| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| HACK WATCH | A chronometer watch used on deck when taking astronomical sights for navigational purposes. Its accuracy is ascertained by daily comparison with the chronometer. It is a convenient means of taking a sight since HAGUE CONVENTION 367 the chronometer itself is normally retained in a fixed position in a ship and slung in gimbals to keep it level, and can hardly be brought up on deck for use whenever a navigator wishes to take a sight. |
| HACKLE | A process in rope-making in which the fibres are drawn through hackle-boards, blocks of wood or steel studded with steel prongs, in order to get them all lying straight in preparation for spinning into strands. |
| HALF BEAMS | Short beams which extend from a ship’s side to the coamings of the hatchways. Normally a beam extends the whole distance across the ship from side to side, but where a hatchway, leading to the cargo holds, intervenes, only half beams can be used as the whole space enclosed by the hatchway has to be left clear for loading and unloading cargo. |
| HALF HITCH | A single turn of a rope around a spar or other object with the end of the rope being led back through the bight. It is the basis on which many knots used at sea are constructed. |
| HALF SEAS OVER | The condition of a ship stranded on a reef or rock when the seas break over her deck. In this condition she is usually unable to take any action to ease her situation. The expression has passed into the English language to describe the situation of a person incapacitated by drink and incapable of steering a steady course. |
| HALF-BREADTH PLAN | A drawing made during the design stages of a ship showing the deck lines from stem to stern for half the breadth of the hull. Only half the breadth is shown, as the other half is the same. |
| HALF-DECK | Traditionally the apartment or structure on the upper deck of a merchant vessel in which the apprentices were berthed. It was usually in the waist of the vessel, but could vary in individual ships from below the poop deck to below the topgallant forecastle. In its stricter definition it was the space between the foremost bulkhead of the steerage and the forward part of the quarterdeck. In the modern designs of flush-deck merchant ships, the bridge structure right aft would house the equivalent of the old half-deck. By modern extension, the name has been given to any deck which extends over only part of the ship, but this is a misuse of the original term. |
| HALF-MUSKET SHOT | The traditional range at which British ships of the line preferred to fight their battles during the days of the sailing navies. The maximum killing range of a musket was around 200 yards and, in general, British fleets on engaging an enemy fleet would withhold their fire until they had approached to about 100 yards, when every shot fired would tell. It was for this reason that British naval gunners concentrated their fire on the hulls of enemy ships, while those of most other navies, which usually opened fire in battle at a rather longer range, concentrated their fire on masts and yards to cripple British ships before they could close in to what was virtually point-blank range. |
| HALYARDS, HALLIARDS, or HAULYARDS | The ropes, wires, or tackles used to hoist or lower sails, either to their yards in square-rigged ships with the exception of the fore, main, and mizen course or on their gaffs or by their peaks in fore-and-aft rigged ships. The courses, which are very heavy sails, are hoisted by the jeers. |
| HAMBRO, or HAMBER, LINE | A three-stranded small size rope tightly laid up and used for lacing sails and for lashings where strength is essential. It is normally supplied in hanks whereas smaller stuff (twine, marline, etc.) is usually supplied in balls. |
| HANCE | A step where the rail of a ship drops to a lower level in cases where a deck is not continuous, as from poop to upper deck, etc. As such a step, if unfilled, is square and unsightly they were, in the days when most wooden ships were highly decorated with carved work, filled by hancing pieces, usually combined with long drop carvings often in the form of a human figure, to produce a curved instead of a square step. The elaborately carved hancing pieces of the Tudor and Stuart periods (1550-1690) gave way to a more restrained and simplified design in the 18th century as an economy measure. They are not applicable in the modern days of steel ships. |
| HAND | (1) The term used to describe the act of furling the square sails of a ship to the yards. In a strong wind the two leeches of the sail were first brought to the yard since if the leeches were left to belly or fill with wind, it would be impossible for the men on the yard to get the sail in. The order given in a square-rigged ship was ‘hand in the leech’.
(2) As a noun, a member of the ship’s crew, ‘all hands’, the order for all seamen to come on deck either in an emergency or to assist in some operation which is beyond the capacity of the watch on deck. (3) handover-hand, to haul rapidly on a rope or tackle by men passing their hands alternately one before the other and thus keeping the hauling part in motion. A seaman was said to go handover-hand when he went up the mast by means of astay or shroud without using the ratlines. The expression also means rapidly, as, e.g., ‘we are coming up with the ship ahead hand-over-hand’. |
| HANDSOMELY | The order given when it is required to ease off a line or tackle gradually and carefully. ‘Lower away handsomely’, the order when lowering a sea boat or a lifeboat from the davits of a ship so that she may go evenly down the ship’s side and be kept level during the process. |
| HANDY BILLY | The name of a small “jigger purchase or watch tackle, used on board ship for a variety of purposes, especially in handling cargo in the holds. It is rove with one double and one single block and multiplies the power by four when rove to advantage. |
| HANK | (1) A small ring or hoop of metal by which the luff of a jib or staysail is bent to the stays of a sailing vessel. Modern hanks are usually spring-loaded so that they can easily be slipped on or off the stays as desired.
(2) A skein of small line or twine, used on board for small work such as whipping the ends of ropes, passing a seizing, etc. |
| HARBOUR DUES | The amount of money the owner of a ship has to pay to a harbour authority for the use of the harbour and its facilities. It is usually quoted as a charge per ton based on a ship’s gross registered tonnage, or in the case of yachts, per foot of their overall length. In many ports, the bare harbour dues are increased by an additional charge for the use of navigational beacons and lights. |
| HARDEN-IN | The operation of hauling in the sheets of a sailing vessel to present the sails at a more acute angle to the wind. |
| HARMATTAN | An easterly wind which occasionally blows during the dry season (December, January, February) on the west coast of Africa, coming off the land instead of the more normal wind which blows off the sea. It is a very dry wind, usually accompanied by dust storms which the wind has picked up from the desert. It is sometimes also known as the ‘doctor’, as it is cooler than the normal temperatures of the coast. |
| HARNESS | One hand for the ship, the other for yourself has been the seaman’s adage through the ages, but aboard a small yacht battling through the seas in an offshore race, both hands may have to be used in an emergency and it is then all too easy for a member of the crew to fall overboard and be lost astern. With the intention of preventing such accidents the Royal Ocean Racing Club, together with other associations connected with offshore yacht racing, introduced a rule that safety harness must be worn at night and in very heavy weather by the watch on deck when racing. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has encouraged this precaution among all who go to sea in small boats. It is an unwise skipper who permits any of his crew to work on deck at night without some form of harness, attached to part of the yacht. The harness is usually of strong webbing which passes round the chest and over both shoulders, with a length of line having a metal clip on its end for easy attachment to a handy stanchion, one of the shrouds, or any really strong object, leaving the wearer free to use both hands. |
| HARNESS CASK | A large cask usually kept on deck in the days of sail which contained the salted provisions for immediate use. Salt pork and salt beef were usually known among sailors as salt horse because the meat was so hard and unsavoury, and the harness cask was where the horse without its harness was stabled. |
| HAUL | The seaman’s word meaning to pull. Virtually every rope that needs a pull to perform its function, such as the falls of tackles, the sheets which trim a sail, hawsers which secure a vessel to a wharf, are hauled at sea, never pulled. ‘Mainsail-haul’, the order given in a square-rigged ship to haul round the after yards when she is nearly head to wind when tacking. A ship also hauls her wind when she is brought nearer to it after having been running with the wind free. |
| HAWSE | Strictly, that part of a ship’s bow where the hawseholes and hawse pipes are situated through which the anchor cables pass. But it is by extension and in its most generally accepted meaning also the distance between the ship’s head and her anchor as it lies on the bottom. Thus another vessel which crosses this space is said to cross the hawse. When a ship lies to two anchors, she has a clear hawse when the two cables grow from the ship without crossing; when they do cross, the ship has afoul hawse. The normal practice in ships when they lie to two anchors is to insert a mooring swivel between the two cables so that the ship swings in a restricted circle without the cables becoming crossed. |
| HAWSEHOLE | The hole in the forecastle deck, or upper deck in the case of vessels without a forecastle, right forward in the bows of a ship, through which the anchor cable passes. The hawseholes form the entries to the hawse pipes which lead the cables from the deck to the outside of the ship’s hull. Large ships are usually fitted with three hawseholes. One each side of the stem head through which are led the cables for the port and starboard bower anchors, and a third just aft of the starboard bower through which is led the cable for the sheet anchor. Originally, in most wooden ships of any size and also in the early iron ships, the capstan was fitted on the main deck and the cables worked from there, so that the hawsehole was no more than a hole cut in the ship’s side close to the stem on the main deck level. Those were the days before the invention of the stockless anchor, and when a ship was at sea, her anchors were secured on anchor beds, the cables being unbent and stowed inboard. The hawseholes were stopped with hawse bags so that no seawater could enter through them in rough weather. |
| HAWSE-PIECES | In a wooden ship the timbers which form the bow, usually parallel to the stem and through which the hawseholes are cut; in a steel ship, the plates similarly placed. They are strengthened in the general construction of the ship by the breast hooks. |
| HAWSEPIPE | The inclined pipe or tube which leads from the hawsehole of a ship, on the deck close to the bows, to the outside of the vessel. The anchor cable is led through the hawse pipe and the anchor, bent to its end with a shackle, lies with its shank in the hawse pipe when it is hove up close and secured for sea. |
| HAWSER | A heavy rope or small cable with a circumference of 5 inches or more. They are used for a variety of purposes on board ship which require a strong and heavy rope, as, e.g., a warp for a kedge anchor, and for breastropes and springs when a ship is secured alongside a wharf. In smaller vessels, such as yachts which have no chain cable, the rope used as an anchor warp is sometimes called a hawser, even though less than the size normally accepted as the minimum to qualify for the name. |
| HAWSER-LAID ROPE | The description given to rope in which three strands are laid up against the twist to form the rope. It is the normal form of rope used for most purposes at sea. In Britain, most hawser-laid rope is laid up right-handed, or anti-clockwise, but left-handed ropes are sometimes found. Three strands each of 150 fathoms in length will make a hawser laid rope of 120 fathoms. See also cable-laid rope and for illus. see s-twist. |
| HAZE | To make life on board a ship as uncomfortable as possible for the crew by keeping them hard at work at all hours of the day and night, often unnecessarily so. It was the practice of some captains, particularly in the big sail trading ships and barques of the 19th century. To try to assert their authority by hazing their crews unmercifully, even to the extent of inventing work to deprive the watch below of the legitimate hours of rest. Richard Henry Dana, in his Two Years Before the Mast, describes how Captain Thompson used to haze the crew of the brig Pilgrim by turning out the watch below, rain or fine, making them stand round the deck far enough apart to be unable to speak to each other, picking oakum. |
| HEAD | A much used maritime word meaning the top or forward part. The top edge of a four-sided sail is called the head, the top of the mast is the masthead, the head of a ship is the bows (but the ship’s head means the compass direction in which she is pointing). Headsails are the jibs and staysails hoisted at the forward end of a sailing vessel; a headboard is the small wooden insertion at the top of a Bermuda mainsail. The word is also used as a verb in very much the same sense; a sailing vessel is headed by the wind when it swings round towards the vessel’s bows so that the original course can no longer be laid. By the head, a ship which is drawing more water forward than aft. |
| HEAD ROPE | That part of the boltrope of a sail which lies along the head of a four-sided sail. Triangular sails, of course, have no head and therefore no head rope. |
| HEADS | The name given to that part of the older sailing ships forward of the forecastle and around the beak which was used by the crew as their lavatory. It was always used in the plural to indicate the weather and lee sides, seamen being expected to use the lee side so that all effluent should fall clear into the sea. They were floored with gratings so that the sea could assist in washing them clean, though there was always a small working party told off from each watch to clean the heads, never a very popular task and one usually reserved as a punishment for small misdemeanours. The name has been largely retained among seamen, even in these days of lavatory bowls and modern flushing arrangements. See also beakhead. |
| HEAVE-TO | To lay a sailing ship on the wind with her helma-lee and her sails shortened and so trimmed that as she comes up to the wind she will fall off again on the same tack and thus make no headway. Vessels normally heave-to when the weather is too rough and the wind too strong to make normal sailing practicable. A steamship can similarly heave-to in stormy weather by heading up to the sea and using her engines just enough to hold her up in position. The whole idea in heaving-to is to bring the wind on to the weather bow and hold the ship in that position, where she rides most safely and easily. |
| HEAVING LINE | A light line with a small weighted bag at the end used for heaving from the ship to shore when coming alongside; a heavier wire rope or hawser is attached which can then be hauled over by the heaving line. |
| HEEL | (1) The after end of a ship’s keel and the lower end of the stern post, to which it is connected.
(2) The lower end of a mast, boom, or bowsprit in a sailing vessel. The heel of a mast is normally squared off and is lowered through a hole in the decks until it fits into a square step cut in the keelson of the ship, or alternatively is held in a tabernacle on deck in the case of masts which can be lowered, or raised, at will. |
| HEEL | In relation to a ship, to lean over to one side. It is not a permanent leaning over, as with a list, or spasmodic, as when a vessel rolls in a sea, but somewhere between the two. Thus a sailing vessel will heel over when the wind catches her sails, unless she has the wind directly astern, and she will retain that heel until she alters course by coming nearer the wind or bearing away or the wind changes in strength or direction; a steamship will heel outwards, when turning at speed, through her centrifugal force, returning to the upright when the turn is over. When used as a noun, the word refers to the amount, or angle, to which a vessel is heeled. |
| HEELING ERROR | An error in a yacht’s magnetic compass which can be caused when she heels. Whereas most ships’ compasses are stabilized and corrected with small magnets to prevent errors when the vessel is rolling or takes a slight list, the compass of a sailing yacht is more liable to become affected when the yacht heels sharply under the pressure of the wind on her sails. The cause is usually due to the shifting positions of adjacent ferrous metal objects in relation to the compass card, which remains level to the horizon by means of its gimbals. While any error in the compass may have been corrected by magnets when the yacht was upright, this correcting influence can be upset as soon as the yacht heels to port or to starboard, and the iron, steel, or electrical objects causing the error HELM 383 move above or below the compass card. A separate correction card for compass error at different angles of heel may have to be made out. or. If the error is excessive at certain angles of heel, it may become necessary to relocate the compass. |
| HELM | Another name for the ’tiller, by which the ‘rudder of small vessels, such as yachts, dinghies, etc. is swung, and also the general term associated with orders connected with the steering of a ship. Steering by tiller was the general form of steering for all ships, after the replacement of the original ‘steering oar by the rudder, and although the tiller gave way long ago to the steering wheel in all ships of any size, the original helm orders (applicable to the tiller) remained in operation. The steering wheel is connected to the rudder so that the direction of turn is the same as the movement of the rudder, i.e. when the wheel is put over to ‘starboard, the rudder moves to starboard and the ship’s head swings the same way. The reverse is the case with the tiller which moves in the opposite way to the rudder: when the tiller is put to starboard the rudder moves to ‘port and the ship’s head swings also to port. |
| HIGH SEAS | In international law all the area of sea not under the sovereignty of states with a seaboard. For many years various claims had been made by different states on the extent of their territorial waters, some choosing an arbitrary figure such as 100 miles, others the range of visibility, and so on. As the interests of navigation and trade grew, it was universally accepted that the dictum terrae dominium finitur ubi finitus armorum vis applied to the definition of territorial waters, and so the utmost range of a cannon-shot, accepted as 3 miles, was taken as the limit of sea which could be claimed nationally. All sea outside this limit was high seas and open to all without hindrance. |
| HITCH | A series of knots by which cne rope is joined to another or made fast to some object, such as a spar. There are many types of hitches used for various purposes, such as a half hitch, a rolling hitch, a clove hitch, a running hitch, etc. They come within the overall genus of bends, which include all the more common knots in use at sea. |
| HOG | An old-fashioned device for cleaning the dirt and weed off a ship’s bottom. It was formed by enclosing a number of birch twigs between two planks, binding them together securely. The tops of the twigs were then cut off to form a stiff broom. The hog was guided under the ship’s bottom by a long staff attached to the hog and drawn upwards by two ropes, one at each end of the hog. Which was held hard against the ship’s side by the staff. This operation was usually conducted from one of the ship’s boats, hogging lines, the lines attached to the corners of a collision mat to manoeuvre it into position under the ship’s bottom. |
| HOG | The condition of a ship in which the bow and stern have drooped, when she is said to be hogged. A vessel whose mid-ship section is supported on a wave crest and whose bow and stern are poised over the trough either side of the wave is said to be subject to a hogging stress. It is the reverse of sagging, in which the bow and stern are supported on succeeding wave crests with the mid-ship section over the trough between the two waves. |
| HOIST | The operation of hauling something up, particularly a sail or a flag, though the word is used in connection with most things which have to be lifted. An exception is a yard of a square-rigged ship which is swayed up, never hoisted. |
| HOLD | A large compartment below decks in a ship mainly for the stowage of cargo but also, in earlier days, for stowing provisions for a voyage, and often ship’s gear. Sailing warships had holds for the stowage of casks containing salt beef and pork. beer, rum, or fresh water, other victualling supplies, slop clothing, and similar articles, but their holds were relatively small and confined to the space between the orlop and lower decks. In the merchant ship of those days the holds were generally as large as could be fitted on board for the carriage of as much cargo as possible, as the more cargo stowed in the holds, the bigger the return in the freight charges. |
| HOLYSTONE | A piece of sandstone used for scrubbing wooden decks on board ship. Opinions differ as to how it received its name, whether because it was used originally for scrubbing the decks on Sundays, because the easiest method of supply was by robbing churchyards of their tombstones, or because seamen had to use holystones on hands and knees to get a good result. Large holystones were known among seamen as ‘bibles*, smaller ones for use in difficult corners were ‘prayer books’, and these names certainly HOOD 393 came into use because seamen had to get down on their knees when using them. A deck scoured by holystones and then washed down with salt water quickly takes a smooth, even surface and the wood becomes almost white. |
| HORIZONTAL SEXTANT ANGLE | The angle in the horizontal plane between two land- or sea-marks. By measuring such an angle the navigator is able to plot a position circle on his chart somewhere on which his ship may be fixed. A second position circle obtained in the same way, or a straight position line, which intersects the first position circle indicates the ship’s position at the point of intersection. See also navigation. |
| HORNS | (1) The points of the jaws of a boom or gaff in a sailing vessel where they embrace the mast. Normally a boom is attached to the mast with a gooseneck, but in some cases jaws were used instead, as jaws allow a spar to slide up and down the mast, while a gooseneck is fixed in position. A gaff always has jaws.
(2) The name by which the outer ends of the crosstrees of a mast are known. (3) Two projecting bars sometimes bolted to the after part of a rudder from which chains can be led as an alternative method of working the rudder should the rudder head be damaged or broken off. |
| HORSE | (1) The footrope of a yard in a square-rigged sailing ship on which seamen stand when they are working aloft on the sails. It is supported at intervals from the yard by stirrups.
(2) An elevated rod, fixed at both ends and parallel with the deck of a sailing vessel to which the sheets of sails can be led, lateral movement of the sheet being made possible by means of a traveller which can slide from side to side of the horse according to the trim of the sail. Before the evolution of the modern high, narrow sail plan with the foresail overlapping the main, a horse was fitted mainly for use with headsails. In smaller sailing craft, the mainsail sheet is almost invariably led to a small horse fitted on the counter or taffrail of the vessel. |
| HORSE LATITUDES | The areas of the ocean which lie between the generally westerly winds of the higher latitudes and the trade winds, usually areas of prolonged calms. The name is said to come from the throwing overboard of the’dead horse’, most ships on long voyages in the older days of sail taking about two months out of England to win clear of the horse latitudes, by which time the seamen had worked off their advance of pay on signing on. |
| HORSING IRON | A caulking iron attached to a wooden handle so that it can be held in position along a deckseam while another man drives it in hard with a beetle to consolidate the oakum. Horsing up, to harden up the oakum in the deck seams by means of a horsing iron. |
| HOUNDS | Wooden shoulders bolted below the masthead to either side of a wooden mast of a sailing vessel which originally supported the trestle-trees. In smaller vessels without trestletrees, hounds are used to support the shrouds by which the mast is stayed laterally. In the days of large sailing ships the hounds of the lower masts were more properly known as cheeks. |
| HOUSE | In general terms a word meaning to secure or make secure. Thus a topmast or topgallant mast is housed by being lowered until its top is level with the top of the mast next below it and its heel secured to the lower mast by a parrel lashing or afrapping line so that its rigging does not chafe or rest on the cap. Topmasts and/or topgallant masts were normally Cross-channel hovercraft housed when it was expected that the wind would increase into a gale of such force that the upper masts would be in danger. In gales of exceptional severity, topmasts and topgallant masts were struck down to the deck. Guns of the old sailing warships were housed when not in use by being run in from the gun ports and secured by tackles, muzzle lashings, and breechings so that they would not take charge if the ship rolled in a seaway. |
| HULL | A ship is said to be hulling when she drives to and fro without rudder or sail or engine movement. To hull a ship, to penetrate her hull with a shot from a gun. To strike hull, in a sailing vessel, to take in all sail in a storm and to lie with the helm lasheda-lee. This is also known as lying a hull, or to lie a-hull. |