'He makes a hole with the augur,' the shipbuilder explained, 'and then it will be fastened with one of these.' He picked up a great wooden spike as long as his arm. 'This is a wooden nail. We make them here. We always use the same wood for the nail as the timber it is to fasten, otherwise it will work loose and the ship will rot. Some of them are even bigger.'

'Don't you use any iron nails in the ship?' asked Edward.

'Yes, we do.' A thought seemed to strike the old man.

'You passed by the rope works up at Beaulieu, I believe? Well, the monks over at Sowley built a great fish pond in times past. And now it is used by an iron works. That's where our nails come from.' He smiled. 'So even a monastery' - he clearly meant, 'even something so useless and popish as a monastery - may be changed, with time, to serve a useful purpose.' And, clearly delighted with this reflection, he led them down towards the river.

There were three vessels of different sizes and stages of completion in the slipways.

Martell looked at them appraisingly. 'I assume you try to build a smaller vessel alongside a larger, for reasons of economy,' he remarked.

'Precisely, Sir. You have it,' Mr Adams responded. 'The larger ship', he explained to the others, 'uses the larger timbers and the lesser ship the smaller, all from the same tree. Even so,' he remarked to Martell, 'there is huge wastage of wood, for only the inner part of the tree is hard enough to be used. We sell off all that we can, but ...' It was evident that any kind of waste was offensive to the shipbuilder.

'Are they all New Forest oaks?' asked Fanny.

'No, Miss Albion. This' - he indicated the surrounding Forest - 'is our first timber yard. But we go further afield. Nor are ships made only of oak. The keel is made of elm, the ships' wall planks are beech. For the masts and spars we use fir. Come, let me show you.'

On the largest slipway, a big man-of-war stood almost ready for launching.

'That's Cerberus,' announced Mr Adams. 'Thirty-two guns, almost eight hundred tons. The biggest battleships are only forty feet longer, although they have double the tonnage. She'll launch in September and be towed along the coast to Portsmouth for fitting in the naval dockyards there. The smaller ship we have started work on beside her is a merchant ship, bound for the West Indies trade. She'll complete next year. The little fellow in the third dock is a fifty-ton lighter for the Navy. As you see, we've just got the keel down, whereas for the merchant vessel we have the whole frame completed.'

'Do you build the great battleships too?' Fanny asked.