Shipworm

Usage examples of teredo.

He knew her intimately now—he'd been up scrambling like an ape in the high spars when they rerigged her, he'd swung an axe when they chopped down the forecastle structure and most of the railing, he'd sweated with saw and drill when they opened new ports for more cannon, and, for more hours than he could yet bear to remember, he'd sat in a sling halfway between the gunwale above and the sand or water below, and, foot by foot, chiseled charred seaweed and barnacles off her hull and dug out the teredo worms, and hammered into the wood little brass drogues, carved and chanted over by Davies' bocor to be powerful antiworm charms.

Up and down, up and down, and all the time their thin canvas grew thinner in the tropical sun and the sudden prodigious downpours, their running rigging, incessantly passing through the countless blocks as they trimmed sail, gradually wasted away in those wisps called shakings, and the weed accumulated on their bottoms, while through the gaps in their copper the teredos thrust their augers through the oak.

Unbeknownst to us, the Fiberglas on one had been rubbed off against a piling at the little marina where she lay docked and teredos had gotten at the plywood underneath.

You see that the frames are cracked, teredos have gotten into the rudder post, there’s dry rot in the mast step, the sails are mildewed, the keel bolts are rusted, and the fastenings are ready to let go.