In the short story, The Last Cruise of the Judas Iscariot by Edward Page Mitchel, which tells the story of Captain Cram, a sailor in Main, who builds a schooner with three masts, which was considered by the people of his town as extraordinary and a bad omen. Later, the schooner runs into several accidents every time it sets to sail that Captain Cram decides to give it the name of Judas the Iscariot to describe its demonic nature. People are unable to understand its behavior, for it has no defects in its structure. The narrator discusses this matter saying:
A board of nautical experts sat upon the Judas Iscariot, but could find nothing the matter with her, physically. The lines of her hull were all right, she was properly planked and ceiled and calked, her spars were of good Oregon pine, she was rigged taut and trustworthy, and her canvas had been cut and stitched by a God-fearing sailmaker. According to all theory, she ought to have been perfectly responsible as to her keel.
My question is about the meaning of "responsible as to her keel". Shouldn't he say "responsible for"? But again what would it mean?