.

Three garboards: a first plank, a critical seam, a proverbial devil. Each names the lowest and most fundamental part of the hull — the piece laid first, the joint sealed last, the place where failure starts. The garboard is the plank that touches the keel. Everything above it depends on it, and nothing above it can be fixed until it is fixed first.