This would apply also to the metal coamings on companions, ventilators, deckhouses, etc.

  If the deck was laid in pine the margins would be teak for good class work as this resisted rust stains from the metal. Even with wooden coamings bolted directly to the tie plates for hatches or deckhouses it was usual to fit teak margins around them as these vertical surfaces caused more water to accumulate than elsewhere and set up rot. With a completely teak deck the margil1s were not so essential except for appearance, and the deckhouse was usually set into scores in continuous planking.

  Teak pads about 2 in. thick were laid under the iron bollards, the patent windlass and the winches; also the area around the masts and under the fife rails was raised similarly with teak sheathing boards.

  The sides of topgallant forecastle decks and the break of forecastle and poop decks sometimes had teak covering boards about I in. thick with a bevelled or rounded edge. This was cheaper than fitting a full depth teak margin. The butt ends of the plal;lking at the exposed deck edge were then covered by a half-round moulding.
On pine decked ships, in order to have a teak margin around a deckhouse without its foundation cutting the planks and bedding on the beams directly, a good method was to fit margin planks about 2 in. thick which were let into the pine deck about 1 in. The extra thickness standing proud above the pine deck could then be either sloped down or rounded off.   Water running or dripping down a deckhouse side tended to set up rot or leaking seams and the extra thickness or slope helped in this respect.

  The fastenings for a wood deck on iron tie plates or beams were metal bolts with nuts on the underside. The bolt heads were sunk below the surface to permit a wood dowel to be let in flush with the deck. The grain in the dowel was horizontal so that it wore down evenly with the deck, as against the treenail head on the wooden ship which did not. Adjoining butt ends could each have fastening bolts with a vee'd caulking joint, or have one butt sloped vertically to hold down the next plank, or a single bolt through an overlapping half step. The latter arrangement did not leave much substance in the top plank, however, and was weak when there was much strain on the fastening.

  A naval officer once told me of an occasion when he was oil the bridge of alight cruiser in the Mediterranean during a storm, with the ship labouring and straining heavily. Suddenly a deck plank sprang up from the foredeck, burst all its fastenings and disappeared upwards as though catapulted. This was a sheathing plank, which was laid over a completely steel plated deck, and the incident gives some idea of the strain to which plank fastenings may be subjected.