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We used waterproof canvas to cover a lot of things exposed to the sea water.

We kept quite a bit of canvas aboard and you cut it to fit whatever you were covering and you had to sew it together.

We had a palm protector that had a sort of socket for the end of the needle so you did not hurt your hand if the needle slipped and large needles and a heavy string. If I can find a picture of this I'll post it?

Canvas was kept on the winches, depth charge racks, the drums where we rolled up the lines used to tie up the ship.

There was a slot in the MK 37 director for the rangefinder. The rangefinder received level and crosslevel so it moved up and down in the slot and we used canvas to waterproof the director around the rangefinder. The officers hatch was canvas on the director.

There were just lots of places we used waterproof canvas and it had to be cut to fit.

The Boatswainsmates kept bolts of canvas and when you needed some you got it from them.

You also got the needles and palm protector from the Boatswainsmates as well as the waterproffing paint.

Depending on what you were going to sew up you only had about 3 choices of string which was called marlin. The marlin had something that it was soaked in before we got it which made it a little waterproof, anyway it had a texture to it. The largest was about 1/8" in diameter.

This stuff was usually kept in the paint locker.

With the 1/8" diameter marlin you wrapped stantions and things like that and it made them look pretty good.

When you were a seaman second class you learned a lot about seaman ship and how to tie all of the knots and to take a white twine and wrap it on things like handles for doors. It made the handle less slippery and you used some neat knots to secure it to the handle. Then you painted it white and it stayed white for a long time because the paint soaked into the white twine.

Some of the knots looked really good and took a while to do them.