| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| BABOON WATCH | The unfortunate man detailed to remain on deck in harbour to watch over the ship’s safety while the rest of the crew were off duty. The term was associated mainly with the big square-rigged sailing ships, and the ‘baboon’ was usually one of the apprentices carried on board. |
| BACK | (1) The wind is said to back when it changes contrary to its normal pattern. In the northern hemisphere, north of the trade wind belt, the wind usually changes clockwise—from north through east, south, and west. When the change is anti-clockwise, the wind is backing. In the southern latitudes, the reverse is the general pattern of the winds. When the wind backs in either hemisphere it is generally taken as a sign that it will freshen.
(2) To back a square sail is to brace the yards so that the wind presses on the forward side of the sail to take the way off the ship. (3) To back water is to push on the oars when rowing a boat, instead of pulling on them, in order to bring the boat to a stop. (4) To back an anchor, the operation of laying out a smaller anchor, usually a kedge or stream anchor, ahead of the bower anchor in order to provide additional holding power and to prevent the bower from coming home. |
| BACK A STRAND | The operation, when making a long splice, of filling the score vacated when unlaying a strand with one of the opposite strands. |
| BACK SPLICE | A method of finishing off the end of a rope to prevent the strands unravelling by forming a crown knot with the strands and then tucking them back two or three times each. |
| BACKBOARD | A board across the sternsheets of a boat just aft of the seats to form a support for passengers or for the helmsman if the boat is under sail. |
| BACK-STAFF | A navigational instrument for measuring the altitude of the sun, introduced during the 16th century. It gained its name because, unlike the cross-staff which it replaced, the user had the sun behind him when taking an observation. It was virtually the same instrument as the Davis’s quadrant. |
| BACKSTAY | A part of the standing rigging of a sailing vessel to support the strain on all upper masts. In full-rigged sailing ships, backstays extend from all mastheads above the lower mast and are brought back to both sides of the ship and set up with deadeyes and lanyards to the backstay plates. Their main purpose is to provide additional support to the shrouds when the wind is abaft the beam. In particularly heavy winds an additional backstay, known as a preventer, is frequently rigged temporarily. In smaller sailing boats and yachts the backstays are usually known as runners, and the lee one is generally slacked off to allow further movement forward of the boom in order to present a squarer aspect of the sail to the wind. In Bermuda-rigged yachts where the boom is short enough to swing across inside the stern when tacking or gybing, the normal two runners are replaced by a single backstay or pair of fixed backstays led from the masthead to the yacht’s taffrail or quarters. |
| BADGE | Originally an ornamental stern in smaller sailing ships either framing a window of the cabin or giving a representation of a window. They were usually heavily decorated with carvings of sea gods or other marine figures. Today a ship’s badge is normally a heraldic device based on the ship’s name or on some other association which she may have. It is often known as the ship’s crest, and is usually displayed on board in some prominent place. |
| BAG REEF | An additional fourth or lower row of reef points on fore-and-aft sails which used to be fitted in the smaller sailing ships of the British Navy. They took in only a short reef to prevent large sails from bagging when on the wind. In the American Navy it was the first reef of five in a topsail, again to prevent bagging when on the wind. |
| BAGGYWRINKLE | Sometimes written as BAG-O’-WRINKLE, a home-made substance to prevent chafe on sails from the lifts, stays, and crosstrees during long periods of sailing. It is made by stretching two lengths of marline at a convenient working height and cutting old manila rope into lengths of about four inches which are then stranded. These strands are then laid across the two lengths of marline, the ends bent over and brought up between the two lengths, pulled tight, and pushed up against other pieces similarly worked, to provide a long length of bushy material. This is then cut into suitable lengths and served round wire and spars wherever there is a danger of the sails chafing. |
| BAGPIPE THE MIZEN | An order given to lay aback a lateen sail set on the mizen-mast by hauling up the sheet to the mizen rigging, the purpose being to stop the way on a vessel or to slow her down. It was a quick and ready, if a little unseamanlike, means of bringing a ship to a halt. BAIL the process of emptying out the water from a boat or small vessel. The term implies that this is done by hand, not by mechanical means. Originally a boat was bailed out with a bail, an old term used to describe a small bucket, but the modern word is bailer, generally in the form of a scoop with a handle so that water in a boat can be thrown out more rapidly than with a bucket. |
| BALANCE FRAMES | Those frames of a ship’s hull which are equal in area, one forward and one aft of the ship’s centre of gravity. Thus the aftermost balance frame of a wooden ship, to which the after deadwood extends, is balanced by a similar frame of equal area in the bows of the ship. |
| BALD-HEADED | A sailing term used to indicate a vessel under way without her headsails set. |
| BALEEN | The proper name for whalebone which consists of the plates in the mouth of the baleen whale (Mystacoceti) whose marginal bristles trap the small marine organisms which form the animal’s food. During the 19th century baleen had considerable industrial value, particularly in corsetry. because of its flexibility, springiness, and strength. |
| BALINGER | A small, sea-going sailing vessel, without a forecastle and carrying either a square sail or a sail extended by a sprit on a single mast, used in the 15th and 16th centuries mainly for coastal trade, but sometimes as transports carrying about forty soldiers. |
| BALK | An old term for naval timber, imported in roughly squared beams from Baltic countries. It is the origin of the present-day term ‘baulk’ used when describing timber. |
| BALLAST | Additional weight carried in a ship to give her stability and/or to provide a satisfactory trim fore and aft. In very small vessels the ballast is usually in the form of pigs of soft iron which are stowed as low as possible on the floors; larger vessels either use water as ballast by flooding tanks on board or they take stone or gravel temporarily on board as ballast in the holds, in ballast, the condition of a cargo vessel which has discharged her cargo and taken on ballast to stabilize and trim her while sailing empty, or light, to the port where she is next to take on cargo. Sailing vessels insufficiently ballasted are said to be crank. Most racing and cruising yachts carry ballast externally in the shape of lead or cast iron formed into a keel. Cruising yachts, however, may carry some ballast internally, in addition to the ballast keel, because by distributing the ballast, instead of concentrating it in a ballast keel, designers can obtain advantages such as an easier motion in a seaway. |
| BALLAST KEEL | The keel of a yacht shaped from the ballast, usually lead or cast iron, which the yacht needs to carry to give her stability under sail. By this means her ballast is carried externally with its centre of gravity as low as possible and the inside of her hull left clear and unencumbered. Racing yachts especially rely on ballast keels rather than internal ballast to give them stability when carrying the maximum sail area. |
| BALLAST TANKS | External or internal tanks fitted in submarines. They are of two types, main and auxiliary. Main ballast tanks, fitted either internally within the submarine’s pressure hull, or externally in the form of blisters outside the main hull, when flooded with seawater, destroy the positive buoyancy of the vessel and thus enable it to submerge. When they are emptied, by blowing the seawater out by air pressure, positive buoyancy is restored and the submarine rises to the surface. Their only function is to destroy or restore the submarine’s positive buoyancy so that she may dive or surface at will. They are normally completely full or completely empty, according to whether the submarine is submerged or on the surface, but in non-nuclear submarines in wartime, a submarine on the surface might have her main ballast tanks partially filled in order to reduce her silhouette and to enable her to dive more quickly if surprised on the surface. When in this condition, a submarine is said to be ‘trimmed-down’. Auxiliary ballast tanks are situated within the pressure hull of a submarine. Their function is to allow the submarine to be trimmed when submerged so that she is in a state of equilibrium with neither positive nor negative buoyancy. The weight of water in each of them is adjustable, either by admitting more from the sea or by pumping some out into the sea. As they are spaced longitudinally in the hull, a correct balance can be achieved to keep the submarine stable horizontally. Most surface ships also have tanks distributed for use in a similar way to correct or alter the trim of the ship. They are. however, usually known as trimming tanks, not ballast tanks. |
| BALSA | Originally a raft or float used chiefly for fishing in coastal waters off the Pacific coast of South America. It consisted usually of two cylinders of a certain wood, which has great buoyancy, but there were some used which employed two inflated floats made of the skins of seawolves, with a platform between them. The wood, and the tree from which it comes (Ochroma lagopus), are known as ‘balsa’ from their use for this type of raft. A similarly constructed raft, colloquially known as a copperpunt, is still used in many dockyards for work on a ship’s hull, particularly for painting in the waterline. Balsa wood was used for the wellknown raft Kon-Tiki. |
| BANJO | The name given to the brass frame in which, in the early screw-driven ships, the propeller worked. In those early days of steam propulsion no ship engaged on ocean passages carried enough bunkers to accommodate all the BARBAROSSA 57 fuel required for such a passage and had therefore to rely on her sails for the greater part of her voyage, her engine and screw acting only as an auxiliary means of propulsion when the wind failed. As a propeller would act as a drag stopping the ship’s way through the water when under sail, it was fitted in a frame which could be hoisted within the hull when it was not required to drive the ship. This frame, the banjo, worked in a well between slides fixed to the inner and outer sternposts. |
| BANKER | The old name for a fishing vessel employed exclusively in the great cod-fishery on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. |
| BARACUDA | Sometimes written as BARRACUDA, a tropical fish, Sphyraena baracuda, particularly known for its fierceness and whose bite at certain times is poisonous. It is however eaten in the West Indies where its colloquial name is sea-salmon. It was also the name given to a carrier-borne bomber aircraft in the British Navy in the Second World War. |
| BARBETTE | The inside fixed trunk of a modern gun-mounting in a warship on which the turret revolves. It contains the shell and cordite hoists from the shell-room and magazine. It was originally the name given to a raised platform on the deck of a warship protected by armour on the sides, on which heavy guns were mounted, firing over the armour. |
| BARCAROLLE | Originally the name given to songs sung by the Venetian barcaruoli while rowing their gondolas, but the meaning has been extended to cover any song reminiscent of the original Venetian barcarolle, which normally had a slow tempo and most often a sad or doleful air. |
| BARCAROLE | Originally the name given to songs sung by the Venetian barcaruoli while rowing their gondolas, but the meaning has been extended to cover any song reminiscent of the original Venetian barcarolle, which normally had a slow tempo and most often a sad or doleful air. |
| BARCARUOLO | An Italian boatman, particularly attributed to Venice and its gondolas but the term was also sometimes used for boatmen plying for hire in other Italian ports. The word dates from the early 1 7th century. |
| BARE POLES | The condition of a ship when, in a severe storm, all her canvas has had to be taken in because of the fierceness of the wind. A ship can attempt to lie a-try under bare poles, though she will do so better under a mizen topsail or trysail, or can scud under bare poles before the wind, very often a hazardous undertaking if there is a high sea running. |
| BARGE | (1) This is probably the case as it was the name given to a small sea-going ship with sails, next in size above a balinger. From about the 1 7th century onwards, the names barge and bark diverged into separate meanings.
(2) A ceremonial state vessel, richly decorated and propelled by rowers, used on state occasions and for river processions. Such was Cleopatra’s barge described by Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra (Act II, sc. 2), which like a burnished throne Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold: Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver; Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water, which they beat, to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes . . . Cleopatra’s was probably carried a bit to extremes, but most state barges were immensely ornate even if their oars were not of silver but of wood. Shakespeare must have seen such barges on the Thames in Elizabethan times, and they continued in use down to the 19th century. A modern derivative of the barge in this meaning is an admiral’s barge, originally a small steam boat, but today a motorboat used by flag officers for harbour transport. (3) A large flat-bottomed coastal trading vessel having a large spritsail and jib-headed topsail, a fore staysail, and a very small mizen; occasionally a jib is set on the bowsprit. They are fitted with leeboards in place of a keel so that they can operate without difficulty in shoal water. The absence of a keel permits them to operate effectively in shallow water and to remain upright when they are grounded. Normally the mast, which is stepped on deck, is held in a lutchet, a type of tabernacle, so that it can be lowered to deck level when passing under bridges, etc. This type of barge is normally only found in the River Thames and on the south-east coast of England, and is used for the coastal transport of freight. A dumb barge is the hull of a barge, without means of self propulsion, used for the carriage of cargo from ship to shore or viceversa in tow of a tug. It is more properly called a lighter. (4) In past days, the second boat of a warship, a double-banked pulling boat with fourteen oars; more recently the largest boat of a battleship, with mast, sails, and a drop keel but also fitted for pulling fourteen oars. (5) In the U.S.A., a double-decked vessel without sails or power, for carrying passengers and freight, towed by a steamboat. This is obsolete. (6) The name given on board ship to the wooden dish in which bread or biscuit is placed on a mess table. |
| BARK | From the Latin barca, and now synonymous with barque. Originally a general term to describe any small sailing ship of any rig. |
| BARQUE or BARK | A sailing vessel with three masts, square-rigged on the fore and main and fore-and-aft rigged on the mizen. Until the mid- 19th entury, barques were relatively small sailing ships, but later were built up to about 3,000 tons, particularly for the grain and nitrate trade to South American ports round Cape Horn. Four-masted and even five-masted barques were later built for this trade, ranging up to about 5.000 tons. Barques are now obsolete as trading vessels, though there may be one or two small ones still used for inter-island trade in the Pacific, but several of the larger ones are still retained in commission as sail training ships while others have been preserved in many countries as museum ships and examples of the great days of sail. In the U.S.A. the term is always bark, never barque. |
| ARQUENTINE | Occasionally BARKEN TEEN, a vessel resembling a barque but squarerigged on the foremast only, main and mizen being fore-and-aft rigged. |
| BARRACK STANCHION | Said of a naval officer or rating who spends long periods of his service in barracks or a shore establishment and seldom serves at sea. |
| BARRATRY | Any fraudulent act on the part of the master or crew of a ship committed to the prejudice of her owners or underwriters, such as deliberately casting her away, deserting her. selling her, or even diverting her from her proper course with evil intent. |
| BARRICADE | A rail supported by posts across the forward end of the quarterdeck of a sailing man-of-war, the spaces between the posts being filled before going into action with rope mats or spare cable, and with nettings above the rail for the stowage of hammocks. The purpose of the barricade was to provide protection for those whose action station was on the quarterdeck from small arms fire from enemy ships. |
| BARRICADO | An old naval term of the 17th century for a tender, a small oared or sailing boat which attended warships in harbour as an oddjob boat. It was usually civilian or dockyard manned and not one of a warship’s boats. |
| BARRICO | A small cask which was designed for use in ships’ boats, filled with fresh water and kept permanently in the boat for survival purposes in the event of the boat being used as a lifeboat in cases of shipwreck, etc. It is also known as a breaker, but barrico is the more ancient word, having been in maritime use since the 16th century. |
| BARRIER REEF | A protective reef of coral formed offshore along a length of coast or encircling smaller islands, in each case being separated from the land by a channel of navigable water. The most notable example is the Great Barriej Reef which stretches for 1,200 miles along the north-east coast of Australia opposite Queensland; there are others in the Bermudas and other groups of islands mainly in tropical waters. They are caused by the rapid growth in seawater of coral which builds up into a ridge at sea level. |
| BASILISK | An old name for the long 48-pounder gun used in the British Navy in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, so-called from the snakes and dragons which were sculptured on it in place of the more usual dolphins. Sir William Monson describes the gun in his Naval Tracts and gives its range as 3,000 paces. |
| BATEAU | Sometimes BATTEAU, the French word for boat, but particularly the term used to describe the light river boats used by the French Canadians for transport on the Great Lakes and rivers. The term was also sometimes used to describe a canoe. |
| BATELOE | A large wooden vessel with a crew of up to a dozen men, used on the river Madeira (widely known as the ‘long cemetery’) in Brazil to transport rubber from Bolivia to the Amazon, whence it is shipped abroad. They each carry about ten tons of latex, and are strongly constructed to withstand the dangers of the nineteen cataracts of the 250-mile stretch of the river between Guajare-Merim and San Antonio. Mortality among the crews of the bateloes was heavy, mainly from fevers. |
| BATHYSPHERE | A spherical steel vessel, 1 44 m (4 ft 9 in.) in diameter and 3-80 cm (15 in.) thick, weighing 2,270 kg (5,000 lb) and fitted with perspex windows, in which the designer, Charles William Beebe (1872-1962), an American zoologist, was lowered in 1934 to a depth of 923 m (3,028 ft), at that time a record for deep-sea diving. Subsequent developments in deep sea exploration resulted in the design of the bathyscaphe. |
| BATTEN | (1) A thin iron bar which is used to secure the tarpaulin cover over a cargo hatch of a merchant ship. Several of them are used on each cover. When they have been placed in position and are held securely in place by wedges under the batten-cleats, the hatches are said to be battened down.
(2) A thin wooden or plastic strip which fits into a long, narrow pocket in the leech of a Bermuda mainsail in racing and cruising yachts to hold the leech out when sailing. The name is also given to the long, thin strips of bamboo which are inserted in lateen sails to hold the form of the sail. These bamboo battens are also particularly used in the sails of junks in Far Eastern waters. |
| BATTEN DOWN | The process of securing the openings in the deck and sides of a vessel when heavy weather is forecast. A merchant vessel at sea will normally have the hatches of her holds already battened down, though when exceptionally severe weather is expected these can be strengthened with strongbacks. In all ships when battening down, hatchways leading below deck, scuttles, manholes, and other openings such as ventilators, etc.. are all secured with steel covers either clipped down against a rubber watertight joint or, in the case of ventilation trunks, manholes, etc.. usually with a circular plate screwed into the opening. In smaller craft, such as yachts, it is difficult to batten down effectively, except for fore hatches and scuttles, as the companionway to the saloon from the cockpit is normally closed only by wooden doors which cannot be made completely watertight. |
| BATTEN-CLEATS | Metal right-angled brackets welded on to the coaming of cargo hatches in merchant vessels to hold the battens which secure the watertight tarpaulin covering over the hatches. Wedges are driven in under the cleats to hold the battens firmly in position. |
| BAWLEY | A small coastal fishing vessel or oyster dredger peculiar to Rochester and Whitstable, Kent, and to Leigh-on-Sea and Harwich, Essex, within the Thames Estuary area. They were cutter-rigged craft with a short mast and topmast, and set a loose-footed mainsail (i.e., without a boom) on a very long gaff, a topsail. and staysail. The Leigh-on-Sea bawley was used chiefly for shrimping. They are now very largely obsolescent, having been driven out of use by motorized fishing vessels, though one or two still exist as conversions to local cruising craft. |
| BAY | (1) The space between decks forward of the bitts in sailing warships. They were often described as two separate spaces, the starboard and larboard bays;
(2) an indentation in the coastline between two headlands. |
| BAYAMO | A violent squall of wind off the land experienced on the southern coast of Cuba, especially in the Bight of Bayamo. They are accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning and usually end in heavy rain. |
| BEACHCOMBER | Originally a seaman who. not prepared to work, preferred to exist by hanging around ports and harbours and existing on the charity of others, but now more generally accepted to describe any loafer around the waterfront, particularly in the Pacific islands, who prefers a life of dolce far niente to work of any description. |
| BEAK | The name sometimes given to the metal point or ram fixed on the bows of war galleys and used to pierce the hulls, and thus to sink or disable enemy galleys. |
| BEAKHEAD | The space in a sailing ship of war immediately forward of the forecastle. In the older ships of war the forecastle was built across the bows of the ship from cathead to cathead, and the beakhead was open to the sea; there were short ladders down to it from the forecastle deck. while doors from the forecastle itself led directly on to the beakhead. This space was used in warships as the seamen’s lavatory, known as the ‘heads’. In some later warship designs the beakhead was decked with gratings so that the sea, breaking through them, helped to keep the space clean. In the British Navy all lavatories on board warships are still known as ‘heads’. |
| BEAM | (1) The transverse measurement of a ship in her widest part. It is also a term used in indicating direction in relation to a ship, thus ‘before the beam’, the arc of a semicircle extended to the horizon from one beam of the ship around the bows to the other beam; ‘abaft the beam’, the similar semicircle extending round the stern of the ship.
(2) The wooden or metal bar which spreads the mouth of a trawl when used for fishing. |
| BEAM | One of the transverse members of a ship’s frames on which the decks are laid. In vessels constructed of wood they are supported on the ship’s sides by right-angled timbers known as knees, in steel ships by steel brackets or stringers. The depth of a beam is known as its moulding, its width as its siding. |
| BEAM ENDS | A ship is ‘on her beam ends’ when she has heeled over to such an extent that her deck beams are nearly vertical and there is no righting moment left to bring her back to the normal upright position. |
| BEAR | A heavy coir mat loaded with sand and with ropes fixed at either end which is hauled to and fro across a wooden deck of a ship to scour it. |
| BEAR | The direction of an object from the observer’s position, usually expressed in terms of a compass, e.g., the land bears NE. by N., the enemy bears 047 degrees, etc. In traditional seamen’s language it was sometimes given with reference to the ship’s head, e.g., the wreck bore 2 points on the port bow. to bear up, in a sailing vessel, to sail closer to the wind; to bear down, to approach another ship from to windward; TO BEAR IN WITH, Or TO BEAR OFF FROM, to approach nearer or to stand farther off, usually in connection with the land. |
| BEARING | The horizontal angle between the direction of true north or south and that of the object of which the bearing is being taken. When the bearing is taken by a magnetic compass, which is subject to variation and deviation, it has to be corrected by these before the true bearing is obtained. |
| BEAT | (1) The operation of sailing to windward by a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
(2) To beat to quarters, the order given to the drummers on board a sailing man-of-war to summon the crew to their stations for action against an enemy. In the British Navy the drums were beaten to the rhythm of ‘Heart of Oak’. |
| BECKET | (1) A short length of rope whose ends have been spliced together to form a circle.
(2) A short length of rope with an eyesplice in one end and a stopper knot in the other used to hold various articles (boarding pikes, cutlasses, etc.) together in their stowage. (3) A short rope with an eyesplice in each end used to hold the foot of a sprit against the mast. (4) The eye at the base of a block for making fast the standing end of a fall. |
| BECUE | A method of making fast a rope to a boat’s anchor for use on rocky ground. The rope is made fast to the flukes of the anchor and then led to the ring, where it is secured by a light seizing. If the flukes are caught in the rocks, a sharp jerk will break the seizing and the anchor will then come home easily, being hoisted from the flukes. |
| BED | (1) A shaped piece of timber placed under the quarters of casks when stowed in a ship’s hold so as to hold the bilge, the central part of a cask where it swells, clear of the ship’s floor.
(2) Anchor bed. a flat space on either side of the bows of the ship on which, in the days before stockless anchors, the bower and sheet anchors were stowed after they had been weighed and catted. (3) Engine bed, the metal base on to which a ship’s engines are bolted. |
| BEE | A ring or hoop of metal, bees of the bow sprit, pieces of hard wood bolted to the outer end of the bowsprit of a sailing vessel through which are rove the foretopmast stays before they are brought in to the bows and secured. |
| BEE BLOCKS | Wooden swells on each side of the after end of a smack’s or yacht’s boom, having sheaves through which to lead the leech reef pendants or reefing tackle. |
| BEETLE | A heavy mallet used by shipwrights to drive reeming irons into the seams of woodenplanked sides and decks of vessels in order to open them up so that they can be caulked with oakum and pitch. |
| BEFORE THE MAST | The position of men whose living quarters on board are in the forecastle, but a term more generally used to describe seamen as compared with officers, in phrases such as ‘he sailed before the mast’. The days of men having their living quarters in the forecastle, which was their traditional home on board, are now largely past, most ships of any size now providing cabins for their crews. |
| BELAY | The operation of making fast a rope by taking turns with it round a cleat or belaying pin. In general terms it refers only to the smaller ropes in a ship, particularly the running rigging in sailing vessels, as larger ropes and cables are bitted, or brought to the bitts, rather than belayed round them. It is also the general order to stop or cease. |
| BELAYING PINS | Short lengths of wood, iron, or brass set up in racks in convenient places in the ship around which the running rigging can be secured or belayed. |
| BELFRY | The small canopy or shelter supported on wooden brackets and often highly decorated with carvings and gold leaf, which used in older ships to be built over the ship’s bell. |
| BELL | Traditionally a ship’s bell is made of brass with her name engraved on it. It is used for striking the bells which mark the passage of time, and is also used as a fog signal where no other form of audible warning, such as a foghorn or steam whistle, is carried on board. The fog signal is the ringing of the bell for five seconds every minute. When a ship is broken up her bell often becomes a highly prized memento of service in the ship and they frequently command very high prices when offered for sale. |
| BELL BUOY | A can. conical, or spherical buoy, normally unlighted. on which is mounted a bell with four clappers, hung inside an iron cage, which is rung by the motion of the sea and serves as a warning to shipping of shoal waters. |
| BELL ROPE | A short length of rope spliced into the eye of the clapper by which the ship’s bell is struck. Traditionally the bell rope is finished with a double wall knot crowned in its end though why this should be so is obscure except perhaps that it is a neat knot which fits well into the palm of the hand. |
| BELLS | The strokes on the ship’s bell to mark the passage of time on board ship. The day is divided into six watches of four hours each, and the passage of time in each watch is marked by the bell every half-hour, one bell marking the end of the first half hour, and eight bells the end of each watch. In order to prevent the same men keeping the same watch each day, the watch between 1 600 and 2000 is divided into two. known as the first and last dog watches, in order to produce an odd number of watches in each day. Thus the four bells struck at 1800 mark the end of the first dog watch: one bell at 1830 marks the end of the first half hour of the last dog watch; but eight bells instead of four are struck at 2000 to mark the end of the last dog watch. Seamen, when reporting the time, traditionally refer to it as bells. Thus, for example, half-past three is seven bells, five minutes to one is five minutes to two bells, and so on. |
| BELLUM | The long canoe-shaped boat of the Shatt-al-Arab and adjacent waters in Iraq. They are paddled or poled, according to the depth of water, the larger ones being capable of carrying from fifteen to twenty-five men. |
| BELLY BAND | A strip of canvas sometimes sewn midway between the lower reef points and the foot of a square sail to strengthen it. |
| BEND | (1) The generic maritime name for a knot which is used to join two ropes or hawsers together or to attach a rope or cable to an object. In strict maritime meaning, a knot is one which entails unravelling the strands of a rope and tucking them over and under each other, such as in a stopper knot (Turk’s Head, ‘Matthew Walker, etc.) and is akin to a splice in this respect. Bends, which are also known as hitches, have a variety of different forms (reef. bowline. clove hitch, etc.) designed to perform a particular function on board ship.
(2) In sailing vessels, the chock of the bowsprit. |
| BENEAPED | The situation of a vessel which has gone aground at the top of the spring tides and has to wait for up to a fortnight (during which the neap tides occur) for the next tide high enough to float her off. Vessels beneaped at around the time of the equinoxes when the highest spring tides occur may have to wait up to six months to get off. |
| BENT ON A SPLICE | The sailor’s term for being about to get married. The allusion is obvious, a splice being used to join two ropes together to make one. |
| BENTINCK | The name given to a small triangular course for use in square-rigged ships, introduced by Captain Bentinck of the Royal Navy in the early years of the 19th century. Bentincks were superseded by storm staysails, although in many American full-rigged ships they were retained throughout the century as trysails. A Bentinck boom was a spar often used to stretch the foot of a foresail in small square-rigged merchant vessels, thus dispensing with the tack and sheet, a guy on the boom bringing the leeches of the sail taut on the wind. Bentinck booms were widely used with a reefed foresail by whalers during the 19th century as it enabled them to see ahead under the sail when working in the ice. |
| BERTH | (1) A place in which to sleep on board ship, either in a bunk or, formerly in naval ships, a place in which to sling a hammock. A snug berth, a situation of not too arduous labour on board a ship.
(2) The place in harbour in which a ship rides to her anchor or is secured alongside. (3) A term used to indicate a clearance of danger, e.g., to give a wide berth to a rock, shoal, or a point of land, to steer a ship well clear of it. |
| BERTHON BOAT | A folding or collapsible boat, of painted canvas stretched on a wooden frame, invented by Edward Berthon. Their naval use was largely confined to destroyers and submarines as they could be folded away and stowed in a small space, but they also proved of great value for life-saving purposes and other similar uses. |
| BEST BOWER | The starboard of the two anchors carried at the bow of a ship in the days of sail. That on the port side was known as the small bower, even though the two were identical in weight. |
| BETWEEN DECKS | The space contained between any two whole decks of a ship. The term has become widely associated with the steerage of a passenger vessel, the space below decks in which passengers, and particularly emigrants, who could not afford cabins, travelled, often enough in conditions of gross overcrowding and discomfort. |
| BETWIXT WIND AND WATER | On or near the line of immersion of a ship’s hull. It was a term used largely in relation to cannon hits in naval battle, particularly with wooden warships, where a shothole in this position would give rise to a possibility of flooding through the influx of the sea. All wooden warships carried a variety of wooden plugs on board which the carpenter would attempt to drive into all holes made by cannon balls betwixt wind and water. |
| BIBBS | Pieces of timber bolted to the hounds of a mast of a square-rigged ship to support the trestle-trees. |
| BIBLE | The sailor’s name for a small block of sandstone used for scrubbing the wooden decks of a ship, so called because seamen had to get down on to their knees to use them. The better known name is holystone, a name derived from the same source. Smaller blocks of sandstone used for scrubbing the deck in awkward places where the larger blocks would not go were known as prayer-books. |
| BIGHT | (1) The name by which the loop of a rope is known when it is folded, or any part of a rope between its two ends when it lies or hangs in a curve or loop.
(2) The area of sea lying between two promontories, being in general wider than a gulf and larger than a bay, is also known as a bight. |
| BILGE | (1) That part of the floors of a ship on either side of the keel which approaches nearer to a horizontal than a vertical direction. It is where the floors and the second futtocks unite, and upon which the ship would rest when she takes the ground. Hence, when a ship is holed in this part, she is said to be bilged. Being the lowest part of the ship inside the hull, it is naturally where any internal water would collect, and where the suction of the bilge pump is placed. These spaces on either side of the keel are collectively known as the bilges.
(2) The largest circumference of a cask in the vicinity of its bung. |
| BILGE KEEL | Also known as a docking keel, longitudinal projections fixed one on each side of a ship, parallel to the central keel, at or just below the turn of the bilge and protruding downwards. Their main purpose is to support the weight of the hull of the ship on the wooden ways when launching or on the lines of keel blocks when in dry-dock for cleaning or repairs. They are also of service to a ship in a seaway by providing additional resistance in the water when the vessel is rolling heavily, and in a sailing vessel provide a better grip on the water and thus allow her to hold a better wind. |
| BILGE PUMP | A small pump fitted in ships and designed to pump the bilges clear of water which lies beyond the suction of the main pumps. |
| BILGE WATER | The water, either from rain or from seas breaking abroad, which runs down and collects in the bilges of a ship and usually BIRCH 83 becomes foul and noxious. Dana, in his Two Years before the Mast, talks of ‘that inexpressibly sickening smell caused by the shaking-up of the bilge water in the hold’. In the older sailing vessels of the 17th and 18th centuries it was not unknown for men to be asphyxiated by the foul smells emitted from the bilges. |
| BILL OF HEALTH | A certificate properly authenticated by the consul or other recognized port authority certifying that a ship comes from a place where there is no contagious disease, and that none of her crew, at the time of her departure, was infected with such a disease. A certificate of this kind constitutes a clean bill of health; a foul bill of health indicates disease in the port of departure or among the crew. |
| BILL OF LADING | A memorandum by which the master of a ship acknowledges the receipt of goods specified on the bill and promises to deliver them in the same condition as received to the consignee or his order at the end of the voyage. |
| BILL OF SIGHT | A warrant for a custom-house officer to examine goods which had been shipped for foreign parts but not sold there. |
| BILL 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 licence, or custom-house permission, for re-importing unsold goods from foreign ports free of duty within a specified limit of time. |
| BINNACLE | The wooden housing of the mariner’s compass and its correctors and illuminating arrangements. The change from bittacle to binnacle came in about 1750, although the former name did not entirely disappear until the mid- 19th century. The origin of the term would appear to be the Italian abitacola, little house or habitation, and was used by the early Portuguese navigators to describe the compass housing. The French word for binnacle is still habittacle. In addition to the compass and a light, the binnacle in older ships was the proper stowage for the traverse-board, the reel with the logline and chip and the 28- second glass used for measuring a ship’s speed. Charts in actual use, if any, were also properly stowed in the binnacle. |
| BIRD’S NEST | A small round top, smaller than a crow’s nest, which was placed right at the masthead to provide a greater range of vision from a ship at sea. It was chiefly used in the older whalers as a look-out post for whales coming to the surface to blow. With the modern whale factory ships and their fleet of catchers, all now equipped with sonar and radar, such oldfashioned means of locating whales are, of course, no longer used. |
| BIREME | A galley having two banks of oars, used particularly for warlike purposes in the Mediterranean until the mid- 17th century when sailing warships took their place. They were almost invariably fitted with a pointed metal ram or beak fixed to the bow at or below sea level for use against ships of an enemy, the traditional tactic of a galley being to sink enemy ships by ramming them. War galleys had three, sometimes four, rowers to each oar, and in biremes, the two banks were on different levels, one higher than the other. |
| BITE | An anchor is said to bite when the flukes bed themselves into the ground and hold firm without dragging. |
| BITT STOPPER | A length of rope, in the days when ships had hemp cables for their anchors, used to bind the cable more securely to the bitts to prevent it slipping. When a ship anchored and enough cable was run out, it was brought to the bitts and secured by several turns round them. The bitt stopper was then passed round the turns to bind the cable in taut so that it could not render round the bitts. With the general substitution of chain for the older hemp cables, bitt stoppers no longer have any place in modern ships. |
| BITTER | The name given to any turn of the anchor cable of a ship about the bitts. Hence, a ship is ‘brought up to a bitter’ when the cable is allowed to run out to that turn around the bitts or to its modern equivalent which is a Blake slip stopper. |
| BITTER END | That part of the anchor cable of a vessel which is abaft the bitts and thus remains within board when a ship is riding to her anchor. To pay a rope or chain out to the bitter end means that all has been paid out and no more remains to be let go. ‘Bend to the bitter end’ means to reverse a cable, to bend the inboard end of it to the anchor so that the strain on the cable when a ship is anchored now comes on a part of it that has been less used and is therefore more trustworthy. |
| BITTS | In older ships, a frame composed of two strong pillars of straight oak timber, fixed upright in the fore part of the ship and bolted to the deck beams, to which were secured the cables when the ship rode to an anchor. Smaller bitts were fitted in square-rigged sailing vessels for securing other parts of the running rigging, such as topsail-sheet bitts, paul-bitts, carrickbitts, windlass-bitts, gallows-bitts, jeer-bitts, etc. They all served the same purpose, providing a convenient means of taking a securing turn with the fall of whatever piece of rigging was involved. |
| BLACK JACK | (1) The flag traditionally flown by pirate ships. Popular imagination gives this flag a white device of skull and crossed bones in the centre of the black field, but there is no real evidence to substantiate this. W. G. Perrin, an authority on ancient flags, gives the pirate flag as a black skeleton on a yellow field. It is more probable that individual pirate captains designed their own flags, if in fact they ever flew them, to their own taste of the moment.
(2) The name popularly given by sailors to the bubonic plague, whose victims were said to turn black. |
| BLACK SHIP | A description used by British shipbuilders during the days of sail of a ship built in India of Burmese teak. The term presumably came from the colour of the men who built the ship rather than from the type of wood of which she was built, as teak is as light in colour as oak. |
| BLACK SQUALL | A sudden squall of wind, accompanied by lightning, encountered in the West Indies. It is usually caused by the heated state of the atmosphere near land where the warm expanded air is repelled by a colder medium to leeward and driven back with great force, frequently engendering electrical storms of great intensity. |
| BLACKBIRD | An old sea term for an African slave. Hence the term blackbirding, said of ships which were engaged actively in the slave trade. |
| BLEED | The operation of draining out of a buoy any water which may have seeped inside after long use at sea. It was also a naval term in the British Navy to describe the surreptitious removal of grog in transit between the point of issue from the grog-tub to the mess for which it was due. It was carried between these points in a tall monkey, a wooden kid’ or bucket wider at the bottom than at the top, and if a swig were taken en route, it was known as “bleeding the monkey’. |
| BURGEE | A broad, tapering pendant, normally with a swallow tail but occasionally without. Burgees of yacht clubs are normally triangular. of a length twice that of the depth at the hoist, and carry on them the particular insignia of the club concerned. Commodores of yacht clubs usually fly swallow-tailed burgees again carrying the insignia of the club. Burgees, without a swallow tail, are used as the substitute flags in the International Code of Signals. |
| BURGOO | An old seafaring dish mainly of the days of sail, a sort of porridge or gruel made of boiled oatmeal seasoned with salt, sugar, and butter. It had the merit of being easily prepared in the galley during very rough weather and was sustaining enough for seamen to perform the heavy work of the ship. But, like all things easy, it was apt to be overdone, and in many ships it became the daily evening meal of the crew because the cook was too lazy to prepare anything more elaborate, or the owner too mean to provide alternative rations. It thus became an object of dislike and derision among seamen. |
| BURTHEN | The older term used to expressa ship’s tonnage or carrying capacity. It was based on the number of tuns of wine that a ship could carry in her holds, the total number giving her burthen. The term remained as an expression ofa ship’s size until the end of the 18th century but gradually fell into disuse after a new system of measurement of ships, known as the Builders Old Measurement, was adopted by Act of Parliament in 1773. |
| BUSKING | An old term, long obsolete, for a ship beating to windward along a coastline. It was also a term used when describing pirate vessels cruising in search of victims to attack. |
| BUTTOCK | The breadth of a ship where the hull rounds down to the stern. A ship is said to have a broad or a narrow buttock according to the convexity of her hull below the counter. |
| BUTTOCK LINES | Longitudinal sections of a ship’s hull parallel to the keel. It is a term used in ship designing. |
| BY THE BOARD | Close to the deck or over the ship’s side. When a mast carries away it is said to have gone by the board. |
| BY THE HEAD | A ship is said to be by the head when she draws more than her normal depth of water forward, with her bows lying deeper than her stern. Similarly, a ship is said to be by the stern when she is drawing more than her normal depth of water aft. It is a result of the faulty trimming of her internal ballast or a bad stowage of cargo, and can be corrected by transferring ballast from forward to aft, or aft to forward, as the case may be. |