BEAR. A large block of stone, matted, loaded with shot, and fitted with ropes, by which it is roused or pulled to and fro to grind the decks withal. Also, a coir-mat filled with sand similarly used.
BEAR, The constellations of the. Ursa Major and Minor, most important to seamen, as instantly indicating by the pointers and pole-star the true north at night, much more correctly than any compass bearing.
BEAR, To. The direction of an object from the viewer; it is used in the following different phrases: The land's end bore E.N.E.; i.e. it was seen from the ship in a line with the E.N.E. point of the compass. We bore down upon the enemy; i.e. having the advantage of the wind, or being to windward, we approached the enemy by sailing large, or from the wind. When a ship that was to windward comes under another ship's stern, and so gives her the wind, she is said to bear under the lee; often as a mark of respect. She bears in with the land, is said of a ship when she runs towards the shore. We bore off the land; i.e. we increased our distance from the land.—To bear down upon a ship, is to approach her from the windward.—To bear ordnance, to carry her guns well.—To bear sail, stiff under canvas.—To bear up, to put the helm up, and keep a vessel off her course, letting her recede from the wind and move to leeward; this is synonymous with to bear away, but is applied to the ship instead of the helm.—Bear up, one who has duly served for a commission, but from want of interest bears up broken-hearted and accepts an inferior warrant, or quits the profession, seeking some less important vocation; some middies have borne up and yet become bishops, lord-chancellors, judges, surgeons, &c.—To bear up round, is to put a ship right before the wind.—To bring a cannon to bear, signifies that it now lies right with the mark.—To bear off from, and in with the land, signifies standing off or going towards the coast.
BEAR A BOB, or A FIST. Jocular for "lend a hand."
BEAR A HAND. Hasten.
BEARD. The silky filaments or byssus by which some testacea adhere to rocks. Of an oyster, the gills.
BEARDIE. A northern name of the three-spined stickleback.
BEARDING. The angular fore-part of the rudder, in juxtaposition with the stern-post. Also, the corresponding bevel of the stern-post. Also, the bevelling of any piece of timber or plank to any required angle: as the bearding of dead wood, clamps, &c.
BEARDING-LINE. In ship-building, is a curved line made by bearding the dead-wood to the shape of the ship's body.
BEARERS. Pieces of plank placed on the bolts which are driven through the standards or posts for the carpenters' stages to rest upon.
BEARING. An arc of the horizon intercepted between the nearest meridian and any distant object, either discovered by the eye and referred to a point on the compass, or resulting from finical proportion. There is the true or astronomical bearing, and the magnetic bearing. It is also the situation of any distant object, estimated with regard to the ship's position; and in this sense the object must bear either ahead, astern, abreast, on the bow, or on the quarter; if a ship sails with a side wind, a distant object is said to bear to leeward or to windward, on the lee quarter or bow, or on the weather quarter or bow.
BEARING BACKSTAYS AFT. To throw the breast backstays out of the cross-tree horns or out-riggers and bear them aft. If not done, when suddenly bracing up, the cross-tree horn is frequently sprung or broken off.
BEARING BINNACLE. A small binnacle with a single compass, usually placed before the other. In line-of-battle ships it is generally placed on the fife-rail in the centre and foremost part of the poop.
BEARINGS. The widest part of a vessel below the plank-shear. The line of flotation which is formed by the water upon her sides when she sits upright with her provisions, stores, and ballast, on board in proper trim.
BEARINGS, To bring to his. Used in conversation for "to bring to reason." To bring an unruly subject to his senses, to know he is under control, to reduce to order.
BEAT. The verb means to excel, surpass, or overcome.
"And then their ships could only follow,
For we had beat them all dead hollow."
BEATEN BACK. Returning into port from stress of foul weather.
BEATING, or Turning to Windward. The operation of making progress by alternate tacks at sea against the wind, in a zig-zag line, or transverse courses; beating, however, is generally understood to be turning to windward in a storm or fresh wind.
BEATING THE BOOBY. The beating of the hands from side to side in cold weather to create artificial warmth.
BEATING WIND. That which requires the ship to make her way by tacks; a baffling or contrary wind.
BEATSTER. One who beats or mends the Yarmouth herring-nets.
BEAT TO ARMS. The signal by drum to summon the men to their quarters.
BEAT TO QUARTERS. The order for the drummer to summon every one to his respective station.
BEAVER. A helmet in general, but particularly that part which lets down to allow of the wearer's drinking.
BECALM, To. To intercept the current of the wind in its passage to a ship, by means of any contiguous object, as a high shore, some other ship to windward, &c. At this time the sails remain in a sort of rest, and consequently deprived of their power to govern the motion of the ship. Thus one sail becalms another.
BECALMED. Implies that from the weather being calm, and not a breath of wind blowing, the sails hang loose against the mast.
BECHE DE MER. See Trepang.
BECK [the Anglo-Saxon becca]. A small mountain-brook or rivulet, common to all northern dialects. A Gaelic or Manx term for a thwart or bench in the boat.
BECKET. A piece of rope placed so as to confine a spar or another rope; anything used to keep loose ropes, tackles, or spars in a convenient place; hence, beckets are either large hooks or short pieces of rope with a knot at one end and an eye in the other; or formed like a circular wreath for handles; as with cutlass hilts, boarding pikes, tomahawks, &c.; or they are wooden brackets, and probably from a corruption and misapplication of this last term arose the word becket, which seems often to be confounded with bracket. Also, a grummet either of rope or iron, fixed to the bottom of a block, for making fast the standing end of the fall.
BECKET, The Tacks and Sheets in the. The order to hang up the weather-main and fore-sheet, and the lee-main and fore-tack, to the small knot and eye becket on the foremost-main and fore-shrouds, when the ship is close hauled, to prevent them from hanging in the water. A kind of large cleat seized on a vessel's fore or main rigging for the sheets and tacks to lie in when not required. Cant term for pockets—"Hands out of beckets, sir."
BED. Flat thick pieces of wood, lodged under the quarters of casks containing any liquid, and stowed in a ship's hold, in order to keep them bilge-free; being steadied upon the beds by means of wedges called quoins. The impression made by a ship's bottom on the mud on having been left by an ebb-tide. The bite made in the ground by the fluke of an anchor. A kind of false deck, or platform, placed on those decks where the guns were too low for the ports.—Bed of a gun-carriage, or stool-bed. The piece of wood between the cheeks or brackets which, with the intervention of the quoin, supports the breech of the gun. It is itself supported, forward, on the bed-bolt, and aft, generally with the intervention of an elevating-screw, on the rear axle-tree.
BED or BARREL SCREWS. A powerful machine for lifting large bodies, and placed against the gripe of a ship to be launched for starting her.
BED-BOLT. A horizontal bolt passing through both brackets of a gun-carriage near their centres, and on which the forward end of the stool-bed rests.
BEDDING A CASK. Placing dunnage round it.
BEDLAMERS. Young Labrador seals, which set up a dismal cry when they cannot escape their pursuers—and go madly after each other in the sea.
BED OF A MORTAR. The solid frame on which a mortar is mounted for firing. For sea-service it is generally made of wood; for land-service, of iron, except in the smaller natures. In mortar vessels as latterly fitted, the bed traverses on a central pivot over a large table or platform of wood, having under it massive india-rubber buffers, to moderate the jar from the discharge.—Bed of a river, that part of the channel of a stream over which the water generally flows, as also that part of the basin of a sea or lake on which the water lies.
BED-OF-GUNS. A nautical phrase implying ordnance too heavy for a ship's scantling, or a fort over-gunned.
BE-DUNDERED. Stupified with noise.
BEE. A ring or hoop of metal.—Bees of the bowsprit. (See Bee-blocks.)
BEE-BLOCKS. Pieces of hard wood bolted to the outer end of the bowsprit, to reeve the fore-topmast stays through, the bolt, serving as a pin, commonly called bees.
BEEF. A figurative term for strength.—More beef! more men on.
BEEF-KID. A mess utensil for carrying meat from the coppers.
BEETLE. A shipwright's heavy mallet for driving the wedges called reeming irons, so as to open the seams in order to caulk. (See Reeming.)
BEETLE-HEAD. A large beetle, weighing 1000 lbs., swayed up by a crabwinch to a height, and dropped by a pincer-shaped hook; it is used in pile-driving.
BEFORE or ABAFT THE BEAM. The bearing of any object which is before or abaft a right line to the keel, at the midship section of a ship.
BEFORE THE MAST. The station of the working seamen, as distinguishing them from the officers.
BEGGAR-BOLTS. A contemptuous term for the missiles which were thrown by the galley-slaves at an approaching enemy.
BEHAVIOUR. The action and qualities of a ship under different impulses. Seamen speak of the manner in which she behaves, as if she acted by her own instinct.
BEIKAT. See Bykat.
BEILED. A sea-term in the old law-books, apparently for moored.
BEING. See Bing.
BELAY, To. To fasten a rope when it has been sufficiently hauled upon, by twining it several times round a cleat, belaying pin, or kevel, without hitching or seizing; this is chiefly applied to the running rigging, which needs to be so secured that it may be quickly let go in case of a squall or change of wind; there being several other expressions used for securing large ropes, as bitting, making fast, stoppering, &c.—Belay there, stop! that is enough!—Belay that yarn, we have had enough of it. Stand fast, secure all, when a hawser has been sufficiently hauled. When the top-sails, or other sails have been hoisted taut up, or "belay the main-tack," &c.
BELAYING PINS. Small wooden or iron cylinders, fixed in racks in different parts of the ship, for belaying running ropes to.
BELEAGUER. To invest or closely surround an enemy's post, in such manner as to prevent all relief or communication.
BELFRY. An ornamental frame or shelter, under which the ship's bell is suspended.
BELL. Strike the bell. The order to strike the clapper against the bell as many times as there are half hours of the watch elapsed; hence we say it is two bells, three bells, &c., meaning there are two or three half-hours past. The watch of four hours is eight bells.
BELLA STELLA. A name used by old seamen for the cross-staff.
BELLATRIX. γ Orionis.
BELL-BUOY. A large can-buoy on which is placed, in wicker-work, a bell, which is sounded by the heaving and setting of the sea.
BELLIGERENT. An epithet applied to any country which is in a state of warfare.
BELLOWS. An old hand at the bellows. A colloquialism for a man up to his duty. "A fresh hand at the bellows" is said when a gale increases.
BELL-ROPE. A short rope spliced round a thimble in the eye of the bell-crank, with a double wall-knot crowned at its end.
BELLS. See Watch.
BELL-TOP. A name applied to the top of a quarter-gallery, when the upper stool is hollowed away, or made like a rim.
BELL-WARE. A name of the Zostera marina (which see).
BELLY. The swell of a sail. The inner or hollow part of compass timber; the outside is called the back. To belly a sail is to inflate or fill it with the wind, so as to give a taut leech.—Bellying canvas is generally applied to a vessel going free, as when the belly and foot reefs which will not stand on a wind, are shaken out.—Bellying to the breeze, the sails filling or being inflated by the wind.—Bellying to leeward, when too much sail is injudiciously carried.
BELLY-BAND. A strip of canvas, half way between the close-reef and the foot of square sails, to strengthen them. Also applied to an army officer's sash.
BELLY-GUY. A tackle applied half-way up sheers, or long spars that require support in the middle. Frequently applied to masts that have been crippled by injudiciously setting up the rigging too taut.
BELLY-MAT. See Paunch-mat.
BELLY-STAY. Used half-mast down when a mast requires support; as belly-guy, above.
BELOW. The opposite of on or 'pon deck. Generally used to distinguish the watch on deck, and those off the watch.
BELT. A metaphorical term in geography for long and proportionally narrow encircling strips of land having any particular feature; as a belt of sand, a belt of hills, &c. It is, in use, nearly synonymous with zone. Also, to beat with a colt or rope's end.
BELTING. A beating; formerly given by a belt.
BELTS. The dusky streaks crossing the surface of the planet Jupiter, and supposed to be openings in his atmosphere.
BENCHES OF BOATS. The seats in the after-part whereon the passengers sit; properly stern-sheets, the others are athwarts, whereon the rowers sit.
BEND, To. To fasten one rope to another, or to an anchor. The term is also applied to any sudden or remarkable change in the direction of a river, and is then synonymous with bight or loop.—Bend a sail is to extend or make it fast to its proper yard or stay. (See Granny's Bend.) Also, bend to your oars, throw them well forward.
BEND. The chock of the bowsprit.
BENDER. A contrivance to bend small cross-bows, formerly used in the navy. Also, "look out for a bender," or "strike out for a bend," applied to coiling the hempen cables.
BENDING ROPES, is to join them together with a bowline knot, and then make their own ends fast upon themselves; not so secure as splicing, but sooner done, and readiest, when it is designed to take them asunder again. There are several bends, as Carrick-bend, hawser-bend, sheet-bend, bowline-bend, &c.
BENDING THE CABLE. The operation of clinching, or tying the cable to the ring of its anchor. The term is still used for shackling chain-cables to their anchors.
BEND-MOULD. A mould made to form the futtocks in the square body, assisted by the rising-square and floor-hollow.
BEND ON THE TACK. In hoisting signals, that piece of rope called the distant line—which keeps the flags so far asunder that they are not confused. Also, in setting free sails, the studding-sail tack, &c.
BEND-ROLL. A rest formerly used for a heavy musket.
BENDS. The thickest and strongest planks on the outward part of a ship's side, between the plank-streaks on which men set their feet in climbing up. They are more properly called wales, or wails. They are reckoned from the water, and are distinguished by the titles of first, second, or third bend. They are the chief strength of a ship's sides, and have the beams, knees, and foot-hooks bolted to them. Bends are also the frames or ribs that form the ship's body from the keel to the top of the side, individualized by each particular station. That at the broadest part of the ship is denominated the midship-bend or dead-flat.
BE-NEAPED. The situation of a vessel when she is aground at the height of spring-tides. (See Neaped.)
BENGAL LIGHT. See Blue Light.
BENJY. A low-crowned straw-hat, with a very broad brim.
BENK. A north-country term for a low bank, or ledge of rock; probably the origin of bunk, or sleeping-places in merchant vessels. (See Bunk.)
BENN. A small kind of salmon; the earliest in the Solway Frith.
BENT. The trivial name of the Arundo arenaria, or coarse unprofitable grass growing on the sea-shore.
BENTINCK-BOOM. That which stretches the foot of the fore-sail in many small square-rigged merchantmen; particularly used in whalers among the ice, with a reefed fore-sail to see clearly ahead. The tack and sheet are thus dispensed with, a spar with tackle amidships brings the leeches taut on a wind. It is principally worked by its bowline.
BENTINCKS. Triangular courses, so named after Captain Bentinck, by whom they were invented, but which have since been superseded by storm staysails. They are still used by the Americans as trysails.
BENTINCK-SHROUDS. Formerly used; extending from the weather-futtock staves to the opposite lee-channels.
BENT ON A SPLICE. Going to be married.
BERG. A word adopted from the German, and applied to the features of land distinguished as steppes, banquettes, shelves, terraces, and parallel roads. (See Iceberg.)
BERGLE. A northern name for the wrasse.
BERM. In fortification, a narrow space of level ground, averaging about a foot and a half in width, generally left between the foot of the exterior slope of the parapet and the top of the escarp; in permanent fortification its principal purpose is to retain the earth of the parapet, which, when the latter is deformed by fire or by weather, would otherwise fall into the ditch; in field fortification it also serves to protect the escarp from the pressure of a too imminent parapet.
BERMUDA SAILS. See 'Mudian.
BERMUDA SQUALL. A sudden and strong wintry tempest experienced in the Atlantic Ocean, near the Bermudas; it is preceded by heavy clouds, thunder, and lightning. It belongs to the Gulf Stream, and is felt, throughout its course, up to the banks of Newfoundland.
BERMUDIANS. Three-masted schooners, built at Bermuda during the war of 1814; they went through the waves without rising to them, and consequently were too ticklish for northern stations.
BERNAK. The barnacle goose (Anser bernicla).
BERSIS. A species of cannon formerly much used at sea.
BERTH. The station in which a ship rides at anchor, either alone, or in a fleet; as, she lies in a good berth, i.e. in good anchoring ground, well sheltered from the wind and sea, and at a proper distance from the shore and other vessels.—Snug berth, a place, situation, or establishment. A sleeping berth.—To berth a vessel, is to fix upon, and put her into the place she is to occupy.—To berth a ship's company, to allot to each man the space in which his hammock is to be hung, giving the customary 14 inches in width.—To give a berth, to keep clear of, as to give a point of land a wide berth, is to keep at a due distance from it.
BERTH. The room or apartment where any number of the officers, or ship's company, mess and reside; in a ship of war there is commonly one of these between every two guns as the mess-places of the crew.
BERTH AND SPACE. In ship-building, the distance from the moulding edge of one timber to the moulding edge of the next timber. Same as room and space, or timber and space.
BERTH-DECK. The 'tween decks.
BERTHER. He who assigns places for the respective hammocks to hang in.
BERTHING. The rising or working up of the planks of a ship's sides; as berthing up a bulk-head, or bringing up in general. Berthing also denotes the planking outside, above the sheer-strake, and is called the berthing of the quarter-deck, of the poop, or of the forecastle, as the case may be.
BERTHING of the head. See Head-boards.
BERVIE. A haddock split and half-dried.
BERWICK SMACK. The old and well-found packets of former days, until superseded by steamers. (See Barrack Smack.)
BESET in ice. Surrounded with ice, and no opening for advance or retreat, so as to be obliged to remain immovable.
BESIEGE, To. To endeavour to gain possession of a fortified place defended by an enemy, by directing against it a connected series of offensive military operations.
BESSY-LORCH. A northern name of the Gobio fluviatilis or gudgeon.
BEST BOWER. See Bower-anchors.
BETELGUESE. The lucida of Orion, α Orionis, and a standard Greenwich star of the first magnitude.
BETHEL. See Floating Bethel.
BETTY MARTIN. See Martin.
BETWEEN DECKS. The space contained between any two whole decks of a ship.
BETWIXT WIND AND WATER. About the line of load immersion of the ship's hull; or that part of the vessel which is at the surface of the water.
BEVEL. An instrument by which bevelling angles are taken. Also a sloped surface.
BEVELLING. Any alteration from a square in hewing timber, as taken by the bevel, bevelling rule, or bevelling boards.—A standing bevelling is that made without, or outside a square; an under-bevelling within; and the angle is optionally acute or obtuse. In ship-building, it is the art of hewing a timber with a proper and regular curve, according to a mould which is laid on one side of its surface.
BEVELLING-BOARD. A piece of board on which the bevellings or angles of the timbers are described.
BEVERAGE. A West India drink, made of sugar-cane juice and water.
BEWPAR. The old name for buntin, still used in navy office documents.
BEWTER. A northern name for the black-wak, or bittern.
BEZANT. An early gold coin, so called from having been first coined at Byzantium.
BIBBS. Pieces of timber bolted to the hounds of a mast, to support the trestle-trees.
BIBLE. A hand-axe. Also, a squared piece of freestone to grind the deck with sand in cleaning it; a small holy-stone, so called from seamen using them kneeling.
BIBLE-PRESS. A hand rolling-board for cartridges, rocket, and port-fire cases.
BICKER, or Beaker. A flat bowl or basin for containing liquors, formerly made of wood, but in later times of other substances. Thus Butler:
"And into pikes, and musqueteers,
Stamp beakers, cups, and porringers."
BID-HOOK. A small kind of boat-hook.
BIEL-BRIEF. The bottomry contract in Denmark, Sweden, and the north of Germany.
BIERLING. An old name for a small galley.
BIFURCATE. A river is said to bifurcate, or to form a fork, when it divides into two distinct branches, as at the heads of deltas and in fluvial basins.
BIGHT. A substantive made from the preterperfect tense of bend. The space lying between two promontories or headlands, being wider and smaller than a gulf, but larger than a bay. It is also used generally for any coast-bend or indentation, and is mostly held as a synonym of shallow bay.
BIGHT. The loop of a rope when it is folded, in contradistinction to the end; as, her anchor hooked the bight of our cable, i.e. caught any part of it between the ends. The bight of his cable has swept our anchor, i.e. the bight of the cable of another ship as she ranged about has entangled itself about the flukes of our anchor. Any part of the chord or curvature of a rope between the ends may be called a bight.
BIG-WIGS. A cant term for the higher officers.
BILANCELLA. A destructive mode of fishing in the Mediterranean, by means of two vessels towing a large net stretched between them.
BILANCIIS DEFERENDIS. A writ directed to a corporation, for the carrying of weights to such a haven, there to weigh the wool that persons, by our ancient laws, were licensed to transport.
BILANDER. A small merchant vessel with two masts, particularly distinguished from other vessels with two masts by the form of her main-sail, which is bent to the whole length of her yard, hanging fore and aft, and inclined to the horizon at an angle of about 45°. Few vessels are now rigged in this manner, and the name is rather indiscriminately used.
BILBO. An old term for a flexible kind of cutlass, from Bilbao, where the best Spanish sword-blades were made. Shakspeare humorously describes Falstaff in the buck-basket, like a good bilbo, coiled hilt to point.
BILBOES. Long bars or bolts, on which iron shackles slid, with a padlock at the end; used to confine the legs of prisoners in a manner similar to the punishment of the stocks. The offender was condemned to irons, more or less ponderous according to the nature of the offence of which he was guilty. Several of them are yet to be seen in the Tower of London, taken in the Spanish Armada. Shakspeare mentions Hamlet thinking of a kind of fighting,
"That would not let me sleep: methought, I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes."
BILCOCK. The northern name for the water-rail.
BILGE, or Bulge. That part of the floor in a ship—on either side of the keel—which approaches nearer to a horizontal than to a perpendicular direction, and begins to round upwards. It is where the floors and second futtocks unite, and upon which the ship would rest if laid on the ground; hence, when a ship receives a fracture in this part, she is said to be bilged or bulged.—Bilge is also the largest circumference of a cask, or that which extends round by the bung-hole.
BILGE-BLOCKS. See Sliding Bilge-blocks.
BILGE-COADS. In launching a ship, same with sliding-planks.
BILGE-FEVER. The illness occasioned by a foul hold.
BILGE-FREE. A cask so stowed as to rest entirely on its beds, keeping the lower part of the bilge at least the thickness of the hand clear of the bottom of the ship, or other place on which it is stowed.
BILGE-KEELS. Used for vessels of very light draught and flattish bottoms, to make them hold a better wind, also to support them upright when grounded. The Warrior and other iron-clads are fitted with bilge-keels.
BILGE-KEELSONS. These are fitted inside of the bilge, to afford strength where iron, ores, and other heavy cargo are shipped. Otherwise they are the same as sister-keelsons.
BILGE-PIECES. Synonymous with bilge-keels.
BILGE-PLANKS. Certain thick strengthenings on the inner and outer lines of the bilge, to secure the shiftings as well as bilge-keels.
BILGE-PUMP. A small pump used for carrying off the water which may lodge about the lee-bilge, so as not to be under the action of the main pumps. In a steamer it is worked by a single link off one of the levers.
BILGE-TREES. Another name for bilge-coads.
BILGE-WATER. The rain or sea-water which occasionally enters a vessel, and running down to her floor, remains in the bilge of the ship till pumped out, by reason of her flat bottom, which prevents it from going to the well of the pump; it is always (especially if the ship does not leak) of a dirty colour and disgusting penetrating smell. It seems to have been a sad nuisance in early voyages; and in the earliest sea-ballad known (temp. Hen. VI.) it is thus grumbled at:—
"A sak of strawe were there ryght good,
For som must lyg theym in theyr hood,
I had as lefe be in the wood
W'out mete or drynk.
For when that we shall go to bedde,
The pumpe was nygh our bedde's hedde;
A man were as good to be dede
As smell thereof ye stynk."
The mixture of tar-water and the drainings of sugar cargo is about the worst perfume known.
BILL. A weapon or implement of war, a pike or halbert of the English infantry. It was formerly carried by sentinels, whence Shakspeare humorously made Dogberry tell the sleepy watchmen to have a care that their bills be not stolen. Also, the point or tapered extremity of the fluke at the arm of an anchor. Also a point of land, of which a familiar instance may be cited in the Bill of Portland.
BILLAT. A name on the coast of Yorkshire for the piltock or coal-fish, when it is a year old.
BILL-BOARDS. Doubling under the fore-channels to the water-line, to protect the planking from the bill of the anchor.
BILLET. The allowance to landlords for quartering men in the royal service; the lodging-money charged by consuls for the same.
BILLET-HEAD. A carved prow bending in and out, contrariwise to the fiddle-head (scroll-head). Also, a round piece of wood fixed in the bow or stern of a whale-boat, about which the line is veered when the whale is struck. Synonymous with bollard.
BILLET-WOOD. Small wood mostly used for dunnage in stowing ships' cargoes, also for fuel, usually sold by the fathom; it is 3 feet 4 inches long, and 71⁄2 inches in compass.
BILL-FISH. See Gar-fish.
BILL-HOOK. A species of hatchet used in wooding a ship, similar to that used by hedgers.
BILL OF EXCHANGE. A means of remitting money from one country to another. The receiver must present it for acceptance to the parties on whom it is drawn without loss of time, he may then claim the money after the date specified on the bill has elapsed.
BILL OF FREEDOM. A full pass for a neutral in time of war.
BILL OF HEALTH. A certificate properly authenticated by the consul, or other proper authority at any port, that the ship comes from a place where no contagious disorder prevails, and that none of the crew, at the time of her departure, were infected with any such distemper. Such constitutes a clean bill of health, in contradistinction to a foul bill.
BILL OF LADING. A memorandum by which the master of a ship acknowledges the receipt of the goods specified therein, and promises to deliver them, in like good condition, to the consignee, or his order. It differs from a charter-party insomuch as it is given only for a single article or more, laden amongst the sundries of a ship's cargo.
BILL OF SALE. A written document by which the property of a vessel, or shares thereof, are transferred to a purchaser.
BILL OF SIGHT, or of View. A warrant for a custom-house officer to examine goods which had been shipped for foreign parts, but not sold there.
BILL OF STORE. A kind of license, or custom-house permission, for re-importing unsold goods from foreign ports duty free, within a specified limit of time.
BILLOWS. The surges of the sea, or waves raised by the wind; a term more in use among poets than seamen.
BILLS. The ends of compass or knee timber.
BILLY BOY or BOAT. A Humber or east-coast boat, of river-barge build, and a trysail; a bluff-bowed north-country trader, or large one-masted vessel of burden.
BINARY SYSTEM. When two stars forming a double-star are found to revolve about each other.
BIND. A quantity of eels, containing 10 sticks of 25 each.
BINDINGS. In ship-building, a general name for the beams, knees, clamps, water-ways, transoms, and other connecting parts of a ship or vessel.
BINDING-STRAKES. Thick planks on the decks, in midships, between the hatchways. Also the principal strakes of plank in a vessel, especially the sheer-strake and wales, which are bolted to the knees and shelf-pieces.
BING. A heap; an old north-country word for the sea-shore, and sometimes spelled being.
BINGE, To. To rinse, or bull, a cask.
BINGID. An old term for locker.
BINK. See Benk.
BINN. A sort of large locker, with a lid on the top, for containing a vessel's stores: bread-binn, sail-binn, flour-binn, &c.
BINNACLE (formerly Bittacle). It appears evidently to be derived from the French term habittacle, a small habitation, which is now used for the same purpose by the seamen of that nation. The binnacle is a wooden case or box, which contains the compass, and a light to illuminate the compass at night; there are usually three binnacles on the deck of a ship-of-war, two near the helm being designed for the man who steers, weather and lee, and the other amidships, 10 or 12 feet before these, where the quarter-master, who conns the ship, stands when steering, or going with a free wind. (See Conn.)
BINNACLE-LIGHT. The lamp throwing light upon the compass-card.
BINOCLE. A small binocular or two-eyed telescope.
BIOR-LINN. Perhaps the oldest of our terms for boat. (See Birlin.)
BIRD-BOLT. A species of arrow, short and thick, used to kill birds without piercing their skins.
BIRD'S-FOOT SEA-STAR. The Palmipes membranaceus, one of the Asterinidæ, with a flat thin pentagonal body, of a bright scarlet colour.
BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. (See Edible Bird's Nest.)
BIREMIS. In Roman antiquity, a vessel with two rows of oars.
BIRLIN. A sort of small vessel or galley-boat of the Hebrides; it is fitted with four to eight long oars, but is seldom furnished with sails.
BIRT. A kind of turbot.
BIRTH-MARKS. A ship must not be loaded above her birth-marks, for, says a maritime proverb, a master must know the capacity of his vessel, as well as a rider the strength of his horse.
BISCUIT [i.e. bis coctus, or Fr. bis-cuit]. Bread intended for naval or military expeditions is now simply flour well kneaded, with the least possible quantity of water, into flat cakes, and slowly baked. Pliny calls it panis nauticus; and of the panis militaris, he says that it was heavier by one-third than the grain from which it was made.
BISHOP. A name of the great northern diver (Colymbus glacialis).
BISMER. A name of the stickleback (Gasterosteus spinachia).
BIT. A West Indian silver coin, varying from 4d. to 6d. In America it is 121⁄2 cents, and in the Spanish settlements is equal with the real, or one-eighth of a dollar. It was, in fact, Spanish money cut into bits, and known as "cut-money."
BITE. Is said of the anchor when it holds fast in the ground on reaching it. Also, the hold which the short end of a lever has upon the thing to be lifted. Also, to bite off the top of small-arm cartridges.
BITTER. Any turn of a cable about the bitts is called a bitter. Hence a ship is "brought up to a bitter" when the cable is allowed to run out to that stop.
BITTER-BUMP. A north-country name for the bittern.
BITTER-END. That part of the cable which is abaft the bitts, and therefore within board when the ship rides at anchor. They say, "Bend to the bitter-end" when they would have that end bent to the anchor, and when a chain or rope is paid out to the bitter-end, no more remains to be let go. The bitter-end is the clinching end—sometimes that end is bent to the anchor, because it has never been used, and is more trustworthy. The first 40 fathoms of a cable of 115 fathoms is generally worn out when the inner end is comparatively new.
BITT-HEADS. The upright pieces of oak-timber let in and bolted to the beams of two decks at least, and to which the cross-pieces are let on and bolted. (See Bitts.)
BITT-PINS. Similar to belaying-pins, but larger. Used to prevent the cable from slipping off the cross-piece of the bitts, also to confine the cable and messenger there, in heaving in the cable.
BITTS. A frame composed of two strong pieces of straight oak timber, fixed upright in the fore-part of a ship, and bolted securely to the beams, whereon to fasten the cables as she rides at anchor; in ships of war there are usually two pairs of cable-bitts, and when they are both used at once the cable is said to be double-bitted. Since the introduction of chain-cables, bitts are coated with iron, and vary in their shapes. There are several other smaller bitts; as, the topsail-sheet bitts, paul-bitts, carrick-bitts, windlass-bitts, winch-bitts, jear-bitts, riding-bitts, gallows-bitts, and fore-brace bitts.
BITT-STOPPER. One rove through the knee of the bitts, which nips the cable on the bight: it consists of four or five fathoms of rope tailed out nipper fashion at one end, and clench-knotted at the other. The old bitt-stopper, by its running loop on a standing end, bound the cable down in a bight abaft the bitts—the tail twisted round the fore part helped to draw it still closer. It is now disused—chain cables having superseded hemp.
BITT THE CABLE, To. To put it round the bitts, in order to fasten it, or slacken it out gradually, which last is called veering away.
BIVOUAC. The resting for the night in the open-air by an armed party, instead of encamping.
BIZE. A piercing cold wind from the frozen summits of the Pyrénées.
BLACKAMOOR. A thoroughly black negro.
BLACK-BIRD CATCHING. The slave-trade.
BLACK-BIRDS. A slang term on the coast of Africa for a cargo of slaves.
BLACK-BOOK of the Admiralty. An imaginary record of offences. Also, a document of great authority in naval law, as it contains the ancient admiralty statutes and ordinances.
BLACK-FISH. A common name applied by sailors to many different species of cetaceans. The animal so called in the south seas belongs to the genus Globiocephalus. It is from 15 to 20 feet long, and occurs in countless shoals.
BLACK-FISHER. A water-poacher: one who kills salmon in close-time.
BLACK-FISHING. The illegally taking of salmon, under night, by means of torches and spears with barbed prongs.
BLACK-HEAD. The pewitt-gull (Larus ridibundus).
BLACK-HOLE. A place of solitary confinement for soldiers, and tried in some large ships.
BLACK-INDIES. Newcastle, Sunderland, and Shields.
BLACKING. For the ship's bends and yards. A good mixture is made of coal-tar, vegetable-tar, and salt-water, boiled together, and laid on hot.
BLACKING DOWN. The tarring and blacking of rigging; or the operation of blacking the ship's sides with tar or mineral blacking.
BLACK-JACK. The ensign of a pirate. Also, a capacious tin can for beer, which was formerly made of waxed leather. In 1630 Taylor wrote—
"Nor or of blacke-jacks at gentle buttry-bars,
Whose liquor oftentimes breeds household wars."
BLACK-LIST. A record of misdemeanours impolitically kept by some officers for their private use—the very essence of private tyranny, now forbidden.
BLACK-LOCK. A trout thought to be peculiar to Lough Melvin, on the west of Ireland.
BLACK SHIPS. The name by which the English builders designate those constructed of teak in India.
BLACK SOUTH-EASTER. The well-known violent wind at the Cape of Good Hope, in which the vapoury clouds called the Devil's Table-cloth appear on Table Mountain.
BLACK SQUALL. This squall, although generally ascribed to the West Indies, as well as the white squall, may be principally ascribed to a peculiar heated state of the atmosphere near land. As blackey, when interrogated about weather, generally observes, "Massa, look to leeward," it may be easily understood that it is the condensed air repelled by a colder medium to leeward, and driven back with condensed electricity and danger. So it is sudden to Johnny Newcomes, who lose sails, spars, and ships, by capsizing.
BLACK'S THE WHITE OF MY EYE. When Jack avers that no one can say this or that of him. It is an indignant expression of innocence of a charge.
BLACK-STRAKE. The range of plank immediately above the wales in a ship's side; they are always covered with a mixture of tar and lamp-black, which not only preserves them from the heat of the sun and the weather, but forms an agreeable variety with the painted or varnished parts above them. Vessels with no ports have frequently two such strakes—one above, the other below the wales, the latter being also called the diminishing strake.
BLACK-STRAP. The dark country wines of the Mediterranean. Also, bad port, such as was served for the sick in former times.
BLACK-TANG. The sea-weed Fucus vesicolosus, or tangle.
BLACKWALL-HITCH. A sort of tackle-hook guy, made by putting the bight of a rope over the back of the hook, and there jamming it by the standing part. A mode of hooking on the bare end of a rope where no length remains to make a cat's-paw.
BLACK WHALE. The name by which the right whale of the south seas (Balæna australis) is often known to whalemen.
BLAD. A term on our northern coasts for a squall with rain.
BLADDER-FISH. A term for the tetraodon. (See Balloon-fish.)
BLADE OF AN ANCHOR. That part of the arm prepared to receive the palm.
BLADE or WASH OF AN OAR. Is the flat part of it which is plunged into the water in rowing. The force and effect in a great measure depends on the length of this part, when adequate force is applied. When long oars are used, the boat is generally single-banked, so that the fulcrum is removed further from the rower. Also, the motive part of the screw-propeller.
BLAE, or Blea. The alburnum or sap-wood of timber.
BLAKE. Yellow. North of England.
BLANK. Level line mark for cannon, as point-blank, equal to 800 yards. It was also the term for the white mark in the centre of a butt, at which the arrow was aimed.
BLANKET. The coat of fat or blubber under the skin of a whale.
BLARE, To. To bellow or roar vehemently.—Blare, a mixture of hair and tar made into a kind of paste, used for tightening the seams of boats.
BLARNEY. Idle discourse; obsequious flattery.
BLASHY. Watery or dirty; applied to weather, as "a blashy day," a wet day. In parlance, trifling or flimsy.
BLAST. A sudden and violent gust of wind: it is generally of short duration, and succeeded by a fine breeze.—To blast, to blow up with gunpowder.
BLAST-ENGINE. A ventilating machine to draw off the foul air from the hold of a ship, and induce a current of fresh air into it.
BLATHER. Thin mud or puddle. Also, idle nonsense.
BLAY. A name of the bleak.
BLAZE, To. To fire away as briskly as possible. To blaze away is to keep up a running discharge of fire-arms. Also, to spear salmon. Also, in the woods, to mark a tree by cutting away a portion of its outer surface, thus leaving a patch of whiter internal surface exposed, to call attention or mark a track.
BLAZERS. Applied to mortar or bomb vessels, from the great emission of flame to throw a 13-inch shell.
BLAZING STARS. The popular name of comets.
BLEAK. The Leuciscus alburnus of naturalists, and the fresh-water sprat of Isaak Walton. The name of this fish is from the Anglo-Saxon blican, owing to its shining whiteness—its lustrous scales having long been used in the manufacture of false pearls.
BLEEDING THE MONKEY. The monkey is a tall pyramidal kid or bucket, which conveys the grog from the grog-tub to the mess—stealing from this in transitu is so termed.
BLEED THE BUOYS. To let the water out.
BLENNY. A small acanthopterygious fish (Blennius).
BLETHER-HEAD. A blockhead.
BLETHERING. Talking idle nonsense; insolent prate.
BLIND. A name on the west coast of Scotland for the pogge, or miller's thumb (Cottus cataphractus).
BLIND. Everything that covers besiegers from the enemy. (See Orillon.)
BLINDAGE. A temporary wooden shelter faced with earth, both in siege works and in fortified places, against splinters of shells and the like.
BLIND-BUCKLERS. Those fitted for the hawse-holes, which have no aperture for the cable, and therefore used at sea to prevent the water coming in.
BLIND-HARBOUR. One, the entrance of which is so shut in as not readily to be perceived.
BLIND-ROCK. One lying just under the surface of the water, so as not to be visible in calms.
BLIND-SHELL. One which, from accident or bad fuze, has fallen without exploding, or one purposely filled with lead, as at the siege of Cadiz. Also used at night filled with fuze composition, and enlarged fuze-hole, to indicate the range.
BLIND-STAKES. A sort of river-weir.
BLINK OF THE ICE. A bright appearance or looming (the iceberg reflected in the atmosphere above it), often assuming an arched form; so called by the Greenlanders, and by which reflection they always know when they are approaching ice long before they see it. In Greenland blink means iceberg.
BLIRT. A gust of wind and rain.
BLOAT, To. To dry by smoke; a method latterly applied almost exclusively to cure herrings or bloaters.—Bloated is also applied to any half-dried fish.
BLOCCO. Paper and hair used in paying a vessel's bottom.
BLOCK. (In mechanics termed a pulley.) Blocks are flattish oval pieces of wood, with sheaves in them, for all the running ropes to run in. They are used for various purposes in a ship, either to increase the mechanical power of the ropes, or to arrange the ends of them in certain places on the deck, that they may be readily found when wanted; they are consequently of various sizes and powers, and obtain various names, according to their form or situation, thus:—A single block contains only one sheave or wheel. A double block has two sheaves. A treble or threefold block, three, and so on. A long-tackle or fiddle-block has two sheaves—one below the other, like a fiddle. Cistern or sister block for top-sail lifts and reef tackles. Every block is composed of three, and generally four, parts:—(1.) The shell, or outside wooden part. (2.) The sheave, or wheel, on which the rope runs. (3.) The pin, or axle, on which the sheave turns. (4.) The strop, or part by which the block is made fast to any particular station, and is usually made either of rope or of iron. Blocks are named and distinguished by the ropes which they carry, and the uses they serve for, as bowlines, braces, clue-lines, halliards, &c. &c. They are either made or morticed (which see).
BLOCK. The large piece of elm out of which the figure is carved at the head of the ship.
BLOCKADE. The investment of a town or fortress by sea and land; shutting up all the avenues, so that it can receive no relief.—To blockade a port is to prevent any communication therewith by sea, and cut off supplies, in order to compel a surrender when the provisions and ammunition are exhausted.—To raise a blockade is to discontinue it.—Blockade is violated by egress as well as by ingress. Warning on the spot is sufficient notice of a blockade de facto. Declaration is useless without actual investment. If a ship break a blockade, though she escape the blockading force, she is, if taken in any part of her future voyage, captured in delicto, and subject to confiscation. The absence of the blockading force removes liability, and might (in such cases) overrules right.
BLOCK AND BLOCK. The situation of a tackle when the blocks are drawn close together, so that the mechanical power becomes arrested until the tackle is again overhauled by drawing the blocks asunder. Synonymous with chock-a-block.
BLOCKHOUSE. A small work, generally built of logs, to protect adjacent ports. Blockhouses were primarily constructed in our American colonies, because they could be immediately built from the heavy timber felled to clear away the spot, and open the lines of fire. The ends were simply crossed alternately and pinned. Two such structures, with a space of 6 feet for clay, formed, on an elevated position, a very formidable casemated work. The slanting overhanging roof furnished excellent cover in lieu of loop-holes for musketry.
BLOCK-MAKER. A manufacturer of blocks.
BLOCKS. The several transverse pieces or logs of timber, piled in plane, on which a ship is built, or to place her on for repair: they consist of solid pieces of oak laid on the ground-ways.
BLOCKS, FIXED. See Fixed Blocks.
BLOOD-SUCKERS. Lazy fellows, who, by skulking, throw their proportion of labour on the shoulders of their shipmates.
BLOODY FLAG. A large red flag.
BLOOM. A peculiar warm blast of wind; a term used in iron-foundries.
BLORE. An old word for a stiff gale.
BLOUT. A northern term for the sudden breaking-up of a storm. Blout has been misused for blirt.
BLOW. Applied to the breathing of whales and other cetaceans. The expired air from the lungs being highly charged with moisture, which condenses at the temperature of the atmosphere, appears like a column of steam.
BLOW. A gale of wind.
BLOWE. A very old English word for scold or revile, still in use, as when a man receives a good blowing-up.
BLOW-HOLES. The nostrils of the cetaceans, situated on the highest part of the head. In the whalebone whales they form two longitudinal slits, placed side by side. In the porpoises, grampuses, &c., they are united into a single crescentic opening.
BLOW HOME. The wind does not cease or moderate till it comes past that place, blowing continuously over the land and sea with equal velocity. In a naval sense, it does not blow home when a sea-wind is interrupted by a mountainous range along shore.
BLOWING GREAT GUNS AND SMALL ARMS. Heavy gales; a hurricane.
BLOWING HARD. Said of the wind when it is strong and steady.
BLOWING THE GRAMPUS. Throwing water over a sleeper on watch.
BLOWING WEATHER. A nautical term for a continuance of strong gales. (See Gale.)
BLOWN COD. A split cod, half dried by exposure to the wind. Blown is also frequently applied to bloated herrings, when only partly cured. Also, a cod-fish rises to the surface, and is easily taken, if blown. By being hauled nearly up, and the hook breaking, it loses the power for some time of contracting the air-bladder, and thus dies head out of water.
BLOWN ITSELF OUT. Said of a falling gale of wind.
BLOW OFF, To. To clear up in the clouds.
BLOW-OFF-PIPE, in a steamer, is a pipe at the foot of each boiler, communicating with the sea, and furnished with a cock to open and shut it.—Blowing-off is the act or operation of using the blow-off-pipe to cleanse a marine steam-engine of its brine deposit; also, to clear the boilers of water, to lighten a ship if grounded.
BLOW-OUT. Extravagant feasting regardless of consequences.
BLOW OVER, (It will). Said of a gale which is expected to pass away quickly.
BLOW-PIPE. An engine of offence used by the Araucanians and Borneans, and with the latter termed sumpitan: the poisoned arrow, sumpit, will wound at the distance of 140 or more yards. The arrow is forced through (like boys' pea-shooters) by the forcible and sudden exertion of the lungs. A wafer can be hit at 30 yards to a certainty, and small birds are unerringly stunned at 30 yards by pellets of clay.
BLOW THE GAFF. To reveal a secret; to expose or inform against a person.
BLOW-THROUGH VALVE. A valve admitting steam into the condenser, in order to clear it of air and water before starting the engine.
BLOW UP, To. To abuse angrily.
BLOW-VALVE. A valve by which the first vacuum necessary for starting a steam-engine is produced.
BLUBBER. The layer of fat in whales between the skin and the flesh, which is flinched or peeled off, and boiled for oil, varying from 10 to 20 inches in thickness. (See Sea-blubber.)
BLUBBER FORKS and CHOPPERS. The implements with which blubber is "made off," or cut for stowing away.
BLUBBER-GUY. A large rope stretched from the main to the fore mast head of whalers, to which the speck-falls are attached for the operation of flensing.
BLUE. Till all's blue: carried to the utmost—a phrase borrowed from the idea of a vessel making out of port, and getting into blue water.—To look blue, to be surprised, disappointed, or taken aback, with a countenance expressive of displeasure.
BLUE-JACKETS. The seamen as distinguished from the marines.
BLUE LIGHT. A pyrotechnical preparation for signals by night. Also called Bengal light.
BLUE-LIGHTISM. Affected sanctimoniousness.
BLUE MOON. An indefinite period.
BLUE-NOSE. A general term for a native of Nova Scotia.
BLUE PETER. The signal for sailing when hoisted at the fore-topmast head; this well-known flag has a blue ground with a white square in the centre.
BLUE PIGEON. A nickname for the sounding lead.
BLUE WATER. The open ocean.
BLUFF. An abrupt high land, projecting almost perpendicularly into the sea, and presenting a bold front, rather rounded than cliffy in outline, as with the headland.
BLUFF-BOWED. Applied to a vessel that has broad and flat bows—that is, full and square-formed: the opposite of lean.
BLUFF-HEADED. When a ship has but a small rake forward on, being built with her stem too straight up.
BLUNDERBUSS. A short fire-arm, with a large bore and wide mouth, to scatter a number of musket or pistol bullets or slugs.
BLUNK. A sudden squall, or stormy weather.
BLUSTROUS. Stormy: also said of a braggadocio.
BO. Abbreviation of boy. A familiar epithet for a comrade, derived probably from the negro.
BOADNASH. Buckhemshein coins of Barbary.
BOANGA. A Malay piratical vessel, impelled by oars.
BOARD. Certain offices under the control of the executive government, where the business of any particular department is carried on: as the Board of Admiralty, the Navy Board, Board of Ordnance, India Board, Board of Trade, &c. Also, timber sawn to a less thickness than plank: all broad stuff of under 11⁄2 inch in thickness. (See Plank.) Also, the space comprehended between any two places when the ship changes her course by tacking; or, it is the line over which she runs between tack and tack when working to windward, or sailing against the direction of the wind.—To make a good board. To sail in a straight line when close-hauled, without deviating to leeward.—To make short boards, is to tack frequently before the ship has run any great length of way.—To make a stern board, is when by a current, or any other accident, the vessel comes head to wind, the helm is shifted, and she has fallen back on the opposite tack, losing what she had gained, instead of having advanced beyond it. To make a stern board is frequently a very critical as well as seamanlike operation, as in very close channels. The vessel is allowed to run up into the wind until she has shot up to the weather danger; the helm is then shifted, and with all aback forward, she falls short off on the opposite tack. Such is also achieved at anchor in club-hauling (which see).—To board a ship, is to enter her in a hostile manner in order to take forcible possession of her, either from the attacking ship or by armed boats. The word board has various other applications among seamen:—To go aboard signifies to go into the ship.—To slip by the board, is to slip down a ship's side.—To board it up, is to beat up, sometimes on one tack and sometimes on another.—The weather-board is the side of the ship which is to windward.—By the board, close to a ship's deck.
BOARD AND BOARD. Alongside, as when two ships touch each other.
BOARDERS. Sailors appointed to make an attack by boarding, or to repel such attempt from the enemy. Four men selected from each gun were generally allotted as boarders, also to trim sails, tend pumps, repair rigging, &c.
BOARD HIM. A colloquialism for I'll ask, demand, or accost him. Hence Shakspeare makes Polonius say of Hamlet,
"I'll board him presently."
To make acquaintance with; to fasten on.
BOARD HIM IN THE SMOKE. To take a person by surprise, as by firing a broadside, and boarding in the smoke.
BOARDING. An assault made by one vessel on another, by entering her in battle with a detachment of armed men.
BOARDING-BOOK. A register which has for its object the recording all particulars relative to every ship boarded, a copy of which is transmitted to the admiral under whose orders the ship is employed. (See Guard-book.)
BOARDING-NETTINGS. A framework of stout rope-netting placed where necessary, to obstruct an enemy's boarders.
BOARDING-PIKE. A defensive lance against boarders.
BOARDLINGS. Flippant understrappers of the admiralty and navy-boards.
BOARD OF TRADE. A committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of commercial matters.
BOAT. A small open vessel, conducted on the water by rowing or sailing. The construction, machinery, and even the names of boats, are very different, according to the various purposes for which they are calculated, and the services on which they are employed. Thus we have the long-boat and the jolly-boat, life-boat and gun-boat, but they will appear under their respective appellations.—A bold boat, one that will endure a rough sea well.—Man the boat, send the crew in to row and manage it.
BOATABLE. Water navigable for boats and small river-craft.
BOAT-BUOYS. Means added to increase the buoyancy of life-boats, &c.
BOAT-CHOCKS. Clamps of wood upon which a boat rests when stowed on a vessel's deck.
BOAT-CLOAK. A mantle for the officer going on duty; when left in the boat it is in the coxswain's charge.
BOAT-DAVIT. A curved piece of timber with a sheave at its outer end, which projects over the boat's stern, while the inner end is shipped into a cleat on each side of the bottom of the boat, for weighing anchors when needed. (See Davit.)
BOAT-FAST. See Painter.
BOAT-GEER. A general name for the rigging and furniture of a boat.
BOAT-HIRE. Expenses for the use of shore-boats.
BOAT-HOOK. An iron hook with a straight prong at its hinder part; it is fixed upon a pole, by the help of which a boat is either pulled to, or pushed off from, any place, and is capable of holding on by anything.
BOATILA. A narrow-sterned, flat-bottomed boat of the Gulf of Manar.
BOATING. Transporting men, munitions, or goods, in boats.
BOAT-KEEPER. One of the boat's crew who remains in charge of her during the absence of the others. In small vessels he is sometimes called the boatman.
BOAT-NAILS. Those supplied for the carpenter's use are of various lengths, generally rose-headed, square at the points, and made both of copper and iron. (See Nails.)
BOAT-ROPE. A separate rope veered to the boat to be towed at the ship's stern.
BOAT'S CREW. The men appointed as the crew of any particular boat, as the barge's crew, cutter's crew, &c.
BOAT'S-GRIPES. Lashings for the secure stowage of boats. (See Gripes.)
BOAT-SKIDS. Portable pieces of plank used to prevent chafing when a boat is hoisted or lowered. (See Skids.)
BOATSWAIN. The officer who superintends the boat-sails, ship's-sails, rigging, canvas, colours, anchors, cables and cordage, committed to his charge. He ought also to take care that the blocks and running ropes are regularly placed to answer the purposes for which they are intended, and that the sails are properly fitted to their yards and stays, and well-furled or reefed when occasion requires. He pipes the hands to their several duties, seeing that they attend his call, and ought to be in every way a thorough seaman. Although termed boatswain, the boats are not in his charge. They, with the spars, &c., and stores for repair, belong to the carpenter. The boatswain is the officer of the first lieutenant; he gives no order, but reports defects, and carries out the will of his superior.
BOATSWAIN-BIRD. Phaethon æthereus, a tropical bird, so called from its sort of whistle. It is distinguished by two long feathers in the tail, called the marling-spike.
BOATSWAIN-CAPTAIN. An epithet given by certain popinjays in the service to such of their betters as fully understand the various duties of their station.
BOATSWAIN'S MATE. Is an assistant to the boatswain, who had the peculiar command of the long-boat. He summons the watch or crew by his whistle, and during his watch looks to the decks, and has peculiar calls for "grog," "'bout ship," "pipe to breakfast," "sweepers," &c.
BOATSWAIN'S STORE-ROOM. Built expressly for boatswain's stores, on a platform or light deck.
BOATSWAIN'S YEOMAN. See Yeoman.
BOAT THE ANCHOR. Place the anchor in-board in the boat.
BOAT THE OARS. Put them in their proper places fore and aft on the thwarts ready for use.
BOB. A knot of worms on a string, used in fishing for eels; also colloquially, it means a berth.—Shift your bob, to move about, to dodge, to fish.—Bear a bob, make haste, be brisk.
BOB. The ball or balance-weight of a clock's pendulum; the weight attached to the plumb-line.
BOBBERY. A disturbance, row, or squabble; a term much used in the East Indies and China.
BOBBING. A particular method of fishing for eels—
"His hook he bated with a dragon's tail,
And sat upon a rock, and bobb'd for whale."
BOBBING ABOUT. Heaving and setting without making any way.
BOBBLE. The state of waves when dashing about without any regular set or direction, as in cross tides or currents.
BOBSTAY-COLLARS. These are made with large rope, and an eye spliced in each end; they are secured round the bowsprit, on the upper side, with a rose lashing. They are almost entirely superseded by iron bands.
BOBSTAY-HOLES. Those cut through the fore-part of the knee of the head, between the cheeks, for the admission of the bobstay; they are not much used now, as chain bobstays are almost universal, which are secured to plates by shackles.
BOBSTAY-PLATES. Iron plates by which the lower end of the bobstay is attached to the stem.
BOBSTAYS. Ropes or chains used to confine the bowsprit downward to the stem or cut-water. They are fitted in various ways. Their use is to counteract the strain of the foremast-stays, which draw it upwards. The bowsprit is also fortified by shrouds from the bows on each side, which are all very necessary, as the fore-mast and the upper spars on the main-mast are stayed and greatly supported by the bowsprit.
BOCCA. [Sp. boca, mouth.] Is a term used both in the Levant, and on the north coast of South America, or the Spanish Main, for a mouth or channel into any port or harbour, or the entrance into a sound which has a passage out by a contrary way.—Bocca Tigris, Canton River.
BODIES. The figure of a ship, abstractedly considered, is divided into different parts or figures, each of which has the appellation body, as fore-body, midship-body, square-body, &c.
BODKIN. A dirk or dagger, a word still in use, though Johnson says it is the oldest acceptation of it. It is the bodekin of Chaucer; and Shakspeare makes Hamlet ask who would bear the ills of life,
"When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?"
BODY. The principal corps of an army, or the main strength of a fleet.
BODY, of a Place. In fortification, the space inclosed by the enceinte, or line of bastions and curtains.
BODY-HOOPS. Those which secure the aris pieces of a made mast.
BODY-PLAN. The draught of a proposed ship, showing the breadth and timbers; it is a section supposed to cut the vessel through the broadest part; it is otherwise called the plan of projection.
BODY-POST. An additional stern-post introduced at the fore-part of an aperture cut in the dead-wood in a ship fitted with a screw-propeller.
BOG. A marsh, or a tract of land, which from its form and impermeable bottom retains stagnant water. (See Quagmire.)
BOG-BLUTER. A northern name for the bittern, from its habit of thrusting its bill into marshy places.
BOG-TROTTER. Any one who lives among marshy moors, but generally applied to the Emeralders.
BOGUE, To. To drop off from the wind. To edge away to leeward with the wind; not holding a good wind, and driving very much to leeward. Used only to clumsy inferior craft.
BOGUE. Mouth of a river; hence disembogue. Bogue forts, China.
BOHEMIAN. A conceited dawdler in his duties. Shakspeare ridicules Simple as a Bohemian Tartar; both of which terms were applied to gipsies.
BOILER. Of a steam-engine, made of wrought iron, or copper-plates, which being partly filled with water, and having fire applied to the outside, generates steam to supply the engine.
BOILERS. Termed coppers; the ship's cooking utensils, of iron or copper.
BOILING. The "whole boiling" means the entire quantity, or whole party; applied to number or quantity. A contemptuous epithet.
BOLD-BOW. A broad bluff bow.
BOLDERING WEATHER. Cloudy and thundery.
BOLD-SHORE. A steep coast where the water, deepening rapidly, admits the near approach of shipping without the danger of grounding.
BOLD-TO. Applied to land; the same as steep-to.
BOLE. A small boat.
BOLIDE. A name for aërolite (which see).
BOLINE. See Bowline. Clavus in navi.
BOLLAN. The Manx or Gaelic term for the fish old-wife.
BOLLARD. A thick piece of wood on the head of a whale-boat, round which the harpooner gives the line a turn, in order to veer it steadily, and check the animal's velocity. Also a strong timber fixed vertically into the ground, part being left above it, on which to fasten ropes. Also a lighter sort of dolphin for attaching vessels to. Wharves have bollards to which vessels are secured when alongside.
BOLLARD-TIMBERS. Two pieces of oak, usually called knight-heads (which see).
BOLLING or BOWLING AWAY. Going with a free wind.
BOLME. An old term for a waterman's pole or boom.
BOLOTO. A small boat of the Philippines and Moluccas.
BOLSTERS. Small cushions or bags of tarred canvas, used to preserve the stays from being chafed by the motion of the masts, when the ship pitches at sea. Pieces of soft wood covered with canvas, placed on the trestle-trees, for the eyes of the rigging to rest upon, and prevent a sharp nip. Also pieces of oak timber fayed to the curvature of the bow, under the hawse-holes, and down upon the upper cheek, to prevent the cable from rubbing against the cheeks.—Bolsters for sheets, tacks, &c., are small pieces of fir or oak, fayed under the gunwale, or other part, with the outer surface rounded to prevent chafing.—Bolsters, for the anchor lining. Solid pieces of oak bolted to the ship's side at the fore part of the fore-chains on which the stanchions are fixed that receive the anchor lining.
BOLT. A cylindrical pin of iron or copper to unite the different parts of a vessel, varied in form according to the places where they are required. In ship-building square ones are used in frame-fastening; the heads of all bolts are round, saucer, or collared.—Bolt of the irons, which runs through three pairs of shackles.—Drift or drive-bolts are used to drive out others.—Bay-bolts, have jags or barbs on each side, to keep them from flying out of their holes.—Clench-bolts are clenched with rivetting hammers.—Fend or fender bolts, made with long and thick heads, and struck into the outermost bends of the ship, to save her sides from bruises.—Forelock-bolts have at the end a forelock of iron driven in, to keep them from starting back.—Set-bolts are used for forcing the planks, and bringing them close together.—Ring-bolts are used for the bringing to of the planks, and those parts whereto are fastened the breeches and tackle of the guns.—Scarp-bolts and keel-bolts, pointed, not clinched, used for false keel or temporary purposes.—Bringing-to bolts, fitted with an eye at one end, and a nut and screw at the other, for bringing to the ends at the stem, &c.—To bolt, to start off, to run away.
BOLT-BOAT. An old term for a boat which makes good weather in a rough sea.
BOLTING TIMBERS. Those on each side of the stem, continued up for the security of the bowsprit. (See Knight-heads.)
BOLT OF CANVAS. The piece or roll of 39 yards in which it is supplied, but which usually measure about 40 yards in length; it is generally from 22 to 30 inches wide.
BOLT-ROPE. A rope sewed all round the edge of the sail, to prevent the canvas from tearing. The bottom part of it is called the foot-rope, the sides leech-ropes, and if the sail be oblong or square the upper part is called the head-rope; the stay or weather rope of fore-and-aft sails is termed the luff.
BOLTROPE-NEEDLE. A strong needle for stitching the sail to the bolt-ropes.
BOLT-SPRIT. See Bowsprit.
BOLT-STRAKE. Certain strakes of plank which the beam fastenings pass through.
BOLT-TOE. The cock of a gun-lock.
BOMB [formerly bomber, from bomba]. The mortar of bomb-vessels.
BOMB or MORTAR VESSELS. Small ships fortified for throwing bombs into a fortress; said to be the invention of M. Reyneau, and to have been first used at the bombardment of Algiers in 1682. Until then it had been judged impracticable to bombard a place from the sea.
BOMBALO. A delicate kind of sand-eel taken in quantities at Bombay.
BOMBARD. A piece of ordnance, anciently in use before the introduction of more complete cannon with improved gunpowder, propelling iron balls. Its bore, for the projection of stone shot, sometimes exceeded 20 inches in diameter, but was short; its chamber, for containing the powder-charge, being about as long, but much narrower both within and without. There were also very diminutive varieties of it. It has been vaguely called by some writers basilisk, and by the Dutch donderbass. Used to assail a town, fortress, or fleet, by the projection of shells from mortars. It was also the name of a barrel, or large vessel for liquids; hence, among other choice epithets, Prince Henry calls that "tun of man," Falstaff, a "huge bombard of sack." Also, a Mediterranean vessel, with two masts like the English ketch.
BOMB-BED BEAMS. The beams which support the bomb-bed in bomb-vessels.
BOMB-BEDS. See Bed of a Mortar.
BOMBO. Weak cold punch.
BOMB-SHELL. A large hollow ball of cast-iron, for throwing from mortars (distinguished by having ears or lugs, by which to lift it with the shell-hooks into the mortar), and having a hole to receive the fuze, which communicates ignition to the charge contained in the shell. (See Fuze.)
BOME-SPAR [a corruption of boom]. A spar of a larger kind.
BOMKIN. See Bumkin.
BONA FIDE. In good faith; without subterfuge—Bona fides is a condition necessary to entitle to the privilege of pre-emption in our admiralty courts.
BONAVENTURE. The old outer mizen, long disused.
BONDING. See Warehousing System.
BONDING-POND. An inclosed space of water where the tide flows, for keeping timber in.
BOND-MAN. A harsh method in some ships, in keeping one man bound for the good behaviour of another on leave.
BOND OF BOTTOMRY. An authority to borrow money, by pledging the keel or bottom of the ship. (See Bottomry.)
BONE, To. To seize, take, or apprehend. A ship is said to carry a bone in her mouth and cut a feather, when she makes the water foam before her.
BON GRACE. Junk-fenders; for booming off obstacles from a ship's sides or bows. (See Bowgrace.)
BONITO. The Thynnus pelamys, a fish of the scomber family, commonly about 2 feet long, with a sharp head, small mouth, full eyes, and a regular semi-lunar tail.
BONI-VOCHIL. The Hebridean name for the great northern diver (Colymbus glacialis).
BONNET. An additional part laced to the foot of the jibs, or other fore-and-aft sails, in small vessels in moderate weather, to gather more wind. They are commonly one-third of the depth of the sails they belong to. Thus we say, "Lace on the bonnet," or "Shake off the bonnet." Bonnets have lately been introduced to secure the foot of an upper-topsail to a lower-topsail yard. The unbonnetted sail is for storm service. Bonnet, in fortification, is a raised portion of the works at any salient angle, having the same plan, but 10 or 12 feet more command than the work on which it is based. It assists in protecting from enfilade, and affords a plunging fire.
BONNET-FLOOK. A name of the well-known flat-fish, brill, pearl, or mouse-dab; the Pleuronectes rhombus.
BONXIE. The Shetland name for the skua-gull (Cataractes vulgaris). Also a very general northern term for sea-birds.
BONY-FISH. One of the names of the hard-head (which see).
BOOBY. A well-known tropical sea-bird, Sula fusca, of the family Pelecanidæ. It is fond of resting out of the water at night, even preferring an unstable perch on the yard of a ship. The name is derived from the way in which it allows itself to be caught immediately after settling. The direction in which they fly as evening comes on often shows where land may be found.
BOOBY-HATCH. A smaller kind of companion, but readily removable; it is in use for merchantmen's half decks, and lifts off in one piece.
BOOK. A commercial term for a peculiar packing of muslin, bast, and other stuffs.—Brought to book, made to account.
BOOKING. A reprimand.
BOOKS. (See Ship's Books.) Official documents.
BOOM. A long spar run out from different places in the ship, to extend or boom out the foot of a particular sail; as, jib-boom, flying jib-boom, studding-sail booms, driver or spanker boom, ringtail-boom, main-boom, square-sail boom, &c. A ship is said to come booming forwards when she comes with all the sail she can make. Boom also denotes a cable stretched athwart the mouth of a river or harbour, with yards, top-masts, or stout spars of wood lashed to it, to prevent the entrance of an enemy.—To top one's boom, is to start off.—To boom off, to shove a boat or vessel away with spars.
BOOMAGE. A duty levied to compound for harbour dues, anchorage, and soundage.
BOOM-BOATS. Those stowed on the booms.
BOOM-BRACE PENDANT. A rope attached to the extremity of a studding-sail boom, and leading down on deck; it is used to counteract the pressure of the sail upon the boom.
BOOM-COVER. The tarpaulin, or painted, cover over the spars.
BOOMING. Sound of distant guns; it is often, but wrongly, applied to the hissing or whistling of shot.
BOOM-IRONS. Are metal rings fitted on the yard-arms, through which the studding-sail booms traverse; there is one on each top-sail yard-arm, but on the lower yards a second, which opens to allow the boom to be triced up; it is one-fourth from the yard-arms, and holds down the heel of the boom when it is rigged out.
BOOM-JIGGER. A tackle used in large ships, for rigging out or running in the top-mast studding-sail booms.
BOOMKIN. See Bumkin.
BOOM-MAINSAIL. See Main-sail.
BOOMS. A space where the spare spars are stowed; the launch being generally stowed between them.
BOOPAH. A Tongatabou canoe with a single out-rigger.
BOOTHYR. An old term, denoting a small river vessel.
BOOT-TOPPING. The old operation of scraping off the grass, slime, shells, &c., which adhere to the bottom, near the surface of the water, and daubing it over with a mixture of tallow, sulphur, and resin, as a temporary protection against worms. This is chiefly performed where there is no dock or other commodious situation for breaming or careening, or when the hurry of a voyage renders it inconvenient to have the whole bottom properly trimmed and cleansed. The term is now applied to sheathing a vessel with planking over felt.
BOOTY. That sort of prize which may be distributed at the capstan-head, or at once.
BOOZE. A carouse; hence, boozy, elevated by liquor.
BORA. A very violent wind experienced in the upper part of the Adriatic Sea, but which fortunately is of no great duration.
BORACCHIO [Sp. borracho, drunk]. A skin for holding wine or water, usually a goat's. Used in the Levant. A skin-full; literally, gorged with wine.
BORASCA. A storm, with thunder and lightning.
BORD. The sea-coast, an old term. Formerly meant the side, edge, or brim; hence, as applied to a ship, to throw overboard, is to cast anything over the side of the vessel.
BORDELS. An old word for houses built along a strand. In the old play called the "Ladies' Privilege," it is said:—"These gentlemen know better to cut a caper than a cable, or board a pink in the bordels than a pinnace."
BORDER. A term referring to the nature of the vegetation on the margin of a stream or lake, or to artificial works constructed along the banks.
BORD YOU. A saying of a man waiting, to one who is drinking, meaning that he claims the next turn.
BORE. A sudden and rapid flow of tide in certain inlets of the sea; as the monstrous wave in the river Hooghly, called bahu by the natives, which rolls in with the noise of distant thunder at flood-tide. It occurs from February to November, at the new and full moon. Its cause has not been clearly defined, although it probably arises from the currents during spring-tides, acting on a peculiar conformation of the banks and bed of the river; it strikes invariably on the same part of the banks, majestically rolling over to one side, and passing on diagonally to the other with impetuous violence. The bore also occurs in England, near Bristol; and in America, in several rivers, but especially in the Bay of Fundy, where at the river Petticodiac the tide rises 76 feet. It also occurs in Borneo and several rivers in the East. (See Hygre.) Also, the interior cavity of a piece of ordnance, generally cylindrical in shape, except when a part of it is modified into a chamber.
BOREAS. A classical name for the north wind, still in use; indeed a brackish proverb for extreme severity of weather says—"Cold and chilly, like Boreas with an iceberg in each pocket."
BORE DOWN. Sailed down from to windward.
BORHAME. A northern term for the flounder.
BORING. In Arctic seas, the operation of forcing the ship through loose ice under a heavy press of sail; at least attempting the chance of advantage of cracks or openings in the pack.
BORN with a Silver Spoon in his Mouth. Said of a person who, by birth or connection, has all the usual obstacles to advancement cleared away for him. Those who toil unceasingly for preferment, and toil in vain, are said to have been born with a wooden ladle. Again, the silver-spoon gentry are said to come on board through the cabin windows; those less favoured, over the bows, or through the hawse-holes.
BORNE. Placed on the books for victuals and wages; also supernumerary and "for rank."
BORROW, To. To approach closely either to land or wind; to hug a shoal or coast in order to avoid adverse tide.
BORT. The name given to a long fishing-line in the Shetland Isles.
BOSS. A head of water, or reservoir. Also the apex of a shield.
BOTARGA. The roe of the mullet pressed flat and dried; that of commerce, however, is from the tunny, a large fish of passage which is common in the Mediterranean. The best kind comes from Tunis; it must be chosen dry and reddish. The usual way of eating it is with olive-oil and lemon-juice.
BOTCH, To. To make bungling work.
BOTE'S-CARLE. An old term for the coxswain of a boat.
BOTHERED. Getting among adverse currents, with shifting winds.
BOTH SHEETS AFT. The situation of a square-rigged ship that sails before the wind, or with the wind right astern. It is said also of a half-drunken sailor rolling along with his hands in his pockets and elbows square.
BOTTE. An old English term for boat, and assuredly the damaged boat into which Prospero is turned adrift by Shakspeare.
BOTTLE-BUMP. The bittern, so called on our east coast.
BOTTLE-CHARTS. Those on which the set of surface currents are exhibited, derived from papers found in bottles which have been thrown overboard for that purpose, and washed up on the beach, or picked up by other ships.
BOTTLE-NOSE, or Bottle-nosed Whale. A name applied to several of the smaller cetaceans of the northern seas, more especially to the Hyperoodon rostratus.
BOTTOM. A name for rich low land formed by alluvial deposits: but in a general sense it denotes the lowest part of a thing, in contradistinction to the top or uppermost part. In navigation, it is used to denote as well the channel of rivers and harbours as the body or hull of a ship. Thus, in the former sense we say "a gravelly bottom, clayey bottom," &c., and in the latter sense "a British bottom, a Dutch bottom," &c. By statute, certain commodities imported in foreign bottoms pay a duty called "petty customs," over and above what they are liable to if imported in British bottoms. Bottom of a ship or boat is that part which is below the wales.
BOTTOM-CLEAN. Thoroughly clean, free from weeds, &c.
BOTTOM-PLANK. That which is placed between the garboard-strake and lower back-strake.
BOTTOMREE, or Bottomry-bond. The contract of bottomry is a negotiable instrument, which may be put in suit by the person to whom it is transferred: it is in use in all countries of maritime commerce and interests. A contract in the nature of a mortgage of a ship, when the owner of it borrows money to enable him to carry on the voyage, and pledge the keel, or bottom of the ship, as a security for the repayment. If the ship be lost the lender also loses his whole money; but if it return in safety then he shall receive back his principal, and also the premium stipulated to be paid, however it may exceed the usual or legal rate of interest. The affair is, however, only regarded as valid upon the ground of necessity; and thus exacting more than the interest allowed by law is not deemed usury.
BOTTOMRY PREMIUM. A high rate of interest charged on the safety of the ship—the lender losing his whole money if she be lost.
BOTTOM-WIND. A phenomenon that occurs on the lakes in the north of England, especially Derwent Water, which is often agitated by swelling waves without any apparent cause.
BOUCHE. See Bush.
BOUGE or Bowge and Chine, or Bilge and Chimb. The end of one cask stowed against the bilge of another. To prepare a ship for the purpose of sinking it.
BOUILLI. Termed by seamen bully-beef; disliked because all the substance is boiled away to enrich the cook's grease-tub, and the meat is useless as food; rejected even by dogs. In one ship of war it produced mutiny; vide Adams' account of the Bounty miseries. It is also the name given to highly cooked meat in hermetically sealed tin canisters.
BOULDER-HEAD. A work against the encroachment of the sea, made of wooden stakes.
BOULDERS. Stones worn and rounded by the attrition of the waves of the sea: the word, on the authority of Hunter, was considered a technical term in the fourteenth century, as appears in a warrant of John of Gaunt for the repair of Pontefract Castle—"De peres, appelés buldres, a n're dit chastel come nous semblerez resonables pur la defense de meisme."
BOULEPONGES. A drink to which many of the deaths of Europeans in India were ascribed; but in Bernier's "Travels," in the train of Aurungzebe, in 1664, we are informed that "bouleponge is a beverage made of arrack, sugar, lemon-juice, and a little muscadine." Probably a corruption of bowls of punch. (See Punch.)
BOUNCE. The larger dog-fish.
BOUNCER. A gun which kicks violently when fired.
BOUND. Destined for a particular service. Intended voyage to a place.—Ice-bound. Totally surrounded with ice.—Tide-bound, or be-neaped. (See Neaped.)—Wind-bound. Prevented from sailing by contrary wind.—Where are you bound to?—i.e. To what place are you going?—Bound on a cruise. A corruption of the old word bowne, which is still in use on the northern coasts, and means to make ready, to prepare.
BOUNTY. A sum of money given by government, authorized by act of parliament or royal proclamation, to men who voluntarily enter into the army or navy; and the widow of such volunteer seaman killed or drowned in the service was entitled to a bounty equal to a year's pay.
BOUNTY-BOATS. Those which fished under the encouragement of a bounty from government.
BOUNTY-LIST. A register of all persons who have received the bounty to which they are entitled after having passed three musters in the service.
BOURN. See Burn.
BOURSE. A place where merchants congregate. An exchange.
BOUSE. See Bowse.
BOUT. A turn, trial, or round. An attack of illness; a convivial meeting.—'Bout ship, the brief order for "about ship."
BOW. The fore-end of a ship or boat; being the rounding part of a vessel forward, beginning on both sides where the planks arch inwards, and terminating where they close, at the rabbet of the stem or prow, being larboard or starboard from that division. A bold bow is broad and round; a lean bow, narrow and thin.—On the bow. An arc of the horizon (not exceeding 45°) comprehended between some distant object and that point of the compass which is right ahead. Four points on either bow is met by four points before the beam.
BOW. An astronomical instrument formerly used at sea, consisting of only one large graduated arc of 90°, three vanes, and a shank or staff. Also the bow of yew, a weapon of our early fleets.
BOW. She bows to the breeze; when the sails belly out full, and the ship inclines and goes ahead, pitching or bowing over the blue waves.
BOW-BYE. The situation of a ship when, in stays, she falls back off the wind again, and gets into irons, which demands practical seamanship for her extrication. This was deemed a lubberly act in our fleets of old.
BOW-CHASERS. Two long chase-guns placed forward in the bow-ports to fire directly ahead, and being of small bore for their length, carry shot to a great distance.
BOWD-EATEN. An old expression for eaten by weevils.
BOWER-ANCHORS. Those at the bows and in constant working use. They are called best and small, not from a difference of size, but as to the bow on which they are placed; starboard being the best bower, and port the small bower. The appropriated cables assume the respective names. (See also Spare Anchor, Sheet, Stream, Coasting, Kedge, &c.)
BOW-FAST. A rope or chain for securing a vessel by the bow. (See Fast.)
BOWGE, or Bouge. An old term for bilge.
BOWGER. A name given in the Hebrides to the coulter-neb, or puffin (Fratercula arctica).
BOWGRACE. A kind of frame or fender of old junk, placed round the bows and sides of a ship to prevent her receiving injury from floating ice or timbers. (See Bon Grace.)
BOWING. An injury done to yards by too much topping, and letting their weights hang by the lifts. The state of a top-sail yard when it arches in the centre from hoisting it too tautly. Also of the mast when it bellies or is crippled by injudiciously setting up the rigging too taut.
BOWING THE SEA. Meeting a turbulent swell in coming to the wind.
BOWLINE. A rope leading forward which is fastened to a space connected by bridles to cringles on the leech or perpendicular edge of the square sails: it is used to keep the weather-edge of the sail tight forward and steady when the ship is close hauled to the wind; and which, indeed, being hauled taut, enables the ship to come nearer to the wind. Hence the ship sails on a bowline, or stands on a taut bowline.—To check or come up a bowline is to slacken it when the wind becomes large or free.—To sharp or set taut a bowline is to pull it as taut as it can well bear.
BOWLINE-BEND. The mode of bending warps or hawsers together by taking a bowline in the end of one rope, and passing the end of the other through the bight, and making a bowline upon it.
BOWLINE-BRIDLE. The span attached to the cringles on the leech of a square sail to which the bowline is toggled or clinched.
BOWLINE-CRINGLE. An eye worked into the leech-rope of a sail; usually in that of a fore-sail two, a main-sail three, and the fore-topsails three, but the main-topsail four. By these the sails are found in the dark, by feeling alone.
BOWLINE HAUL. A hearty and simultaneous bowse. (See One! two!! three!!!) In hauling the bowline it is customary for the leading man to veer, and then haul, three times in succession, singing out one, two, three—at the last the weight of all the men is thrown in together: this is followed by "belay, oh!" When the bowlines are reported "bowlines hauled, sir," by the officer in command of the fore-part of the ship, the hands, or the watch, return to their duties.
BOWLINE-KNOT. That by which the bowline-bridles were fastened to the cringles: the bowline-knot is made by an involution of the end and a bight upon the standing part of a rope. A further involution makes what is termed a bowline on a bight. It is very difficult to explain by words:—holding the rope some distance from the end by the left hand, the end held in the right is laid on the main part, and by a twist given screw-fashion to the right, a loop or kink is formed inclosing this end, which is then passed behind, and back in the same direction with the former, and then jammed home. It is rapidly done, easily undone, and one of the most seamanlike acts, exhibiting grace as well as power. It can be made by a man with but one arm.
BOW-LINES. In ship-building, longitudinal curves representing the ship's fore-body cut in a vertical section.
BOWLING-ALONG. Going with a free wind.
BOW-LOG TIMBERS. A provincial name for hawse-wood.
BOWMAN. In a single-banked boat he who rows the foremost oar and manages the boat-hook; called by the French "brigadier de l'embarcation." In double-banked boats there are always two bowmen. Also an archer, differently pronounced.
BOW-OAR. The foremost oar or oars, in pulling a boat.
BOW-PIECES. The ordnance in the bows; also in building.
BOW-RAIL. A rail round the bows.
BOWSE, To. To pull upon any body with a tackle, or complication of pulleys, in order to remove it, &c. Hauling upon a tack is called "bowsing upon a tack," and when they would have the men pull all together, they cry, "Bowse away." Also used in setting up rigging, as "Bowse away, starboard;" "Bowse away, port." It is, however, mostly a gun-tackle term.—Bowse up the jib, a colloquialism to denote the act of tippling: it is an old phrase, and was probably derived from the Dutch buyzen, to booze.
BOWSPRIT, or Bolt-sprit. A large spar, ranking with a lower-mast, projecting over the stem; beyond it extends the jib-boom, and beyond that again the flying jib-boom. To these spars are secured the stays of the fore-mast and of the spars above it; on these stays are set the fore and fore-topmast staysails, the jib, and flying-jib, which have a most useful influence in counter-balancing the pressure of the after-sails, thereby tending to force the ship ahead instead of merely turning her round. In former times underneath these spars were set a sprit-sail, sprit-topsail, &c.
BOWSPRIT, Running. In cutter-rigged vessels. (See Cutter.)
BOWSPRIT-BITTS. Are strong upright timbers secured to the beams below the deck; they have a cross-piece bolted to them, the inner end of the bowsprit steps between them, and is thus prevented from slipping in. The cross-piece prevents it from canting up.
BOWSPRIT-CAP. The crance or cap on the outer end of the bowsprit, through which the jib-boom traverses.
BOWSPRIT-GEAR. A term denoting the ropes, blocks, &c., belonging to the bowsprit.
BOWSPRIT-HEART. The heart or block of wood used to secure the lower end of the fore-stay, through which the inner end of the jib-boom is inserted. It is seldom, if ever, used now, an iron band round the bowsprit, with an eye on each side for the fore-stays, being preferred.
BOWSPRIT-HORSES. The ridge-ropes which extend from the bowsprit-cap to the knight-heads.
BOWSPRIT-LADDER. Skids over the bowsprit from the beak-head in some ships, to enable men to run out upon the bowsprit.
BOWSPRIT-NETTING. The netting placed just above a vessel's bowsprit, for stowing away the fore-topmast staysail; it is usually lashed between the ridge-ropes.
BOWSPRIT-SHROUDS. Strong ropes or chains leading from nearly the outer end of the bowsprit to the luff of the bow, giving lateral support to that spar.
BOW-STAVES. Early supplied to our men-of-war.
BOW-TIMBERS. Those which form the bow of the ship.
BOX. The space between the back-board and the stern-post of a boat, where the coxswain sits.
BOXES OF THE PUMPS. Each ordinary pump has an upper and lower box, the one a fixture in the lower part of its chamber, the other attached to the end of the spear or piston-rod; in the centre of each box is a valve opening upwards.
BOXHAULING. Is an evolution by which a ship is veered sharp round on her heel, when the object is to avoid making a great sweep. The helm is put a-lee, the head-yards braced flat aback, the after-yards squared, the driver taken in, and the head-sheets hauled to windward; when she begins to gather stern-way the helm is shifted and sails trimmed. It is only resorted to in emergencies, as a seaman never likes to see his ship have stern-way. With much wind and sea this evolution would be dangerous.
BOXING. A square piece of dry hard wood, used in connecting the frame timbers. Also, the projection formerly left at the hawse-pieces, in the wake of the hawse-holes, where the planks do not run through; now disused. The stem is said to be boxed when it is joined to the fore end of the keel by a side scarph. (See Boxing of Rudder.)
BOXING OFF. Is performed by hauling the head-sheets to windward, and laying the head-yards flat aback, to pay the ship's head out of the wind, when the action of the helm alone is not sufficient for that purpose; as when she is got "in irons."
BOX THE COMPASS, To. Not only to repeat the names of the thirty-two points in order and backwards, but also to be able to answer any and all questions respecting its divisions.
BOYART. An old term for a hoy.
BOYAUX. The zig-zags or tortuous trenches in the approach of a besieger.
BOYER. A sloop of Flemish construction, with a raised work at each end.
BRAB. The sheaf of the young leaves of the Palmyra palm (and also of the cocoa-nut), from which sinnet or plait for hats is made.
BRAB-TREE. The Palmyra palm.
BRACE. The braces are ropes belonging to all the yards of a ship; two to each yard, rove through blocks that are stropped to the yards, or fastened to pendants, seized to the yard-arms. Their use is either to square or traverse the yards horizontally; hence, to brace the yard, is to bring it to either side by means of the braces. In ship-building, braces are plates of iron, copper, or mixed metal, which are used to bind efficiently a weakness in a vessel; as also to receive the pintles by which the rudder is hung.
BRACE ABACK. To brace the yards in, so as to lay the sails aback.—To brace about, to turn the yards round for the contrary tack, or in consequence of a change of wind.—To brace abox, a manœuvre to insure casting the right way, by bracing the head-yards flat aback (not square).—To brace by, to brace the yards in contrary directions to each other on the different masts, to effect the stopping of the vessel. (See Counter-brace.)—To brace in, to lay the yard less oblique, as for a free wind, or nearly square.—To brace round, synonymous with brace about.—To brace sharp, to cause the yards to have the smallest possible angle with the keel, for the ship to have head-way: deemed generally to form an angle of 20° with the keel.—To brace to, is to check or ease off the lee braces, and round in the weather ones, to assist in the manœuvre of tacking or wearing.—To brace up, or brace sharp up, to lay the yards more obliquely fore and aft, by easing off the weather-braces and hauling in the lee ones, which enables a ship to lie as close to the wind as possible.
BRACE OF SHAKES. A moment: taken from the flapping of a sail. I will be with you before it shakes thrice.
BRACE PENDANTS. Are lengths of rope, or now more generally chain, into which the yard-arm brace-blocks are spliced. They are used in the merchant service to save rope, to give the blocks more freedom for slewing to their work, but chiefly because when the brace is let go, the falling chain will overhaul it, making it easier to haul in the other brace.
BRACE UP AND HAUL AFT! The order usually given after being hove-to, with fore or main top-sail square or aback, and jib-sheet flowing, i.e. haul aft jib-sheet, brace up the yards which had been squared, for the purpose of heaving to.
BRACK. The Manx or Gaelic name for mackerel.
BRACKETS. Short crooked timbers resembling knees, fixed in the frame of a ship's head to support the gratings; they likewise served to support and ornament the gallery. Also, the two vertical side-pieces of the carriage of any piece of ordnance, which support it by the trunnions. Called also cheeks. Also, triangular supports to miscellaneous things.
BRACKISH. Water not fresh; from the Icelandic breke, the sea.
BRADS. Small nails.
BRAE. A declivity or precipice.
BRAGGIR. The name given in the Western Islands of Scotland to the broad leaves growing on the top of the Alga marina, or sea-grass.
BRAILS. Ropes passing through leading blocks on the hoops of the mizen-mast and gaff, and fastened to the outermost leech of the sail, in different places, to truss it close up as occasion requires; all trysails and several of the staysails also have brails.
BRAIL UP! The order to pull upon the brails, and thereby spill and haul in the sail. The mizen, or spanker, or driver, or any of the gaff-sails, as they may be termed, when brailed up, are deemed furled; unless it blows hard, when they are farther secured by gaskets.
BRAKE. The handle or lever by which a common ship-pump is usually worked. It operates by means of two iron bolts, one thrust through the inner hole of it, which bolted through forms the lever axis in the iron crutch of the pump, and serves as the fulcrum for the brake, supporting it between the cheeks. The other bolt connects the extremity of the brake to the pump-spear, which draws up the spear box or piston, charged with the water in the tube; derived from brachium, an arm or lever. Also, used to check the speed of machinery by frictional force pressing on the circumference of the largest wheel acted on by leverage of the brake.
BRAN, To. To go on; to lie under a floe edge, in foggy weather, in a boat in Arctic seas, to watch the approach of whales.
BRANCH. The diploma of those pilots who have passed at the Trinity House, as competent to navigate vessels in particular places. The word branch is also metaphorically used for river divergents, but its application to affluents is improper. Any branch or ramification, as in estuaries, where they traverse, river-like, miles of territory, in labyrinthine mazes.
BRANCH-PILOT. One approved by the Trinity House, and holding a branch, for a particular navigation.
BRAND. The Anglo-Saxon for a burnished sword. A burned device or character, especially that of the broad arrow on government stores, to deface or erase which is felony.
BRANDED TICKET. A discharge given to an infamous man, on which his character is written, and the reason he is turned out of the service. In the army, deserters are branded with D; also B for bad character. In the navy, a corner of the ticket is cut off.
BRANDLING. A supposed fry of the salmon species, found on the north of England coasts. Also, the angler's dew-worm.
BRANDY-PAWNEE. A cant term for brandy and water in India.
BRANLAIG. The Manx or Gaelic term for a cove or creek on a shore between rocks.
BRANLIE, or Branlin. A northern name for the samlet or par.
BRAN-NEW. Quite new: said of a sail which has never been bent.
BRASH. Small fragments of crushed ice, collected by wind or currents, near the shore; or such that the ship can easily force through.
BRASS. Impudent assurance.
BRASSARTS. Pieces between the elbow and the top of the shoulder in ancient armour.
BRASSER. A defensive bit of armour for the arm.
BRAT. A northern name for a turbot.
BRAVE. This word was not only used to express courage by our early seamen, but was also applied to strength; as, "we had a brave wind."
BRAWET. A kind of eel in the north.
BRAY, To. To beat and bruise in a mortar.
BREACH. Formerly, what is made by the breaking in of the sea, now applied also to the openings or gaps made in the works of fortified places battered by an enemy's cannon. Also, an old term for a heavy surf or broken water on a sea-coast; by some called brist.
BREACHING. The act of leaping out of the water; applied to whales.
BREACH OF THE SEA. Waves breaking over the hull of a vessel in bad weather, or when stranded.—A clear breach implies the waves rolling clean over without breaking. Shakspeare in "Twelfth Night" uses the term for the breaking of the waves.—Clean-breach, when masts and every object on deck is swept away.
BREACHY. Brackish, as applied to water, probably originating in the sea breaking in.
BREAD. The usual name given to biscuit.
BREAD-BARGE. The tray in which biscuit is handed round.
BREAD-FRUIT (Artocarpus incisa). This most useful tree has a wide range of growth, but the seedless variety produced in Tahiti and some of the South Sea Islands is superior to others; it has an historical interest from its connection with the voyage of the Bounty in 1787.
BREAD-ROOM. The lowest and aftermost part of the orlop deck, where the biscuit is kept, separated by a bulk-head from the rest; but any place parted off from below deck for containing the bread is so designated.
BREAD-ROOM JACK. The purser's steward's help.
BREADTH. The measure of a vessel from side to side in any particular place athwart-ships. (See Straight of Breadth, Height of Breadth, Top-timber Breadth, &c.)—Breadth of beam, extreme breadth of a ship.
BREADTH EXTREME. See Extreme Breadth or Beam.
BREADTH LINE. A curved line of the ship lengthwise, intersecting the timbers at their greatest extent from the middle line of the ship.
BREADTH-MOULDED. See Moulded Breadth.
BREADTH-RIDERS. Timbers placed nearly in the broadest part of the ship, and diagonally, so as to strengthen two or more timbers.
BREAK, To. To deprive of commission, warrant, or rating, by court-martial.
BREAK. The sudden rise of a deck when not flush; when the aft, and sometimes the fore part, of a vessel's deck is kept up to give more height below, and at the drifts.—Break of the poop, where it ends at the foremost part.
BREAKAGE. The leaving of empty spaces in stowing the hold. In marine insurance, the term alludes to damage occurring to goods.
BREAK-BEAMS. Beams introduced at the break of a deck, or any sudden termination of planking.
BREAK-BULK. To open the hold, to begin unloading and disposing of the goods therein, under legal provisions.
BREAKERS. Small barrels for containing water or other liquids; they are also used in watering the ship as gang-casks. (See Bareka.) Also, those billows which break violently over reefs, rocks, or shallows, lying immediately at, or under, the surface of the sea. They are distinguished both by their appearance and sound, as they cover that part of the sea with a perpetual foam, and produce loud roaring, very different from what the waves usually have over a deeper bottom. Also, a name given to those rocks which occasion the waves to break over them.—Breakers ahead! the common pass-word to warn the officer of broken water in the direction of the course. (See also Ship-breaker.)
BREAK-GROUND. Beginning to weigh, or to lift the anchor from the bottom. On shore it means to begin the works for besieging a place, or opening the trenches.
BREAKING. Breaking out stores or cargo in the hold. The act of extricating casks or other objects from the hold-stowage.
BREAKING LIBERTY. Not returning at the appointed time.
BREAKING OF A GALE. Indications of a return of fine weather; short gusts at intervals; moaning or whistling of the wind through the rigging.
BREAKING-PLATE DISTANCE. The point within which iron-plated ships, under concentrated fire, may be damaged.
BREAKING THE EY. See Eyght.
BREAKING-UP OF THE MONSOON. A nautical term for the violent storms that attend the shifting of periodical winds.
BREAK-OFF. (See Broken-off). "She breaks off from her course," applied only when the wind will not allow of keeping the course; applies only to "close-hauled" or "on a wind."—Break-off! an order to quit one department of duty, to clap on to another.
BREAK-SHEER, To. When a ship at anchor is laid in a proper position to keep clear of her anchor, but is forced by the wind or current out of that position, she is said to break her sheer. Also, for a vessel to break her sheer, or her back, means destroying the gradual sweep lengthways.
BREAK-UP, To. To take a ship to pieces when she becomes old and unserviceable.
BREAK-WATER. Any erection or object so placed as to prevent the sea from rolling inwards. Where there is no mole or jetty the hull of an old ship may be sunk at the entrance of a small harbour, to break off or diminish the force of the waves as they advance towards the vessels moored within. Every bar to a river or harbour, intended to secure smooth water within, acts as a break-water.
BREAM. A common fresh as well as salt water fish (Abramis brama), little esteemed as food.
BREAMING. Cleaning a ship's bottom by burning off the grass, ooze, shells, or sea-weed, which it has contracted by lying long in harbour; it is performed by holding kindled furze, faggots, or reeds to the bottom, which, by melting the pitch that formerly covered it, loosens whatever filth may have adhered to the planks; the bottom is then covered anew with a composition of sulphur, tallow, &c., which not only makes it smooth and slippery, so as to divide the fluid more readily, but also poisons and destroys those worms which eat through the planks in the course of a voyage. This operation may be performed either by laying the ship aground after the tide has ebbed from her or by docking or careening.
BREAST, To. To run abeam of a cape or object. To cut through a sea, the surface of which is poetically termed breast.—To breast the sea, to meet it by the bow on a wind.—To breast the surf, to brave it, and overcome it swimming.—To breast a bar, to heave at the capstan.—To breast to, the act of giving a sheer to a boat.
BREAST-BACKSTAYS. They extend from the head of an upper-mast, through an out-rigger, down to the channels before the standing backstays, for supporting the upper spars from to windward. When to leeward, they are borne abaft the top-rim. (See Backstays.)
BREAST-BEAMS. Those beams at the fore-part of the quarter-deck, and the after-part of the forecastle, in those vessels which have a poop and a top-gallant forecastle.
BREAST-FAST. A large rope or chain, used to confine a ship's broadside to a wharf or quay, or to some other ship, as the head-fast confines her forward, and the stern-fast abaft.
BREAST-GASKETS. An old term for bunt-gaskets.
BREAST-HOOKS. Thick pieces of timber, incurvated into the form of knees, and used to strengthen the fore-part of a ship, where they are placed at different heights, directly across the stem internally, so as to unite it with the bows on each side, and form the principal security, supporting the hawse-pieces and strain of the cables. The breast-hooks are strongly connected to the stem and hawse-pieces by tree-nails, and by bolts driven from without through all, and forelocked or clinched upon rings inside.
BREAST-RAIL. The upper rail of the balcony; formerly it was applied to a railing in front of the quarter-deck, and at the after-part of the forecastle-deck. Also, fife-rail.
BREAST-ROPE. The lashing or laniard of the yard-parrels. (See also Horse.) Also, the bight of a mat-worked band fastened between the shrouds for the safety of the lad's-man in the chains, when sounding, so that he may hang over the water, and let the lead swing clear.
BREAST-WORK. A sort of balustrade of rails, mouldings, or stanchions, which terminates the quarter-deck and poop at the fore ends, and also incloses the forecastles both before and behind. (See Parapet.) Now applicable to the poop-rails only. In fortification, it signifies a parapet thrown up as high as the breasts of the men defending it.
BREATHER. A tropical squall.
BREATH OF WIND. All but a dead calm.
BREECHING. A strong rope passing through at the cascable of a gun, used to secure it to the ship's side, and prevent it recoiling too much in time of battle, also to secure it when the ship labours; it is fixed by reeving it through a thimble stropped upon the cascable or knob at the breech of the gun; one end is rove and clinched, and the other is passed through the ring-bolt in the ship's side, and seized back. The breeching is of sufficient length to let the muzzle of the cannon come within the ship's side to be charged, or to be housed and lashed. Clinch-shackles have superseded the ring-bolts, so that guns may be instantly unshackled and shifted.
BREECHING-BOLT. Applies to the above.
BREECH-LOADER. A gun, large or small, charged at the breech. The method is a very old one revived, but with such scientific modifications as to have enormously increased the effectiveness of small-arms; with cannon its successful practical application to the larger natures has not yet been arrived at, but with field-guns it has added largely to accuracy of practice and facility of loading.
BREECH OF A CANNON. The after-end, next the vent or touch-hole. It is the most massive part of a gun; strictly speaking, it is all the solid metal behind the bottom of the bore. Also, the outside angle formed by the knee-timber, the inside of which is the throat.
BREECH-SIGHT. The notch cut on the base ring of a gun.
BREEZE. This word is widely understood as a pleasant zephyr; but among seamen it is usually applied as synonymous with wind in general, whether weak or strong.
BREEZE, Sea or Land. A shifting wind blowing from sea and land alternately at certain hours, and sensibly only near the coasts; they are occasioned by the action of the sun raising the temperature of the land so as to draw an aërial current from sea-ward by day, which is returned as the earth cools at night.
BREEZE, To kick up a. To excite disturbance, and promote a quarrelsome row.
BREEZING UP. The gale freshening.
BREEZO. A toast given by the presiding person at a mess-table; derived from brisée générale.
BREVET. A rank in the army higher than the regimental commission held by an officer, affording him a precedence in garrison and brigade duties. Something approaching this has been attempted afloat, under the term "staff."
BREWING. The appearance of a collection of black and tempestuous clouds, rising gradually from a particular part of the hemisphere, as the forerunner of a storm.
BRICKLAYER'S CLERK. A contemptuous expression for lubberly pretenders to having seen "better days," but who were forced to betake themselves to sea-life.
BRIDGE. A narrow gangway between two hatchways, sometimes termed a bridge. Military bridges to afford a passage across a river for troops, are constructed with boats, pontoons, casks, trusses, trestles, &c. Bridge in steam-vessels is the connection between the paddle-boxes, from which the officer in charge directs the motion of the vessel. Also, the middle part of the fire-bars in a marine boiler, on either side of which the fires are banked. Also, a narrow ridge of rock, sand, or shingle, across the bottom of a channel, so as to occasion a shoal over which the tide ripples. That between Mount Edgecombe and St. Nicholas' Isle, at Plymouth, has occasioned much loss of life.
BRIDGE-ISLET. A portion of land which becomes insular at high-water—as Old Woman's Isle at Bombay, and among others, the celebrated Lindisfarne, thus tidally sung by Scott:—
"The tide did now his flood-mark gain,
And girdled in the saint's domain:
For, with the flow and ebb, its style
Varies from continent to isle;
Dry-shod, o'er sands, twice ev'ry day
The pilgrims to the shrine find way;
Twice every day the waves efface
Of staves and sandall'd feet the trace."
BRIDGE-TRAIN. An equipment for insuring the passage of troops over a river. Pontooners. (See Pontoon.)
BRIDLE. See Mooring-bridle and Bowline-bridle.
BRIDLE-PORT. A square port in the bows of a ship, for taking in mooring bridles. They are also used for guns removed from the port abaft, and required to fire as near a line ahead as possible. They are main-deck chase-ports.
BRIDLES. The upper part of the moorings laid in the queen's harbours, to ride ships or vessels of war. (See Moorings.)
BRIG. A two-masted square-rigged vessel, without a square main-sail, or a trysail-mast abaft the main-mast. This properly constituted the snow, but both classes are latterly blended, and the terms therefore synonymous.
BRIGADE. A party or body of men detached for a special service. A division of troops under the command of a general officer. In artillery organization on land, a brigade is a force usually composed of more than a battery; in the field it commonly consists of two or three batteries; on paper, and for administrative purposes, of eight.
BRIGADE-MAJOR. A staff officer attached to a brigade, and is the channel through which all orders are received from the general and communicated to the troops.
BRIGADE-ORDERS. Those issued by the general officer commanding troops which are brigaded.
BRIGADIER. An officer commanding a brigade, and somewhat the same as commodore for a squadron of ships.
BRIGANDINE. A pliant scale-like coat of mail.
BRIGANTINE. A square-rigged vessel with two masts. A term variously applied by the mariners of different European nations to a peculiar sort of vessel of their own marine. Amongst British seamen this vessel is distinguished by having her main-sail set nearly in the plane of her keel, whereas the main-sails of larger ships are spread athwart the ship's length, and made fast to a yard which hangs parallel to the deck; but in a brig, the foremost side of the main-sail is fastened at different heights to hoops which encircle the main-mast, and slide up and down it as the sail is hoisted or lowered: it is extended by a gaff above and a boom below. Brigantine is a derivative from brig, first applied to passage-boats; in the Celtic meaning "passage over the water." (See Hermaphrodite or Brig Schooner.)
BRIGANTS. Formerly, natives of the northern parts of England.
BRIGDIE. A northern name for the basking shark (Squalus maximus).
BRIGHT LOOK-OUT. A vigilant one.
BRIG-SCHOONER. (See Hermaphrodite and Brigantine, by which, term she is at present classed in law.) Square-rigged on the fore-mast, schooner on the main-mast.
BRILL. The Pleuronectes rhombus, a common fish, allied to, but rather smaller than, the turbot.
BRIM. The margin or bank of a stream, lake, or river.
BRIMSTONE. See Sulphur.
BRINE, or Pickle. Water replete with saline particles, as brine-pickle for salt meat. The briny wave.
BRINE-GAUGE. See Salinometer.
BRINE-PUMPS. When inconvenient to blow off the brine which collects at the bottom of a steamer's boilers, the brine-pump is used for clearing away the deposit.
BRING BY THE LEE, To. To incline so rapidly to leeward of the course when the ship sails large, or nearly before the wind, as in scudding before a gale, that the lee-side is unexpectedly brought to windward, and by laying the sails all aback, exposes her to the danger of over-setting. (See Broach-to.)
BRING 'EM NEAR. The day-and-night telescope.
BRINGERS UP. The last men in a boarding or small-arm party. Among soldiers, it means the whole last rank of a battalion drawn up, being the hindmost men of every file.
BRING HOME THE ANCHOR, To, is to weigh it. It applies also when the flukes slip or will not hold; a ship then brings home her anchor.—Bring home the log. When the pin slips out of the log ship and it slides through the water.
BRINGING IN. The detention of a vessel on the high seas, and bringing her into port for adjudication.
BRINGING-TO THE YARD. Hoisting up a sail, and bending it to its yard.
BRING-TO, To. To bend, as to bring-to a sail to the yard. Also, to check the course of a ship by trimming the sails so that they shall counteract each other, and keep her nearly stationary, when she is said to lie by, or lie-to, or heave-to.—Bring to! The order from one ship to another to put herself in that situation in order to her being boarded, spoken to, or examined. Firing a blank gun across the bows of a ship is the forcible signal to shorten sail and bring-to until further pleasure.—Bring-to is also used in applying a rope to the capstan, as "bring-to the messenger."
BRING-TO AN ANCHOR, To. To let go the anchor in the intended port. "All hands bring ship to an anchor!" The order by which the people are summoned for that duty, by the pipes of the boatswain and his mates.
BRING UP, To. To cast anchor.
BRING UP WITH A ROUND TURN. Suddenly arresting a running rope by taking a round turn round a bollard, bitt-head, or cleat. Said of doing a thing effectually though abruptly. It is used to bring one up to his senses by a severe rating.
BRISAS. A north-east wind which blows on the coast of South America during the trades.
BRISMAK. A name among the Shetlanders for the excellent fish called tusk or torsk, the best of the cod kind (Brosmius vulgaris).
BRISTOL FASHION AND SHIP-SHAPE. Said when Bristol was in its palmy commercial days, unannoyed by Liverpool, and its shipping was all in proper good order.
BRITISH-BUILT SHIP. Such as has been built in Great Britain or Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man, or some of the colonies, plantations, islands, or territories in Asia, Africa, or America, which, at the time of building the ship, belonged to or were in possession of Her Majesty; or any ship whatsoever which has been, taken and condemned as lawful prize.
BRITISH SEAS. See Quatuor Maria.
BRITISH SHIP. May be foreign built, or rebuilt on a foreign keel which belonged to any of the people of Great Britain and Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey, or the Isle of Man, or of any colony, island, or territory in Asia, Africa, or America, or was registered before the 1st of May, 1786.
BRITISH SUBJECT. Settled in an enemy's country, may not trade in any contraband goods.
BRITTLE-STAR. The common name of a long-rayed star-fish (Ophiocoma rosula).
BROACH A BUSINESS, To. To begin it.
BROACH-TO, To. To fly up into the wind. It generally happens when a ship is carrying a press of canvas with the wind on the quarter, and a good deal of after-sail set. The masts are endangered by the course being so altered, as to bring it more in opposition to, and thereby increasing the pressure of the wind. In extreme cases the sails are caught flat aback, when the masts would be likely to give way, or the ship might go down stern foremost.
BROAD ARROW. The royal mark for government stores of every description. To obliterate, deface, or remove this mark is felony; or even to be in possession of any goods so marked without sufficient grounds. It is no doubt one of the Ditmarsh runes.
BROAD AXE. Formerly a warlike instrument; also for beheading; specially applied to the axe of carpenters for mast-making, and sometimes cutting away the masts or cable.
BROAD CLOTH. Square sails.
BROAD OF WATER. An extensive lake with a channel communicating with the sea, or a wide opening of a river after passing a narrow entrance.
BROAD PENNANT. A swallow-tailed piece of buntin at the mast-head of a man-of-war; the distinctive mark of a commodore. The term is frequently used for the officer himself. It tapers, in contradistinction to a cornet, which has only the triangle cut out of it.
BROAD R. See Broad Arrow.
BROADS. Fresh-water lakes, in contradistinction to rivers or narrow waters.
BROADSIDE. The whole array, or the simultaneous discharge of the artillery on one side of a ship of war above and below. It also implies the whole of that side of a ship above the water which is situate between the bow and quarter, and is in a position nearly perpendicular to the horizon. Also, a name given to the old folio sheets whereon ballads and proclamations were printed of old (broad-sheet).
BROADSIDE-ON. The whole side of a vessel; the opposite of end-on.
BROADSIDE WEIGHT OF METAL. The weight of iron which the guns of a ship can project, when single-shotted, from one side. (See Weight of Metal.)
BROADSWORD. See Cutlas.
BROCAGE. The same with brokerage (which see).
BROCLES. See Strake-nails.
BRODIE. The fry of the rock-tangle, or Hettle-codling, a fish caught on the Hettle Bank, in the Firth of Forth.
BROGGING. A north-country method of catching eels, by means of small sticks called brogs.
BROGUES. Among seamen, coarse sandals made of green hide; but Shakspeare makes Arviragus put "his clouted brogues from off his feet," for "answering his steps too loud." This would rather refer to shoes strengthened with hob-nails.
BROKE. Sentence of a court-martial, depriving an officer of his commission.
BROKEN. An old army word, used for reduced; as, a broken lieutenant, &c. The word is also applied to troops in line when not dressed. The heart of a gale is said to be broken; parole is broken; also, leave, bulk, &c. (which see).
BROKEN-BACKED. The state of a ship so loosened in her frame, either by age, weakness, or some great strain from grounding amidships, as to droop at each end, causing the lines of her sheer to be interrupted, and termed hogged. It may result from fault of construction, in the midship portions having more buoyancy, and the extreme ends too much weight, as anchors, boats, guns, &c., to sustain.
BROKEN-OFF. Fallen off, in azimuth, from the course. Also, men taken from one duty to be put on another.
BROKEN SQUALL. When the clouds separate in divisions, passing ahead and astern of a ship, and affecting her but little, if at all.
BROKEN WATER. The contention of currents in a narrow channel. Also, the waves breaking on and near shallows, occasionally the result of vast shoals of fish, as porpoise, skip-jacks, &c., which worry untutored seamen.
BROKER. Originally a broken tradesman, from the Anglo-Saxon broc, a misfortune; but, in later times, a person who usually transacts the business of negotiating between the merchants and ship-owners respecting cargoes and clearances: he also effects insurances with the underwriters; and while on the one hand he is looked to as to the regularity of the contract, on the other he is expected to make a candid disclosure of all the circumstances which may affect the risk.
BROKET. A small brook; the sea-lark is so called at the Farne Islands.
BROKE-UP. Said of a gale of wind passing away; or a ship which has gone to pieces on a reef, &c.
BROND. An old spelling of brand, a sword.
BRONGIE. A name given to the cormorant in the Shetland Islands.
BROOD. Oysters of about two years old, which are dredged up at sea, for placing on the oyster-beds.
BROOD-HEN STAR. The cluster of the Pleiades.
BROOK, or Brooklet. Streams of fresh or salt water, less than a rivulet, creeping through narrow and shallow passages. The clouds brook-up, when they draw together and threaten rain.
BROOM. A besom at the mast-head signifies that the ship is to be sold: derived probably from the old practice of displaying boughs at shops and taverns. Also, a sort of spartium, of which ropes are made.
BROOMING. See Breaming.
BROTHER-OFFICERS. Those of the same ship or regiment.
BROTH OF A BOY. An excellent, though roystering fellow.
BROUGHT BY THE LEE. See Bring by the Lee.
BROUGHT-TO. A chase made to stop, and heave-to. Also, the cable is brought-to when fastened to the messenger by nippers. The messenger is brought to the capstan, or the cable to the windlass.
BROUGHT TO HIS BEARINGS. Reduced to obedience.
BROUGHT TO THE GANGWAY. Punished.
BROW. An inclined plane of planks, on one or both sides of a ship, to communicate internally; a stage-gangway for the accommodation of the shipwrights, in conveying plank, timber, and weighty articles on board. Also, the face of a rising ground. An old term for a gang-board.
BROWN BESS. A nickname for the old government regulation bronzed musket, although till recently it was brightly burnished.
BROWN BILL. The old weapon of the English infantry: hence, perhaps the expression "Brown Bess" for a musket.
BROWN GEORGE. A hard and coarse biscuit.
BROWNIE. The Polar bear, so called by the whalers. It is also a northern term for goblin.
BROWN JANET. A cant phrase for a knapsack.
BROWN-PAPER WARRANT. See Warrant.
BROWSE. A light kind of dunnage.
BRUISE-WATER. A ship with very bluff bows, built more for carrying than sailing.
BRUISING WATER. Pitching heavily to a head-sea, and making but little head-way.
BRUN-SWYNE. An early name for a seal.
BRUSH. A move; a skirmish.
BRYDPORT. An old word signifying cable. The best hemp grew at Bridport, in Dorsetshire; and there was a statute, that the cables and hawsers for the Royal Navy were to be made thereabouts.
BUB. A liquor or drink. Bub and grub meaning inversely meat and drink.
BUBBLE. Another term for spirit-level, used for astronomical instruments.
BUBBLER. A fish found in the waters of the Ohio, thus named from the bubbling noise it makes.
BUCCANEER. A name given to certain piratical rovers, of various European nations, who formerly infested the coasts of Spanish America. They were originally inoffensive settlers in Hispaniola, but were inhumanly driven from their habitations by the jealous policy of the Spaniards; whence originated their implacable hatred to that nation. Also, a large musketoon, about 8 feet in length, so called from having been used by those marauders.
BUCENTAUR. A large and splendid galley of the doge of Venice, in which he received the great lords and persons of quality who went there, accompanied by the ambassadors and councillors of state, and all the senators seated on benches by him. The same vessel served also in the magnificent ceremony on Ascension-day, when the doge threw a ring into the sea to espouse it, and to denote his dominion over the Gulf of Venice.
BUCHAN BOILERS. The heavy breaking billows among the rocks on the coast of Buchan.
BUCHT. A Shetland term for lines of 55 fathoms.
BUCK, To. To wash a sail.
BUCKALL. An earthen wine-cup used in the sea-ports of Portugal, Spain, and Italy. [From bocale, It.]
BUCKER. A name for the grampus in the Hebrides. It is also applied, on some of our northern coasts, to the porpoise.
BUCKET. A small globe of hoops, covered with canvas, used as a recall for the boats of whalers.
BUCKET-ROPE. That which is tied to a bucket for drawing water up from alongside.
BUCKETS. Are made either of canvas, of leather, or of wood; the latter are used principally for washing the decks, and therefore answer the purposes of pails.
BUCKET-VALVE. In a steamer's engine, is a flat metal plate filling up the passage between the air-pump and the condenser, and acted upon by both in admitting or repressing the passage of water.
BUCKHORN. Whitings, haddocks, thorn-backs, gurnet, and other fish, cleaned, gently salted, and dried in the sun.
BUCKIE. A northern name for the whelk.
BUCKIE-INGRAM. A name for the hermit-crab.
BUCKIE-PRINS. A northern designation for a periwinkle.
BUCKLE. A mast buckles when it suffers by compression, so that the fibre takes a sinuous form, and the grain is upset. Also, in Polar regions, the bending or arching of the ice upwards, preceding a nip.
BUCKLERS. Two blocks of wood fitted together to stop the hawse-holes, leaving only sufficient space between them for the cable to pass, and thereby preventing the ship taking in much water in a heavy head-sea. They are either riding or blind bucklers (which see).
BUCKRA. A term for white man, used by the blacks in the West Indies, Southern States of America, and the African coast.
BUCK-WEEL. A bow-net for fish.
BUDE. An old name for the biscuit-weevil.
BUDGE-BARREL. A small cask with copper and wooden hoops, and one head formed by a leather hose or bag, drawing close by a string, for carrying powder in safety from sparks. In heraldry, the common bucket is called a water bouget or budget.
BUDGEROW. A cabined passage-boat of the Ganges and Hooghly.
BUFFET A BILLOW, To. To work against wind and tide.
BUG. An old term for a vessel more remarkable in size than efficiency. Thus, when Drake fell upon Cadiz, his sailors regarded the huge galleys opposed to them as mere "great bugges."
BUGALILO. A large trading-boat of the Gulf of Persia; the buglo of our seamen.
BUGAZEENS. An old commercial term for calicoes.
BUILD. A vessel's form or construction.
BUILD A CHAPEL, To. To turn a ship suddenly by negligent steerage.
BUILDER'S CERTIFICATE. A necessary document in admiralty courts, containing a true account of a ship's denomination, tonnage, trim, where built, and for whom.
BUILDING. The work of constructing ships, as distinguished from naval architecture, which may rather be considered as the art or theory of delineating ships on a plane. The pieces by which this complicated machine is framed, are joined together in various places by scarfing, rabbeting, tenanting, and scoring.
BUILT. A prefix to denote the construction of a vessel, as carvel or clinker-built, bluff-built, frigate-built, sharp-built, &c.; English, French, or American built, &c.
BUILT-BLOCK. Synonymous with made-block (which see). The lower masts of large ships are built or made.
BUILT-UP GUNS. Recently invented guns of great strength, specially adapted to meet the requirements of rifled artillery and of the attack of iron plating. They are usually composed of an inner core or barrel (which may be of coiled and welded iron, but is now generally preferred of tough steel), with a breech-piece, trunnion-piece, and various outer strengthening hoops or coils of wrought iron, shrunk or otherwise forced on; having their parts put together at such predetermined relative tensions, as to support one another under the shock of explosion, and thereby avoiding the faults of solid cast or forged guns, whereof the inner parts are liable to be destroyed before the outer can take their share of the strain. The first practical example of the method was afforded by the Armstrong gun, the "building up" which obtained in ancient days, before the casting of solid guns, having been apparently resorted to as an easy means of producing large masses of metal, without realizing the principle of the mutual support of the various parts.
BUIRAN. A Gaelic word signifying the sea coming in, with a noise as of the roar of a bull.
BULCH, To. To bilge a ship.
BULGE. (See Bilge.) That part of the ship she bears upon when on the ground.
BULGE-WAYS. Otherwise bilge-ways (which see).
BULK. In bulk; things stowed without cases or packages. (See Bulk-head and Laden in Bulk.)
BULKER. A person employed to measure goods, and ascertain the amount of freight with which they are chargeable.
BULK-HEAD, The. Afore, is the partition between the forecastle and gratings in the head, and in which are the chase-ports.
BULK-HEADS. Partitions built up in several parts of a ship, to form and separate the various cabins from each other. Some are particularly strong, as those in the hold, which are mostly built with rabbeted or cyphered plank; others are light, and removable at pleasure. Indeed the word is applied to any division made with boards, to separate one portion of the 'tween decks from another.
BULK OF A SHIP. Implies the whole cargo when stowed in the hold.
BULL. An old male whale. Also, a small keg; also the weak grog made by pouring water into a spirit-cask nearly empty.
BULL-DANCE. At sea it is performed by men only, when without women. It is sometimes called a stag-dance.
BULL-DOG, or Muzzled Bull-dog. The great gun which stands "housed" in the officer's ward-room cabin. General term for main-deck guns.
BULLETIN. Any official account of a public transaction.
BULLET-MOULD. An implement for casting bullets.
BULLETS. Leaden balls with which all kinds of fire-arms are loaded.
BULL-HEAD, or Bull-jub. A name of the fish called miller's thumb (Cottus gobio).
BULLOCK-BLOCKS. Blocks secured under the top-mast trestle-trees, which receive the top-sail ties through them, in order to increase the mechanical power used in hoisting them up.
BULLOCK-SLINGS. Used to hoist in live bullocks.
BULL'S-EYE. A sort of block without a sheave, for a rope to reeve through; it is grooved for stropping. Also, the central mark of a target. Also, a hemispherical piece of ground glass of great thickness, inserted into small openings in the decks, port-lids, and scuttle-hatches, for the admission of light below.
BULL'S-EYE CRINGLE. A piece of wood in the form of a ring, which answers the purpose of an iron thimble; it is seldom used by English seamen, and then only for the fore and main bowline-bridles.
BULL-TROUT. The salmon-trout of the Tweed. A large species of trout taken in the waters of Northumberland.
BULLYRAG, To. To reproach contemptuously, and in a hectoring manner; to bluster, to abuse, and to insult noisily. Shakspeare makes mine host of the Garter dub Falstaff a bully-rook.
BULWARK. The planking or wood-work round a vessel above her deck, and fastened externally to the stanchions and timber-heads. In this form it is a synonym of berthing. Also, the old name for a bastion.
BULWARK-NETTING. An ornamental frame of netting answering the purpose of a bulwark.
BUMBARD. A cask or large vessel for liquids. (See Bombard.) Trinculo, in the "Tempest," thinks an impending storm-cloud "looks like a foul bumbard."
BUM-BOAT. A boat employed to carry provisions, vegetables, and small merchandise for sale to ships, either in port or lying at a distance from the shore; thus serving to communicate with the adjacent town. The name is corrupted from bombard, the vessels in which beer was formerly carried to soldiers on duty.
BUMKIN, Bumpkin, or Boomkin. A short boom or beam of timber projecting from each bow of a ship, where it is fayed down upon the false rail. Its use is to extend the clue or lower corner of the fore-sail to windward, for which purpose there is a large block fixed on its outer end, through which the tack is passed, and when hauled tight down is said to be aboard. The name is also applied to the pieces on each quarter, for the main-brace blocks.
BUMKIN. A small out-rigger over the stern of a boat, usually serving to extend the mizen.
BUMMAREE. A word synonymous with bottomry, in maritime law. It is also a name given to a class of speculating salesmen of fish, not recognized as regular tradesmen.
BUMP, To. To bump a boat, is to pull astern of her in another, and insultingly or inimically give her the stem; a practice in rivers and narrow channels.
BUMP-ASHORE. Running stem-on to a beach or bank. A ship bumps by the action of the waves lifting and dropping her on the bottom when she is aground.
BUMPERS. Logs of wood placed over a ship's side to keep off ice.
BUND. In India, an embankment; whence, Bunda head, and Bunda boat.
BUNDLE-UP! The call to the men below to hurry up on deck.
BUNDLING Things into a Boat. Loading it in a slovenly way.
BUNGLE, To. To perform a duty in a slovenly manner.
BUNGO, or Bonga. A sort of boat used in the Southern States of America, made of the bonga-tree hollowed out.
BUNG-STARTER. A stave shaped like a bat, which, applied to either side of the bung, causes it to start out. Also, a soubriquet for the captain of the hold. Also, a name given to the master's assistant serving his apprenticeship for hold duties.
BUNG-UP and BILGE-FREE. A cask so placed that its bung-stave is uppermost, and it rests entirely on its beds.
BUNK. A sleeping-place in the fore-peak of merchantmen; standing bed-places fixed on the sides between decks.
BUNKER. For stowing coal in steamers. Cellular spaces on each side which deliver the coal to the engine-room.—Wing-bunkers below the decks, cutting off the angular side-spaces of the hold, and hatched over, are usually filled with sand, holy-stones, brooms, junk-blocks, &c., saving stowage.
BUNT of a Sail. The middle part of it, formed designedly into a bag or cavity, that the sail may gather more wind. It is used mostly in top-sails, because courses are generally cut square, or with but small allowance for bunt or compass. "The bunt holds much leeward wind;" that is, it hangs much to leeward. In "handed" or "furled" sails, the bunt is the middle gathering which is tossed up on the centre of the yard.—To bunt a sail is to haul up the middle part of it in furling, and secure it by the bunt-gasket.
BUNTERS. The men on the yard who gather in the bunt when furling sails.
BUNT-FAIR. Before the wind.
BUNT-GASKET. See Gasket.
BUNTING. A name on our southern shores for the shrimp.
BUNTING, or Buntin. A thin woollen stuff, of which the ship's colours, flags, and signals are usually made.
BUNT-JIGGER. A small gun-tackle purchase, of two single blocks, one fitted with two tails, used in large vessels for bowsing up the bunt of a sail when furling: a peculiar combination of two points, fitted to a spar to which it is hooked.
BUNTLINE-CLOTH. The lining sewed up the fore-part of the sail in the direction of the buntline to prevent that rope from chafing the sail.
BUNTLINE-CRINGLE. An eye worked into the bolt-rope of a sail, to receive a buntline. This is only in top-gallant sails, and is seldom used now. In the merchant service all buntlines are generally passed through an eyelet-hole in the sail, and clinched round its own part.
BUNTLINES. Ropes attached to the foot-ropes of top-sails and courses, which, passing over and before the canvas, turn it up forward, and thus disarm the force of the wind; at one-third from each clue, eyelet-holes are worked in the canvas, and by grummets passed through, a toggle is secured on both bights: to this buntline-toggle the buntline attaches by an eye or loop. When the sails are loosed to dry, the bowlines, unbent from the bridles, are attached to these toggles, and haul out the sails by the foot-ropes like table-cloths. The buntline is rove through a block at the mast-head, passes through the buntline span attached to the tye-blocks on the yard to retain them in the bunt, or amidships, down before all, and looped to the toggles aforesaid. By aid of the clue-lines, reef-tackles, and buntlines, a top-sail is taken in or quieted if the sheets carry away, but more especially by the buntlines, as the wind has no hold then to belly the canvas.
BUNTLINE-SPANS. Short pieces of rope with a thimble in one end, the other whipped; the buntlines are rove through these thimbles: they are attached to the tie-blocks to keep the sail in the bunt when hauled up.
BUNTLINE-TOGGLES. See Buntlines and Toggle.
BUNT SLAB-LINES. Reeve through a block on the slings of the yard or under the top, and pass abaft the sail, making fast to its foot. Their object is to lift the foot of a course so as to see underneath it, or to prevent it from chafing. Something of the same kind is used for top-sails, to keep them from rubbing on the stays when flapping in a calm.
BUOY. A sort of close cask, or block of wood, fastened by a rope to the anchor, to show its situation after being cast, that the ship may not come so near it as to entangle her cable about its stock or flukes.—To buoy a cable is to make fast a spar, cask, or the like, to the bight of the cable, in order to prevent its galling or rubbing on the bottom. When a buoy floats on the water it is said to watch. When a vessel slips her cable she attaches a buoy to it in order afterwards to recover it. Thus the blockading squadrons off Brest and in Basque Roads frequently slipped, by signal, and each in beautiful order returned and picked up their cables.—To stream the buoy is to let it fall from the ship's side into the water, which is always done before the anchor is let go, that it may not be fouled by the buoy-rope as it sinks to the bottom.—Buoys of various kinds are also placed upon rocks or sand-banks to direct mariners where to avoid danger.
BUOYANCY. Capacity for floating lightly.—Centre of buoyancy, in naval architecture, the mean centre of that part of the vessel which is immersed in the water. (See Centre of Cavity.)
BUOYANT. The property of floating lightly on the water.
BUOY-ROPE. The rope which attaches the buoy to the anchor, which should always be of sufficient strength to lift the anchor should the cable part; it should also be little more in length than equal to the depth of the water (at high-water) where the anchor lies.—To bend the buoy-rope, pass the running eye over one fluke, take a hitch over the other arm, and seize. Or, take a clove-hitch over the crown on each arm or fluke, stopping the end to its own part, or to the shank.
BUOY-ROPE KNOT. Used where the end is lashed to the shank. A knot made by unlaying the strands of a cable-laid rope, and also the small strand of each large strand; and after single and double walling them, as for a stopper-knot, worm the divisions, and round the rope.
BURBOT. A fresh-water fish (Molva lota) in esteem with fishermen.
BURDEN. Is the quantity of contents or number of tons weight of goods or munitions which a ship will carry, when loaded to a proper sea-trim: and this is ascertained by certain fixed rules of measurement. The precise burden or burthen is about twice the tonnage, but then a vessel would be deemed deeply laden.
BURG [the Anglo-Saxon burh]. A word connected with fortification in German, as in almost all the Teutonic languages of Europe. In Arabic the same term, with the alteration of a letter, burj, signifies primarily a bastion, and by extension any fortified place on a rising ground. This meaning has been retained by all northern nations who have borrowed the word; and we, with the rest, name our towns, once fortified, burghs or boroughs.
BURGALL. A fish of the American coasts, from 6 to 12 inches long: it is also called the blue-perch, the chogset, and the nibbler—the last from its habit of nibbling off the bait thrown for other fishes.
BURGEE. A swallow-tailed or tapered broad pendant; in the merchant service it generally has the ship's name on it.
BURGOMASTER. In the Arctic Sea, a large species of gull (Larus glaucus).
BURGONET. A steel head-piece, or kind of helmet. Shakspeare makes Cleopatra, alluding to Antony, exclaim—
"The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
And burgonet of men."
In the second part of "Henry VI." Clifford threatens Warwick—
"And from thy burgonet I'll rend thy bear,
And tread it underfoot with all contempt."
BURGOO. A seafaring dish made of boiled oatmeal seasoned with salt, butter, and sugar. (See Loblolly and Skilly.)
BURLEY. The butt-end of a lance.
BURLEY-TWINE. A strong and coarse twine or small string.
BURN, or Bourne. The Anglo-Saxon term for a small stream or brook, originating from springs, and winding through meadows, thus differing from a beck. Shakspeare makes Edgar say in "King Lear"—
"Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me."
The word also signifies a boundary.
BURNETTIZE, To. To impregnate canvas, timber, or cordage with Sir William Burnett's fluid, a solution of chloride of zinc.
BURN THE WATER. A phrase denoting the act of killing salmon in the night, with a lister and lighted torch in the boat.
BURN-TROUT. A northern term for a small species of river-trout.
BURR. The iris or hazy circle which appears round the moon before rain. Also, a Manx or Gaelic term for the wind blowing across on the tide. Also, the sound made by the Newcastle men in pronouncing the letter R.
BURREL. A langrage shot, consisting of bits of iron, bullets, nails, and other matters, got together in haste for a sudden emergency.
BURROCK. A small weir over a river, where weals are laid for taking fish.
BURR-PUMP. A name of the bilge-pump.
BURSER. See Purser.
BURST. The explosion of a shell or any gun.
BURTHEN. See Burden.
BURTON. A small tackle rove in a particular manner; it is formed by two blocks or pulleys, with a hook-block in the bight of the running part; it is generally used to set up or tighten the shrouds, whence it is frequently termed a top-burton tackle; but it is equally useful to move or draw along any weighty body in the hold or on the deck, as anchors, bales of goods, large casks, &c. (See Spanish-burton.) The burton purchase, also runner-purchase (which see).
BUSH, or Bouche. A circular shouldered piece of metal, usually of brass, let into the lignum vitæ sheaves of such blocks as have iron pins, thereby preventing the sheave from wearing, without adding much to its weight. The operation of placing it in the wood is called bushing or coaking, though the last name is usually given to smaller bushes of a square shape. Brass bushes are also extensively applied in the marine steam-engine work. Also, in artillery, the plug (generally of copper, on account of the superior resistance of that metal to the flame of exploded gunpowder), having a diameter of about an inch, and a length equal to the intended length of the vent, screwed into the metal of the gun at the place of the vent, which is then drilled in it. Guns may be re-bushed when the vent has worn too large, by the substitution of a new bush.
BUSH. The forests in the West Indies, Australia, &c.
BUSHED. Cased with harder metal, as that inserted into the holes of some rudder braces or sheaves in general, to prevent their wearing.
BUSHED-BLOCK. See Coak.
BUSKING. Piratical cruising; also, used generally, for beating to windward along a coast, or cruising off and on.
BUSS. A small strong-built Dutch vessel with two masts, used in the herring and mackerel fisheries, being generally of 50 to 70 tons burden.
BUST-HEAD. See Head.
BUSY as the Devil in a gale of wind. Fidgety restlessness, or double diligence in a bad cause; the imp being supposed to be mischievous in hard gales.
BUT. A northern name for a flounder or plaice. Also, a conical basket for catching fish.
BUTCHER'S BILL. A nickname for the official return of killed and wounded which follows an action.
BUTESCARLI. The early name for the sea-officers in the British Navy (see Equipment).
BUTT. The joining of two timbers or planks endways. Also, the opening between the ends of two planks when worked. Also, the extremities of the planks themselves when they are united, or abut against each other. The word likewise is used to denote the largest end of all timber. Planks under water as they rise are joined one end to another. In large ships butt-ends are most carefully bolted, for if any one of them should spring, or give way, the leak would be very dangerous and difficult to stop.—To start or spring a butt is to loosen the end of a plank by the ship's weakness or labouring.—Butt-heads are the same with butt-ends.—Butt is also a mark for shooting at, and the hind part of a musket or pistol. Also, a wine-measure of 126 gallons.
BUTT-AND-BUTT. A term denoting that the butt ends of two planks come together, but do not overlay each other. (See Hook and Butt and Hook-scarph.)
BUTT-END. The shoulder part of a fire-lock.
BUTTER-BOX. A name given to the brig-traders of lumpy form, from London, Bristol, and other English ports. A cant term for a Dutchman.
BUTTER-BUMP. A name of the bittern in the north.
BUTTER-FINGERED. Having a careless habit of allowing things to drop through the fingers.
BUTTLE. An eastern-county name for the bittern.
BUTTOCK. The breadth of the ship astern from the tuck upwards: it is terminated by the counter above, by the bilge below, by the stern-post in the middle, and by the quarter on the side. That part abaft the after body, which is bounded by the fashion pieces, and by the wing transom, and the upper or second water-line. A ship is said to have a broad, or narrow, buttock according to her transom convexity under the stern.
BUTTOCK-LINES. In ship-building, the longitudinal curves at the rounding part of the after body in a vertical section.
BUTTON. The knob of metal which terminates the breech end of most guns, and which affords a convenient bearing for the application of handspikes, breechings, &c.
BUTTONS, To make. A common time-honoured, but strange expression, for sudden apprehension or misgiving.
BUTTRESS. In fortification. (See Counterforts.)
BUTT-SHAFT, or Butt-bolt. An arrow without a barb, used for shooting at a butt.
BUTT-SLINGING A BOWSPRIT. See Slings.
BUXSISH. A gratuity, in oriental trading.
BUZZING. Sometimes used for booming (which see).
BY. On or close to the wind.—Full and by, not to lift or shiver the sails; rap-full.
BY AND LARGE. To the wind and off it; within six points.
BYKAT. A northern term for a male salmon of a certain age, because of the beak which then grows on its under-jaw.
BYLLIS. An old spelling for bill (which see).
BYRNIE. Early English for body-armour.
BYRTH. The old expression for tonnage. (See Burden or Burthen.)
BYSSA. An ancient gun for discharging stones at the enemy.
BYSSUS. The silken filaments of any of the bivalved molluscs which adhere to rocks, as the Pinna, Mytilus, &c. The silken byssus of the great pinna, or wing-shell, is woven into dresses. In the Chama gigas it will sustain 1000 lbs. Also, the woolly substance found in damp parts of a ship.
BY THE BOARD. Over the ship's side. When a mast is carried away near the deck it is said to go by the board.
BY THE HEAD. When a ship is deeper forward than abaft.
BY THE LEE. The situation of a vessel going free, when she has fallen off so much as to bring the wind round her stern, and to take her sails aback on the other side.
BY THE STERN. When the ship draws more water abaft than forward. (See By the Head.)
BY THE WIND. Is when a ship sails as nearly to the direction of the wind as possible. (See Full and By.) In general terms, within six points; or the axis of the ship is 671⁄2 degrees from the direction of the wind.
BY-WASH. The outlet of water from a dam or discharge channel.
C.
CAAG. See Kaag.
CABANE. A flat-bottomed passage-boat of the Loire.
CABBAGE. Those principally useful to the seaman are the esculent cabbage-tree (Areca oleracea), which attains to a great height in the W. Indies. The sheaths of the leaves are very close, and form the green top of the trunk a foot and a half in length; this is cut off, and its white heart eaten. Also, the Crambe maritima, sea-kail, or marine cabbage, growing in the west of England.
CABIN. A room or compartment partitioned off in a ship, where the officers and passengers reside. In a man-of-war, the principal cabin, in which the captain or admiral lives, is the upper after-part of the vessel.
CABIN-BOY. A boy whose duty is to attend and serve the officers and passengers in the cabin.
CABIN-LECTURE. See Jobation.
CABIN-MATE. A companion, when two occupy a cabin furnished with two bed-places.
CABLE. A thick, strong rope or chain which serves to keep a ship at anchor; the rope is cable-laid, 10 inches in circumference and upwards (those below this size being hawsers), commonly of hemp or coir, which latter is still used by the Calcutta pilot-brigs on account of its lightness and elasticity. But cables have recently, and all but exclusively, been superseded by iron chain.—A shot of cable, two cables spliced together.
CABLE, To Coil a. To lay it in fakes and tiers one over the other.—To lay a cable. (See Laying.)—To pay cheap the cable, to hand it out apace; to throw it over.—To pay out more cable, to let more out of the ship.—To serve or plait the cable, to bind it about with ropes, canvas, &c.; to keep it from galling in the hawse-pipe. (See Rounding, Keckling, &c.)—To splice a cable, to make two pieces fast together, by working the several yarns of the rope into each other; with chain it is done by means of shackles.—To veer more cable, to let more out.
CABLE-BENDS. Two small ropes for lashing the end of a hempen cable to its own part, in order to secure the clinch by which it is fastened to the anchor-ring.
CABLE-BITTED. So bitted as to enable the cable to be nipped or rendered with ease.
CABLE-BITTS. See Bitts.
CABLE-BUOYS. Peculiar casks employed to buoy up rope cables in a rocky anchorage, to prevent their rubbing against the rocks; they are also attached to the end of a cable when it is slipped, with the object of finding it again.
CABLE-ENOUGH. The call when cable enough is veered to permit of the anchor being brought to the cat-head.
CABLE-HANGER. A term applied to any person catching oysters in the river Medway, not free of the fishery, and who is liable to such penalty as the mayor and citizens of Rochester shall impose upon him.
CABLE-LAID ROPE. Is a rope of which each strand is a hawser-laid rope. Hawser-laid ropes are simple three-strand ropes, and range up to the same size as cablets, as from 3⁄4 to 9 inches. (See Rope.)
CABLE-SHEET, Sheet-cable. The spare bower cable belonging to a ship. Sheet is deemed stand-by, and is also applied to its anchor.
CABLE'S LENGTH. A measure of about 100 fathoms, by which the distances of ships in a fleet are frequently estimated. This term is frequently misunderstood. In all marine charts a cable is deemed 607·56 feet, or one-tenth of a sea mile. In rope-making the cable varies from 100 to 115 fathoms; cablet, 120 fathoms; hawser-laid, 130 fathoms, as determined by the admiralty in 1830.
CABLE-STAGE. A place constructed in the hold, or cable-tier, for coiling cables and hawsers on.
CABLE-STREAM, Stream-cable. A hawser or rope something smaller than the bower, used to move or hold the ship temporarily during a calm in a river or haven, sheltered from the wind and sea, &c.
CABLE-TIER. The place in a hold, or between decks, where the cables are coiled away.
CABOBBLED. Confused or puzzled.
CABOBS, or Kebaub. The Turkish name for small fillets of meat broiled on wooden spits; the use of the term has been extended eastward, and in India signifies a hot spiced dish of fish, flesh, or fowl.
CABONS. See Kaburns.
CABOOSE, or Camboose. The cook-room or kitchen of merchantmen on deck; a diminutive substitute for the galley of a man-of-war. It is generally furnished with cast-iron apparatus for cooking.
CABOTAGE [Ital.] Sailing from cape to cape along a coast; or the details of coast pilotage.
CABURNS. Spun rope-yarn lines, for worming a cable, seizing, winding tacks, and the like.
CACAO The plant Theobroma, from which what is commonly termed cocoa is derived.
CACCLE, or Keccle. To apply a particular kind of service to the cable. (See Keckling.)
CACHE. A hidden reservoir of provision (to secure it from bears) in Arctic travel. Also, a deposit of despatches, &c.
CADE. A small barrel of about 500 herrings, or 1000 sprats.
CADENCE. The uniform time and space for marching, more indispensable to large bodies of troops than to parties of small-arm men; yet an important part even of their drill. The regularity requisite in pulling.
CADET. A volunteer, who, serving at his own charge, to learn experience, waits for preferment; a designation, recently introduced, for young gentlemen formerly rated volunteers of the first class. Properly, the younger son in French.
CADGE, To. To carry.—Cadger, a carrier. Kedge may be a corruption, as being carriable.
CÆSAR'S PENNY. The tip given by a recruiting sergeant.
CAFFILA. See Kafila.
CAGE. An iron cage formed of hoops on the top of a pole, and filled with combustibles to blaze for two hours. It is lighted one hour before high-water, and marks an intricate channel navigable for the period it burns; much used formerly by fishermen.
CAGE-WROCK. An old term for a ship's upper works.
CAIQUE, or Kaique. A small Levantine vessel. Also, a graceful skiff seen in perfection at Constantinople, where it almost monopolizes the boat traffic. It is fast, but crank, being so narrow that the oars or sculls have their looms enlarged into ball-shaped masses to counter-balance their out-board length. It has borne for ages the wave-line now brought out in England as the highest result of marine architecture. It may have from one to ten or twelve rowers.
CAIRBAN. A name in the Hebrides for the basking-shark.
CAIRN. Piles of stones used as marks in surveying.
CAISSON, or Caissoon. An adopted term for a sort of float sunk to a required depth by letting water into it, when it is hauled under the ship's bottom, receives her steadily, and on pumping out the water floats her. These were long used in Holland, afterwards at Venice, and in Russia, where they were known as camels (which see). Caisson is also a vessel fitted with valves, to act instead of gates for a dry dock. Used also in pontoons (which see).
CAKE-ICE. Ice formed in the early part of the season.
CALABASH. Cucurbita, a gourd abundant within the tropics, furnishing drinking and washing utensils. At Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands they attain a diameter of 2 feet. There is also a calabash-tree, the fruit not exceeding the size of oranges.
CALABASS. An early kind of light musket with a wheel-lock. Bourne mentions it in 1578.
CALALOO. A dish of fish and vegetables.
CALAMUS. See Rattan.
CALANCA. A creek or cove on Italian and Spanish coasts.
CALAVANCES [Phaseolus vulgaris. Haricot, Fr.] Small beans sometimes used for soup, instead of pease.
CALCULATE, To. This word, though disrated from respectability by American misuse, signified to foretell or prophesy; it is thus used by Shakspeare in the first act of "Julius Cæsar." To calculate the ship's position, either from astronomical observations or rate of the log.
CALENDAR. A distribution of time. (See Almanac.)
CALENDAR-TIME. On which officers' bills are drawn.
CALF. A word generally applied to the young of marine mammalia, as the whale.—Calf, in the Arctic regions, a mass of floe ice breaking from under a floe, which when disengaged rises with violence to the surface of the water; it differs from a tongue, which is the same body kept fixed beneath the main floe. The iceberg is formed by the repeated freezing of thawed snow running down over the slopes, until at length the wave from beneath and weight above causes it to break off and fall into the sea, or, as termed in Greenland, to calve. Thus, berg, is fresh-water ice, the work of years. The floe, is salt water frozen suddenly each winter, and dissolving in the summer.
CALF, or Calva. A Norwegian name, also used in the Hebrides, for islets lying off islands, and bearing a similar relation to them in size that a calf does to a cow. As the Calf at Mull and the Calf of Man.
CALFAT. The old word for caulking. [Calfater, Fr.; probably from cale, wedge, and faire, to make.] To wedge up an opening with any soft material, as oakum. [Calafatear, Sp.]
CALIBER, or Calibre. The diameter of the bore of a gun, cannon, shot, or bullet. A ship's caliber means the known weight her armament represents.
CALIPASH. The upper shell of a turtle.
CALIPEE. The under shell of a turtle.
CALIVER. A hand-gun or arquebuss; probably the old name of the matchlock or carabine, precursors of the modern fire-lock, or Enfield rifle. (See Calabass.)
CALL. A peculiar silver pipe or whistle, used by the boatswain and his mates to attract attention, and summon the sailors to their meals or duties by various strains, each of them appropriated to some particular purpose, such as hoisting, heaving, lowering, veering away, belaying, letting go a tackle-fall, sweeping, &c. This piping is as attentively observed by sailors, as the bugle or beat of drum is obeyed by soldiers. The coxswains of the boats of French ships of war are supplied with calls to "in bow oar," or "of all," "oars," &c.
CALLIPERS. Bow-legged compasses, used to measure the girth of timber, the external diameter of masts, shot, and other circular or cylindrical substances. Also, an instrument with a sliding leg, used for measuring the packages constituting a ship's cargo, which is paid for by its cubical contents.
CALL THE WATCH. This is done every four hours, except at the dog-watches, to relieve those on deck, also by pipe. "All the watch," or all the starboard, or the port, first, second, third, or fourth watches.
CALM. There being no wind stirring it is designated flat, dead, or stark, under each of which the surface of the sea is unruffled.
CALM LATITUDES. That tropical tract of ocean which lies between the north-east and south-east trade-winds; its situation varies several degrees, depending upon the season of the year. The term is also applied to a part of the sea on the Polar side of the trades, between them and the westerly winds.
CALVERED SALMON. Salmon prepared in a peculiar manner in early times.
CALVE'S TONGUE. A sort of moulding usually made at the caps and bases of round pillars, to taper or hance the round part to the square.
CAMBER. The part of a dockyard where cambering is performed, and timber kept. Also, a small dock in the royal yards, for the convenience of loading and discharging timber. Also, anything that curves upwards.—To camber, to curve ship-planks.
CAMBER-KEELED. Keel slightly arched upwards in the middle of the length, but not actually hogged.
CAMBOOSE. A form of caboose (which see).
CAMELS. All large ships are built, at St. Petersburg, in a dockyard off the Granite Quay, where the water is shallow; therefore a number of camels or caissons are kept at Cronstadt, for the purpose of carrying them down the river. Camels are hollow cases of wood, constructed in two halves, so as to embrace the keel, and lay hold of the hull of a ship on both sides. They are first filled with water and sunk, in order to be fixed on. The water is then pumped out, when the vessel gradually rises, and the process is continued until the ship is enabled to pass over the shoal. Similar camels were used at Rotterdam about 1690.
CAME-TO. Brought to an anchor.
CAMFER. See Chamfer.
CAMISADO. A sudden surprise or assault of the enemy.
CAMOCK. A very early term for crooked timber.
CAMP. The whole extent of ground on which an army pitches its tents and lodges. (See Decamp.)
CAMP, or Camp-out, To. In American travel, to rest for the night without a standing roof; whether under a light tent, a screen of boughs, or any makeshift that the neighbourhood may afford.
CAMPAIGN. A series of connected operations by an army in the field, unbroken by its retiring into quarters.
CAMPAIGNER. A veteran soldier.
CAMP-EQUIPAGE. See Equipage.
CAMPER. See Kemp.
CAMPESON. See Gambison.
CAMP-FIGHT. See Acre.
CAN. A tin vessel used by sailors to drink out of.
CANAICHE, or Canash. An inner port, as at Granada in the West Indies.
CANAL-BOAT. A barge generally towed by horses, but furnished with a large square-sail for occasional use.
CAN-BODIES. The old term for anchor-buoys, now can-buoys.
CAN-BUOYS. Are in the form of a cone, and therefore would countenance the term cone-buoys. They are floated over sands and other obstructions in navigation, as marks to be avoided; they are made very large, to be seen at a distance; where there are several, they are distinguished by their colour, as black, red, white, or chequered; &c.
CANCELLED TICKET. One rendered useless by some subsequent arrangement or clerk's error. In either case the word "cancelled" is to be written across in large characters, and due record made. The corner cut off cancels good character, yet they are a certificate for time.
CANCER. The Crab; the fourth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of June, and commences the summer solstice.
CANDLE-BARK. A cylindrical tin box for candles.
CANE. The rattan (Calamus rudentum), is extensively used in the East for rigging, rope, and cables. The latter have remained for years at the bottom of the sea uninjured by teredo, or any destructive crustacea. The cables, too, resist any but the sharpest axes, when used to connect logs as booms, to stop the navigation of rivers.
CANEVAS. The old word for hempen canvas; but many races, even the Chinese, make sails entirely of cane. The Americans frequently use cotton, and term that cloth duck. In the islands of the South Pacific it is made from the bark of various trees, grasses, &c.
CAN-HOOKS. They are used to sling a cask by the chimes, or ends of its staves, and are formed by reeving the two ends of a piece of rope or chain through the eyes of two flat hooks, and there making them fast. The tackle is then hooked to the middle of the bight.
CANISTER SHOT. See Case-shot.
CANNIKIN. A small drinking-vessel.
CANNON. The well-known piece of artillery, mounted in battery on board or on shore, and made either of brass or iron. The principal parts are:—1st. The breech, together with the cascable and its button, called by seamen the pommelion. The breech is of solid metal, from the bottom of the concave cylinder or chamber to the cascable. 2d. The trunnions, which project on each side, and serve to support the cannon, hold it almost in equilibrio. 3d. The bore or caliber, is the interior of the cylinder, wherein the powder and shot are lodged when the cannon is loaded. The entrance of the bore is called the mouth or muzzle. It may be generally described as gradually tapering, with the various modifications of first and second reinforce and swell, to the muzzle or forward end. (See Gun.)
CANNONADE. The opening and continuance of the fire of artillery on any object attacked. Battering with cannon-shot.
CANNON-PERER. An ancient piece of ordnance used in ships of war for throwing stone shot.
CANNON-PETRONEL. A piece of ordnance with a 6-inch bore which carried a 24-lb. ball.
CANNON, RIFLED. Introduced by Captain Blakely, Sir W. Armstrong, and others.
CANNON ROYAL. A 60-pounder of eight and a half inches bore. (See Carthoun.)
CANNON-SERPENTINE. An old name for a gun of 7-inches bore.
CANOE. A peculiar boat used by several uncivilized nations, formed of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, and sometimes of several pieces of bark joined together, and again of hide. They are of various sizes, according to the uses for which they are designed, or the countries to which they belong. Some carry sail, but they are commonly rowed with paddles, somewhat resembling a corn-shovel; and instead of rowing with it horizontally, as with an oar, they manage it perpendicularly. In Greenland and Hudson Bay, the Esquimaux limits of America, skin-boats are chiefly in use, under the name of kaiack, oomiak, baidar, &c.
CANOPUS. The lucida of Argo Navis, and a Greenwich star. Also, a city of classical importance, visited by the heroes of the Trojan war, the reputed burial-place of the pilot of Menelaus, &c. But, as some ancient places have been so fortunate as to renew their classical importance in modern times, so this, under the modern name of Abukeir, has received a new "stamp of fate," by its overlooking, like Salamis, the scene of a naval battle, which also led to a decision of the fate of nations. In this bay Nelson, at one blow, destroyed the fleet of the enemy, and cut off the veteran army of France from the shores of Egypt. The Canopian mouth of the Nile was the most westerly of all the branches of that celebrated river.
CANOPY. A light awning over the stern-sheets of a boat.
CANT, To. To turn anything about, or so that it does not stand square. To diverge from a central right line. Cant the boat or ship; i.e. for careening her.
CANT. A cut made in a whale between the neck and the fins, to which the cant-purchase is made fast, for turning the animal round in the operation of flensing.
CANTARA. A watering-place.
CANT-BLOCKS. The large purchase-blocks used by whalers to cant the whales round under the process of flensing.
CANT-BODY. An imaginary figure of that part of a ship's body which forms the shape forward and aft, and whose planes make obtuse angles with the midship line of the ship.
CANTEEN. A small tin vessel for men on service to carry liquids. Also, a small chest containing utensils for an officer's messing. Also, a kind of sutling-house in garrisons.
CANTERA. A Spanish fishing-boat.
CANT-FALLS. See Spike-tackle.
CANT-HOOK. A lever with a hook at one end for heavy articles.
CANTICK-QUOINS. Short three-edged pieces of wood to steady casks from labouring against each other.
CANTING BALLAST. Is when by a sudden gust or stress of weather a ship is thrown so far over that the ballast settles to leeward, and prevents the ship from righting.
CANTING-LIVRE. See Console-bracket.
CANT-LINE. Synonymous with girt-line, as to cant the top over the lowermast-head.
CANTONMENTS. Troops detached and quartered in different towns and villages near each other.
CANT-PURCHASE. This is formed by a block suspended from the mainmast-head, and another block made fast to the cant cut in the whale. (See Cant-blocks.)
CANT-RIBBONS. Those ribbons that do not lie in a horizontal or level direction.
CANT-ROPE. See Four-cant.
CANT-SPAR. A hand-mast pole, fit for making small masts or yards, booms, &c.
CANT-TIMBERS. They derive their name from being canted or raised obliquely from the keel. The upper ends of those on the bow are inclined to the stem, as those in the after-part incline to the stern-post above. In a word, cant-timbers are those which do not stand square with the middle line of the ship. They may be deemed radial bow or stern-timbers.
CANVAS [from cannabis, hemp]. A cloth made of hemp, and used for the sails of ships. It is purchased in bolts, and numbered from 1 to 8, rarely to 9 and 10. Number 1 being the coarsest and strongest, is used for the lower sails, as fore-sail and main-sail in large ships. When a vessel is in motion by means of her sails she is said to be under canvas.
CANVAS-BACK DUCK. An American wild duck (Fuligula valisneria), which takes this name from the colour of the back feathers; much esteemed as a delicacy.
CANVAS-CLIMBER. A word used by Marston for a sailor who goes aloft; hence Marina tells Leonine—
"And, clasping to a mast, endur'd a sea
That almost burst the deck, and from the ladder-tackle
Wash'd off a canvas-climber."
CAP. A strong thick block of wood having two large holes through it, the one square, the other round, used to confine two masts together, when one is erected at the head of the other, in order to lengthen it. The principal caps of a ship are those of the lower masts, which are fitted with a strong eye-bolt on each side, wherein to hook the block by which the top-mast is drawn up through the cap. In the same manner as the top mast slides up through the cap of the lower mast, the topgallant-mast slides up through the cap of the top-masts. When made of iron the cap used to be called a crance.—To cap a mast-head is placing tarpaulin guards against weather. The term is applied to any covering such as lead put over iron bolts to prevent corrosion by sea-water, canvas covers over the ends of rigging, &c. &c. Also, pieces of oak laid on the upper blocks on which a vessel is built, to receive the keel. They are split out for the addition of the false keel, and therefore should be of the most free-grained timber. Also, the coating which guards the top of a quill tube. Also, the percussion priming for fire-arms.—Cap-a-pied, armed from head to foot.
CAP, To. To puzzle or beat in argument. To salute by touching the head-covering, as Shakspeare makes Iago's friends act to Othello. It is now more an academic than a sea-term.
CAPABARRE. An old term for misappropriating government stores. (See Marryat's Novels.)
CAPACISE. A corrupt form of capsize.
CAPACITY. Burden, tonnage, fitness for the service, rating.
CAPE. A projecting point of land jutting out from the coast-line; the extremity of a promontory, of which last it is the secondary rank. It differs from a headland, since a cape may be low. The Cape of Good Hope is always familiarly known as "The Cape." Cape was also used for a rhumb-line.
CAPE, To. To keep a course. How does she cape? how does she lie her course?
CAPE FLY-AWAY. A cloud-bank on the horizon, mistaken for land, which disappears as the ship advances. (See Fog.)
CAPE-HEN. See Molly-mawk.
CAPELLA. The lucida of Auriga, and a nautical star.
CAPE-MERCHANT . An old name for super-cargo in early voyages, as also the head merchant in a factory.
CAPE-PIGEON, or Cape-petrel. A sea-bird which follows a ship in her passage round the cape; the Procellaria capensis. (See Pintados.)
CAPER. A light-armed vessel of the 17th century, used by the Dutch for privateering.
CAPER CORNER-WAY. Diagonally.
CAPFUL OF WIND. A light flaw, which suddenly careens a vessel and passes off.
CAPITAL of a Work. In fortification, an imaginary line bisecting its most prominent salient angle.
CAPITANA. Formerly the principal galley in a Mediterranean fleet: the admiral's ship.
CAPITULATION. The conditions on which a subdued force surrenders, agreed upon between the contending parties.
CAPLIN, or Capelin. A fish of the family Clupeidæ, very similar to a smelt; frequently imported from Newfoundland dried. It is the general bait for cod-fish there.
CAP'N. The way in which some address the commanders of merchant vessels.
CAPON. A jeering name for the red-herring.
CAPONNIERE. In fortification, a passage across the bottom of the ditch, covered, at the least, by a parapet on each side, and very generally also with a bomb-proof roof, when it may be furnished with many guns, which are of great importance in the defence of a fortress, as the besieger can hardly silence them till he has constructed batteries on the brink of the ditch.
CAPOTE. A good storm-coat with a hood, much worn in the Levant, and made of a special manufacture.
CAPPANUS. The worm which adheres to, and gnaws the bottom of a ship, to prevent which all ships should be sheathed with copper.
CAPPED. A ship making against a race or very strong currents.
CAPRICORNUS. The tenth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of December, and opens the winter solstice.
CAP-SCUTTLE. A framing composed of coamings and head-ledges raised above the deck, with a top which shuts closely over into a rabbet.
CAP-SHORE. A supporting spar between the cap and the trestle-tree.
CAPSIZE, To. To upset or overturn anything.
CAP-SQUARE. The clamp of iron which shuts over the trunnions of a gun to secure them to the carriage, having a curve to receive one-third part of the trunnion, the other two being sunk in the carriage; it is closed by forelocks.
CAPSTAN, Cabestan, Capstern, Capston, &c. A mechanical arrangement for lifting great weights. There is a variety of capsterns, but they agree in having a horizontal circular head, which has square holes around its edge, and in these long bars are shipped, and are said to be "swifted" when their outer ends are traced together; beneath is a perpendicular barrel, round which is wrapped the rope or chain used to lift the anchor or other great weight, even to the heaving a ship off a shoal. Now, in most ships where a capstern is used to lift the anchor, the chain cable is itself brought to the capstern. The purchase or lifting power is gained by the great sweep of the bars. A perpendicular iron spindle passes through the whole capstern, and is stepped into a socket on the deck below the one on which it stands. In some cases capsterns are double in height, so that bars may be worked on two decks, giving more room for the men.
CAPSTAN, To come up the. In one sense is to lift the pauls and walk back, or turn the capstan the contrary way, thereby slackening, or letting out some of the rope on which they have been heaving. The sudden order would be obeyed by surging, or letting go any rope on which they were heaving. Synonymous to "Come up the purchase."
CAPSTAN, To heave at the. To urge it round, by pushing against the bars, as already described.
CAPSTAN, To man the. To place the sailors at it in readiness to heave.
CAPSTAN, To paul the. To drop all the pauls into their sockets, to prevent the capstan from recoiling during any pause of heaving.
CAPSTAN, To rig the. To fix the bars in their respective holes, thrust in the pins to confine them, and reeve the swifter through the ends.
CAPSTAN, Surge the. Is the order to slacken the rope which is wound round the barrel while heaving, to prevent it from riding or fouling. This term specially applies to surging the messenger when it rides, or when the two lashing eyes foul on the whelps or the barrel.
CAPSTAN-BAR PINS. Pins inserted through their ends to prevent their unshipping.
CAPSTAN-BARRING. An obsolete sea-punishment, in which the offender was sentenced to carry a capstan-bar during a watch.
CAPSTAN-BARS. Long pieces of wood of the best ash or hickory, one end of which is thrust into the square holes in the drumhead, like the spokes of a wheel. They are used to heave the capstan round, by the men setting their hands and chests against them, and walking round. They are also held in their places in the drumhead holes, by little iron bolts called capstan or safety pins, to prevent their flying out when the surging overcomes the force of the men. Many men have been killed by this action, and more by the omission to "pin and swift."
CAPSTAN-ROOM. See Room.
CAPSTAN-STEP. (See Step of the Capstan.) The men march round to the tune of a fiddle or fife, and the phrase of excitement is, "Step out, lads, make your feet tell."
CAPSTAN-SWIFTER. A rope passed horizontally through notches in the outer ends of the bars, and drawn very tight: the intent is to steady the men as they walk round when the ship rolls, and to give room for a greater number to assist, by manning the swifters both within and without.
CAPTAIN. This title is said to be derived from the eastern military magistrate katapan, meaning "over everything;" but the term capitano was in use among the Italians nearly 200 years before Basilius II. appointed his katapan of Apulia and Calabria, a.d. 984. Hence, the corruption of the Apulian province into capitanata. Among the Anglo-Saxons the captain was schipp-hláford, or ship's lord. The captain, strictly speaking, is the officer commanding a line-of-battle ship, or a frigate carrying twenty or more cannon. A captain in the royal navy is answerable for any bad conduct in the military government, navigation, and equipment of his ship; also for any neglect of duty in his inferior officers, whose several charges he is appointed to regulate. It is also a title, though incorrectly, given to the masters of all vessels whatever, they having no commissions. It is also applied in the navy itself to the chief sailor of particular gangs of men; in rank, captain of the forecastle, admiral's coxswain, captain's coxswain, captain of the hold, captain of main-top, captain of fore-top, &c.
CAPTAIN. A name given to the crooner, crowner, or gray gurnard (Trigla gurnardus).
CAPTAIN of a Merchant Ship. Is a certificated officer in the mercantile marine, intrusted with the entire charge of a ship, both as regards life and property. He is in no way invested with special powers to meet his peculiar circumstances, but has chiefly to depend upon moral influence for maintaining order amongst his passengers and crew during the many weeks or even months that he is cut off from appeal to the laws of his country, only resorting to force on extreme occasions. Great tact and judgment is required to fulfil this duty properly.
CAPTAIN of a Ship of War. Is the commanding officer; as well the post-captain (a title now disused) as those whose proper title is commander.
CAPTAIN of the Fleet. Is a temporary admiralty appointment; he is entitled to be considered as a flag-officer, and to a share in the prize-money accordingly. He carries out all orders issued by the commander-in-chief, but his special duty is to keep up the discipline of the fleet, in which he is supreme. He is the adjutant-general of the force, hoisting the flag and wearing the uniform of rear-admiral.
CAPTAIN of the Head. Not a recognized rating, but an ordinary man appointed to attend to the swabs, and to keep the ship's head clean.
CAPTAIN of the Hold. The last of the captains in rank, as a first-class petty officer.
CAPTAIN of the Port. The captain of the port is probably better explained by referring to that situation at Gibraltar. He belongs to the Board of Health; he controls the entries and departures, the berthing at the anchorage, and general marine duties, but possesses no naval authority. Hence, the port-captain is quite another officer. (See Port-captain.)
CAPTAIN-GENERAL. The highest army rank.
CAPTAIN'S CLERK. One whose duty is strictly to keep all books and official papers necessary for passing the captain's accounts at the admiralty.
CAPTAIN'S CLOAK. The jocose name given to the last sweeping clause, the thirty-sixth article of war:—"All other crimes not capital, and for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea."
CAPTAIN'S GIG. See Gig.
CAPTAIN'S STORE-ROOM. A place of reserve on the platform deck, for the captain's wines and sea-stores.
CAPTIVE. A prisoner of war.
CAPTORS. The conquerors of and sharers in the proceeds of a prize. Captors are not at liberty to release prisoners belonging to the ships of the enemy. The last survivor is in law the only captor.
CAPTURE. A prize taken by a ship of war at sea; is the taking forcible possession of vessels or goods belonging to one nation by those of a hostile nation. Vessels are looked on as prizes if they fight under any other standard than that of the state from which they have their commission; if they have no charty-party, manifest, or bill of lading, or if loaded with effects belonging to the king's enemies, or even contraband goods. Whether the capture be lawful or unlawful, the insurer is rendered liable to the loss.
CAR. A north-country word, denoting any swampy land surrounded by inclosures, and occasionally under water.
CARABINEER. One who uses the carbine.
CARACK, Carrak, or Carrick. A large ship of burden, the same with those called galleons. Hippus, the Tyrian, is said to have first devised caracks, and onerary vessels of prodigious bulk for traffic or offence.
CARACORA. A proa of Borneo, Ternate, and the Eastern Isles; also called caracol by early voyagers.
CARAMOUSSAL. A Turkish merchant ship with a pink-stern.
CARAVEL, or Caravela. A Portuguese despatch boat, lateen-rigged, formerly in use; it had square sails only on the fore-mast, though dignified as a caravela.
CARAVELAO. A light pink-sterned vessel of the Azores.
CARBASSE. See Karbatz.
CARBIN. A name in our northern isles for the basking shark.
CARBINE, or Carabine. A fire-arm of less length and weight than a musket, originally carrying a smaller ball, though latterly, for the convenience of the supply of ammunition, throwing the same bullet as the musket, though with a smaller charge. It has been proper to mounted troops since about a.d. 1556, and has been preferred to the musket as a weapon for the tops of ships as well as boats.
CARCASS. An iron shell for incendiary purposes, filled with a very fiercely flaming composition of saltpetre, sulphur, resin, turpentine, antimony, and tallow. It has three vents for the flame, and sometimes is equipped with pistol barrels, so fitted in its interior as to discharge their bullets at various times.
CARCASS OF A SHIP. The ribs, with keel, stem, and stern-post, after the planks are stripped off.
CARCATUS [from caricato, It.] A law-term for a freighted ship.
CARD. The dial or face of the magnetic compass-card.
"Reason the card, but passion is the gale."—Pope.
Probably derived from cardinal.
CARDINAL POINTS. The general name by which the north, east, south, and west rhumbs of the horizon are distinguished.
CARDINAL POINTS OF THE ECLIPTIC. The equinoctial and solstitial points; namely, the commencement of Aries and Libra, and of Cancer and Capricornus.
CARDINAL SIGNS. The zodiacal signs which the sun enters at the equinoxes and solstices.
CARDINAL WINDS. Those from the due north, east, south, and west points of the compass.
CAREEN, To. A ship is said to careen when she inclines to one side, or lies over when sailing on a wind; off her keel or carina.
CAREENING. The operation of heaving the ship down on one side, by arranging the ballast, or the application of a strong purchase to her masts, which require to be expressly supported for the occasion to prevent their springing; by these means one side of the bottom, elevated above the surface of the water, may be cleansed or repaired. (See Breaming.) But this operation is now nearly superseded by sheathing ships with copper, whereby they keep a clean bottom for several years.
CAREENING BEACH. A part of the strand prepared for the purpose of a ship's being grounded on a list or careen, to repair defects.
CARFINDO. One of the carpenter's crew.
CARGO. The merchandise a ship is freighted with.
CARGO-BOOK. The master of every coasting-vessel is required to keep a cargo-book, stating the name of the ship, of the master, of the port to which she belongs, and that to which she is bound; with a roll of all goods, shippers, and consignees. In all other merchant ships the cargo-book is a clean copy of all cargo entered in the gangway-book, and shows the mark, number, quality, and (if measurement goods) the dimensions of such packages of a ship's cargo.
CARICATORE. Places where the traders of Sicily take in their goods, from caricare, to load.
CARINA. An old term, from the Latin, for the keel, or a ship's bottom. The north-country term keel means an entire vessel: "So many keels touched the strand." (See Keel.)
CARL, or Male Hemp. See Fimble or Female Hemp.
CARLE-CRAB. The male of the black-clawed crab, Cancer pagurus; also of the partan or common crab.
CARLINE-KNEES. Timbers going athwart the ship, from the sides to the hatchway, serving to sustain the deck on both sides.
CARLINES, or Carlings. Pieces of timber about five inches square, lying fore and aft, along from one beam to another. On and athwart these the ledges rest, whereon the planks of the deck and other portions of carpentry are made fast. The carlines have their end let into the beams, called "culver-tail-wise," or scored in pigeon-fashion. There are other carlines of a subordinate character.
CARLINO, or Caroline. A small silver coin of Naples, value 4d. English. Ten carlini make a ducat in commerce.
CARN-TANGLE. A long and large fucus, thrown on our northern beaches after a gale of wind in the offing.
CAROUS. A sort of gallery in ancient ships, which turned on a pivot. It was hoisted to a given height by tackles, and thus brought to project over, or into, the vessel of an adversary, furnishing a bridge for boarding.
CARP. A well-known fresh-water fish of the Cyprinidæ family, considered to have been introduced into England in the time of Henry VIII.; but in Dame Berner's book on angling, published in 1486, it is described as the "daynteous fysshe" in England.
CARPENTER, Ship. A ship-builder. An officer appointed to examine and keep in order the hull of a ship, and all her appurtenances, likewise the stores committed to him by indenture from the store-keeper of the dockyard. The absence of other tradesmen whilst a ship is at sea, and the numerous emergencies in which ships are placed requiring invention, render a good ship's carpenter one of the most valuable artizans on board.
CARPENTER'S CREW. Consists of a portion of the crew, provided for ship-carpentry and ship-building. In ships of war there are two carpenter's mates and one caulker, one blacksmith, and a carpenter's crew, according to the size of the ship.
CARPENTER'S STORE-ROOM. An apartment built below, on the platform-deck, for keeping the carpenter's stores and spare tools in.
CARPENTER'S YEOMAN. See Yeoman.
CARPET-KNIGHT. A man who obtains knighthood on a pretence for services in which he never participated.
CARPET-MEN. Those officers who, without services or merit, obtain rapid promotion through political or other interest, and are yet declared "highly meritorious and distinguished."
CARR. See Car.
CARRAC, Carraca, Carrack, or Carricke. A name given by the Spaniards and Portuguese to the vessels they sent to Brazil and the East Indies; large, round built, and fitted for fight as well as burden. Their capacity lay in their depth, which was extraordinary. English vessels of size and value were sometimes also so called.
CARRARA. The great northern diver, Colymbus glacialis.
CARREE. A Manx or Gaelic term for the scud or small clouds that drive with the wind.
CARRIAGE of a Gun. The frame on which it is mounted for firing, constructed either exclusively for this purpose, or also for travelling in the field. Carriages for its transport only, are not included under this term. The first kind only is in general use afloat, where it usually consists of two thick planks (called brackets or cheeks) laid on edge to support the trunnions, and resting, besides other transverse connections, on two axle-trees, which are borne on low solid wooden wheels called trucks, or sometimes, to diminish the recoil, on flat blocks called chocks. The hind axle-tree takes, with the intervention of various elevating arrangements, the preponderance of the breech. The second kind is adapted for field and siege work: the shallow brackets are raised in front on high wheels, but unite behind into a solid beam called the trail, which tapers downwards, and rests on the ground when in action, but for travel is connected to a two-wheeled carriage called a limber (which see). Gun-carriages are chiefly made of elm for ship-board, as less given to splinter from shot, and of oak on shore; wrought-iron, however, is being applied for the carriages of the large guns recently introduced, and even cast-iron is economically used in some fortresses little liable to sudden counter-battery.
CARRICK. An old Gaelic term for a castle or fortress, as well as for a rock in the sea.
CARRICK-BEND. A kind of knot, formed on a bight by putting the end of a rope over its standing part, and then passing it.
CARRICK-BITTS. The bitts which support the ends or spindles of the windlass, whence they are also called windlass-bitts.
CARRIED. Taken, applied to the capture of forts and ships.
CARRONADE. A short gun, capable of carrying a large ball, and useful in close engagements at sea. It takes its name from the large iron-foundry on the banks of the Carron, near Falkirk, in Scotland, where this sort of ordnance was first made, or the principle applied to an improved construction. Shorter and lighter than the common cannon, and having a chamber for the powder like a mortar, they are generally of large calibre, and carried on the upper works, as the poop and forecastle.
CARRONADE SLIDE. Composed of two wide balks of elm on which the carronade carriage slides. As the slide is bolted to the ship's side, and is a radius from that bolt or pivot, carronades were once the only guns which could be truly concentrated on a given object.
CARRY, To. To subdue a vessel by boarding her. To move anything along the decks. (See Lash and Carry, as relating to hammocks.) Also, to obtain possession of a fort or place by force. Also, the direction or movement of the clouds. Also, a gun is said to carry its shot so many yards. Also, a ship carries her canvas, and her cargo.
CARRY AWAY, To. To break; as, "That ship has carried away her fore-topmast," i.e. has broken it off. It is customary to say, we carried away this or that, when knocked, shot, or blown away. It is also used when a rope has been parted by violence.
CARRYING ON DUTY. The operations of the officer in charge of the deck or watch.
CARRYING ON THE WAR. Making suitable arrangements for carrying on the lark or amusement.
CARRY ON, To. To spread all sail; also, beyond discretion, or at all hazards. In galley-slang, to joke a person even to anger; also riotous frolicking.
CARRY THE KEG. See Keg.
CARTE BLANCHE. In the service sense of the term, implies an authority to act at discretion.
CARTEL. A ship commissioned in time of war to exchange the prisoners of any two hostile powers, or to carry a proposal from one to the other; for this reason she has only one gun, for the purpose of firing signals, as the officer who commands her is particularly ordered to carry no cargo, ammunition, or implements of war. Cartel also signifies an agreement between two hostile powers for a mutual exchange of prisoners. In late wars, ships of war fully armed, but under cartel, carried commissions for settling peace, as flags of truce. Cartel-ships, by trading in any way, are liable to confiscation.
CARTHOUN. The ancient cannon royal, carrying a 66-lb. ball, with a point blank range of 185 paces, and an extreme one of about 2000. It was 12 feet long and of 81⁄2 inches diameter of bore.
CARTOUCH-BOX. The accoutrement which contains the musket-cartridges: now generally called a pouch.
CARTOW. See Cart-piece.
CART-PIECE. An early battering cannon mounted on a peculiar cart.
CARTRIDGE. The case in which the exact charge of powder for fire-arms is made up—of paper for small-arms, of flannel for great guns, or of sheet metal for breech-loading muskets. For small-arms generally the cartridge contains the bullet as well as the powder, and in the case of most breech-loaders, the percussion priming also; in the case of some very light pieces the shot is included, and then named a round of "fixed ammunition;" and for breech-loading guns some sort of lubricator is generally inclosed in the forward end of the cartridge.
CARTRIDGE-BOX. A cylindrical wooden box with a lid sliding upon a handle of small rope, just containing one cartridge, and used for its safe conveyance from the magazine to the gun—borne to and fro by powder-monkeys (boys) of old. The term is loosely applied to the ammunition pouch.
CARUEL. See Carvel.
CARVED WORK. The ornaments of a ship which are wrought by the carver.
CARVEL. A light lateen-rigged vessel of small burden, formerly used by the Spaniards and Portuguese. Also, a coarse sea-blubber, on which turtles are said to feed.
CARVEL-BUILT. A vessel or boat, the planks of which are all flush and smooth, the edges laid close to each other, and caulked to make them water-tight: in contradistinction to clinker-built, where they overlap each other.
CARY. See Mother Cary's Chicken. Procellaria pelagica.
CASCABLE. That generally convex part of a gun which terminates the breech end of it. The term includes the usual button which is connected to it by the neck of the cascable.
CASCADE. A fall of water from a considerable height, rather by successive stages than in a single mass, as with a cataract.
CASCO. A rubbish-lighter of the Philippine Islands.
CASE. The outside planking of the ship.
CASE-BOOK. A register or journal in which the surgeon records the cases of all the sick and wounded, who are placed under medical treatment.