| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| KAMAL | From the Arabic word meaning guide, a navigational instrument of great antiquity, used by Arab seamen in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean for at least six centuries for measuring the altitude of a celestial body. The instrument became known to European navigators through Vasco daGama after he had rounded the African continent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean in 1497. The principle of the kamal, which is the same as that of the cross-staff, depends upon the geometrical properties of similar triangles. The simplest form of kamal consisted of a rectangular board or tablet of wood, to the centre of which was secured a knotted cord. The tablet was held so that the upper and lower edges coincided respectively with the observed body and the horizon vertically below it. In this position the cord was stretched taut to the observer’s eye, and the ratio between the fixed length of the tablet and the variable length of the cord between tablet and eye. Being a function of the altitude of the observed body, gave the measurement. The positions of the knots on the cord were related to the meridian altitudes of a given star appropriate to the latitudes of headlands and harbours along the route. The ancient kamal in a modified form is used even today by the Arab navigators of the dhows often to be seen in the Red Sea and off the East African coast. |
| KAPAL | A square-rigged trading vessel, usually two-masted but very occasionally with three, used in Far Eastern waters, particularly in Malaya, for inter-island trade. It is rapidly becoming obsolete under competition from the diesel engine. |
| K-CLASS SUBMARINE | A revolutionary submarine design produced by the British Navy during the First World War (1914-18). The basis of its design was the requirement in the British Grand Fleet for a submarine fast enough on the surface to accompany the fleet in its searches for the German High Seas Fleet and to dive and attack the enemy fleet with torpedoes when contact had been made. Since the normal diesel submarine propulsion could not produce the required surface speed, a steam turbine was the only answer, and steam requires a boiler to produce it. |
| KECKLE | The operation of covering a hemp cable spirally with old rope to protect it from chafing in the hawsehole, a necessary precaution in the days before chain anchor cables. In the days of large sailing vessels, anchors and cables were normally worked on the main deck, the hawsehole being cut in the ship’s side close to the stem. As there was no hawsehole as such in the modern sense of a sloping pipe, the wear through the hawsehole on an unprotected hemp cable as a ship swung to her anchor was prodigious, hence the need for keckling it. Chain cable was not generally adopted for anchor cables until the third or fourth decade of the 1 9th century. |
| KEDGE | A small ship’s anchor formerly carried on board to warp a ship from one harbour berth to another or to haul her off into deeper water after grounding: also the name by which the spare anchor normally carried in yachts is known. |
| KEEL | (1) The lowest and principal timber of a wooden ship, or the lowest continuous line of plates of a steel or iron ship, which extends the whole length of the vessel and to which the stem. Stern post, and ribs or timbers of the vessel are attached. It could be called the backbone of the ship and is its strongest single member. In the sailing barges of the Thames the keel is a continuous run of oak 16 inches square, an indication of the great strength required in the keel of any ship.
(2) The name of a flat-bottomed vessel used extensively in north-eastern England for loading colliers before modern mechanical methods of handling coal were introduced. They approximated very closely to the modern lighter and have been immortalized in the song ‘We ‘el may the keel row that my laddie’s in’, first published in Tyneside Songs in 1863. |
| KEEL BLOCKS | The line of blocks on the floor of a building slip on which the keel of the ship to be constructed is laid. Also the line of blocks in a dry-dock on which the ship rests when the dock is pumped dry. |
| KEEL-ROPE | Another name for the limber-rope which is threaded through the limbers alongside the keel of a vessel to clear the bilges. |
| KEELSON or KELSON | An internal keel in the form of a stringer bolted on to the keel, to provide additional strength and to support the floors. |
| KELPIE | A sea spirit said to haunt the northern British Isles. Local mythology attributed several shapes to the kelpie, but it is mostly depicted as a horse. It was a malignant spirit whose chief delight was drowning seamen and travellers. |
| KENTLEDGE | The pigs of iron cast as ballast and laid over the keelson plates to provide additional stability to a vessel. If they are laid in the limbers, they are known as limber-kentledge. Following this reasoning, heavy items of cargo stowed low in the holds of a ship as an addition to ballasting during a voyage are sometimes known as kentledge-goods. |
| KEVEL, sometimes known as KENNET | A large cleat formed of two upright pieces of wood usually fitted on the gunwale of a sailing vessel and used for belaying ropes. Kevel-heads are the ends of a vessel’s top timbers projected beyond the level of the gunwale and similarly used for belaying ropes. |
| KHAMSIN or KAMSIN | A hot wind, usually from the south-west, which blows over Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean Sea, normally only in the months of March and April. It is a source of much discomfort, very similar to the sirocco of the central Mediterranean. When blowing strongly it causes sandstorms, sometimes far out at sea. There is an ancient Arab saying, ‘When the Khamsin has blown for three days a man is justified in killing his wife.’ |
| KHIZR | The East Indian deity of the sea. Until quite recently he was propitiated in many small coastal communities by the burning of small wooden boats known as beera, either annually as a festival or before the start of long voyages. |
| KICKING-STRAP | The name usually given by helmsmen of racing dinghies and yachts to the martingale which prevents the boom of the mainsail from rising when it swings outwards, thus presenting a flatter sail to the wind and increasing its driving power. |
| KINGPOST | A short mast close to the cargo hatches of merchant ships from which is worked the smaller cargo derrick. Kingposts are used for loading and unloading cargoes into lighters where normal port cranes are not available or there is no room for the ship to lie alongside a loading or unloading berth in a port. |
| KITE | A fitting attached to a hawser or wire which is being towed by a vessel, designed to hold it at a certain depth beneath the surface of the sea, though in the vertical plane as opposed to the otter’s horizontal plane. It consists of an inclined surface attached to the hawser or wire, the pressure of the water upon it as it is being towed forcing it down beneath the surface. The required depth is arranged by varying the distance from the point of tow at which it is attached to the hawser. It is used particularly in certain minesweeping techniques. |
| KITES | A general name used to describe the additional light sails spread in a square-rigged ship to make the most of light following winds. Originally they included all sails set above the topsails but as the square rig was extended in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the topgallant sail became standard, the term referred only to sails set above that sail, but included studding-sails and jib-topsails. |
| KLIPPER | A larger type of Dutch cargo carrier or barge, about 65 to 80 feet (20-24-5 m) in length, steel built with leeboards and normally ketch rigged when used under sail. These barges are recognizable by the upright stem curved at the top into a form of clipper bow and a round counter stern. Almost all klippers are today diesel driven with only a derrick mast. |
| KNEE | A timber or metal bar fashioned into a right-angle to provide strengthening and support at the points of intersection of ship’s timbers in a wooden ship. They are of various kinds, such as a hanging knee, which fits vertically under a deck beam and supports its ends; a lodging knee, which is fixed horizontally between the forward side of a beam and the ship’s side; a bosom knee, which performs the same purpose on the after side of a beam; and a carling knee, which strengthens the right-angle between a carling and a beam. Knees of ships’ boats, which support the thwarts, or in small sailing craft, which support the deck beams, are preferably fashioned from naturally grown timber in which the grain of the wood follows the right-angle round. Trees used to be artificially bent during growth to provide knee-timber for shipbuilding. |
| KNIGHTHEADS | The name given to two large timbers, one on each side of the stem of a wooden ship, which rose above the deck and supported the heel of the bowsprit between them. In older wooden merchant ships, the name was also frequently given to the two timber frames abaft the foremast which supported the ends of the windlasses. In some smaller vessels the knightheads of the bowsprit were also called bitts, as with no space for separate bitts to be fixed to the deck, the anchor cable was brought to the knightheads for bitting. |
| KNOCK DOWN | The operation of knocking off the hoops of a cask when it is empty and gathering up the staves for stowage until it is required to remake the cask. In the days of sailing ships, casks were a very important part of their equipment, as most food for the voyage and all drinking water were carried in them. All ships of any size in those days carried a cooper on board whose duty it was to maintain the casks in good condition, making new ones to replace any that had been staved accidentally and retaining for future use all parts of casks which had been knocked down. |
| KNOT | (1) The nautical measure of speed, one knot being a speed of one nautical mile (6,080 feet) per hour. The term comes from the knots on the line of a chip log which were spaced at a distance of 47 feet 3 inches. The number of these knots which ran out while a 28-second sandglass emptied itself gave the speed of the ship in nautical miles per hour. As a measure of speed the term is always knots, and never knots an hour.
(2) It is also a generally used term to describe abend or hitch in ropes, but in its strict maritime sense only refers to a tucking knot in which the strands of a rope are tucked over and under each other to form a stopper knot, or a knob or enlargement of the rope, such as a manrope knot, a Matthew Walker, a turk’s head, etc., or a splice, such as a long, short, back, or eye splice. In more general terms, a knot is meant to be permanent, a bend or hitch temporary. The term is very rarely used in this strict definition today and is widely employed to embrace every form of knot, bend, or hitch. |