oakum

• “Dutchman, picking to pieces tarred ropes, which, when reduced to its original form of hemp, they call oakum; or else you see him lazily stowed away in some corner, with his pipe, surrounded with smoke, and”

  A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. Late A Surgeon On Board An American Privateer, Who Was Captured At Sea By The British, In May, Eighteen Hundred And Thirteen, And Was Confined First, At Melville Island, Halifax, Then At Chatham, In England ... And Last, At Dartmoor Prison. Interspersed With Observations, Anecdotes And Remarks, Tending To Illustrate The Moral And Political Characters Of Three Nations. To Which Is Added, A Correct Engraving Of Dartmoor Prison, Representing The Massacre Of American Prisoners, Written By Himself.

• “The planks are jointed at the edges so as to fit close, and the spaces between are stuffed with oakum, which is called calking.”

  The Boat Club or, The Bunkers of Rippleton

• “He saw the prisoners picking "oakum," or untwisting old ropes that had been used in boats, tearing the strands into loose hemp to be afterwards used in caulking the seams between the wood planks on the decks and sides of ships, so as to make them water-tight; and as it was near the prisoners 'dinner-time, he saw the food that had been prepared for their dinner in”

  From John O'Groats to Land's End

• “Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum?”

  k-punk

• “He says that when a certain philosophical neighbor came to visit him in his hut at Walden, their discourse expanded and racked the little house: "I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak -- but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.”

  The Last Harvest

• “Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of — we three — it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak; — but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.”

  Walden~ Chapter 14 (historical)

• “Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of, -- we three, -- it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak; -- but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.”

  Walden, or Life in the woods

• “Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of -- we three -- it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds 'weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak; -- but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.”

  Walden

• “_entremets_, or he began to stuff what he, himself, had called "oakum," into the chinks of his dinner.”

  Homeward Bound or, the Chase

• “The powder crackled, fizzed, and spluttered and spilled out the excess of gasolene from the flaming oakum balls so that streams of fire dripped down on the main deck beneath.”

  CHAPTER XLVII

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