| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| QUADRANT | (1) The name given to a variety of nautical astronomical instruments including the seaman’s quadrant, Davis’s quadrant, and Hadley’s quadrant.
(2) The quarters of the magnetic compass card are also known as quadrants when they are graduated by degrees instead of by points. Such a compass card has 90° in each quadrant, measured from the north and south points and running to east and west. A compass card thus graduated is known as a quadrantal card. It is a method of graduation of the magnetic compass card which is rapidly becoming obsolete. |
| QUARANTINE | A harbour restriction placed on a ship which has an infectious disease on board or has arrived from a port or country which is notoriously unhealthy. While under quarantine she must fly Q flag in the International Code of Signals, a square yellow flag usually known as the yellow jack, and her crew may not land until either the infectious period (a maximum of forty days in the case of plague) has elapsed or she is granted pratique as free from disease. These quarantine laws originated in a Council of Health held in Venice in the 14th centurv. |
| QUARTER | The two after parts of the ship, one on each side of the centre line. Strictly, a ship’s port or starboard quarter is on a bearing 45° from the stern, but the term is more often rather loosely applied to any point approximately on that bearing. The term is also applied to the direction from which the wind is blowing if it looks like remaining there for some time, e.g., the wind is in the south-west quarter. |
| QUARTER GALLERY | A small gallery on each quarter of a ship, with balustrades in the larger ships, which communicated with the stern gallery. Like the large gallery in the stern, they were used to provide a private walking space for the occupant of the cabin with which they communicated. Also like the stern gallery, they were, in ships such as warships and East Indiamen, highly decorated with carvings. Galleries and quarter galleries first made an appearance in the late 14th or early 15th century and were still in use in the larger warships in the form of a stern walk until the second decade of the 20th century. |
| QUARTER-BILL | A nominal list of officers and men in a warship which gives the action station of every man on board when the ship goes into battle. It was the origin of the naval order to ‘beat to quarters’, the drummers beating a particular rhythm on their drums to indicate that action was imminent and that men must go to their battle stations. In the British Navy, the rhythm used was that of ‘Heart of Oak’. Today, when drums are no longer used on board ship to beat to quarters, the usual order is “Action Stations’, when every man closes up to his station as indicated in the ship’s quarter-bill. |
| QUARTER-BLOCKS | Two single blocks fitted on the quarters of a yard of a square-rigged ship, one on each side of the point where the lifts are secured, through which the topsail and topgallant sheets, and topsail and topgallant clew lines, are rove. Quarter-blocks on the main yard take the topsail sheets and clew lines, those on the topsail yard take the topgallant sheets and clew lines. On board yachts, blocks on the deck at the quarters, on each side of the stern, through which the main sheets are rove are also known as quarter blocks. |
| QUARTER-CLOTHS | Strips of canvas, nor mally painted red, which were fixed on the outboard side of the quarter- nettings, extending from the quarter galleries to the gangways, in sailing warships of most navies. Their purpose was to protect the hammocks, stowed by day in the nettings, from seas breaking aboard. |
| QUARTERDECK | That part of the upper deck of a ship which is abaft the mainmast, or approximately where the mainmast would be in the case of those ships without one. In medieval British warships, the religious shrine was set up at the break of the quarterdeck and was saluted by every man taking off his hat or cap as he passed it. This led to the habit in British warships of saluting on every occasion of entering the quarterdeck, a tradition which is still in existence in British ships of war. |
| QUARTER-GUNNER | A petty officer in the days of sailing navies whose duty it was to assist the gunner of the ship in keeping the guns and their carriages in proper order, scaling the barrels when necessary, filling the cartridges with powder, etc. Quarter-gunners were appointed in each ship at the rate of one for every four guns. |
| QUARTERMASTER | Originally a petty officer appointed to assist the master of a ship and his mates in such duties as stowing the hold, coiling the cables, etc., but now a term more generally applied to the senior helmsman who takes over when a ship is entering or leaving harbour. He is also concerned with the upkeep and use of much of the navigational equipment, such as sounding machines, patent log, lead and lines, etc. |
| QUATUOR MARIA | An old term for the four British seas, those which surround Great Britain. The term dates from the time of Mary I (1553-8) when there was trouble with France over the salute demanded by English ships in the British seas. The four seas are now known as the North Sea, English Channel, Irish Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean bordering the Scottish west coast. Quatuor was the Tudor way of spelling quattuor, which is the better Latin. |
| QUICK FLASHING LIGHT | A navigational light displayed by a lighthouse or lightship in which quick flashes of less than one second duration are shown. See characteristics. |
| QUICKWORK | The planking of a ship’s bulwarks between the ports in a sailing man-of war, and also that part of the inner upper works above the covering board in a wooden ship. See also SPIRKETTING, with which quick work is largely synonymous. |
| QUILTING | The name given to paunch matting secured to the outer planking of a wooden-hulled vessel to protect it against drift ice. |
| QUINTANT | A reflecting navigational instrument, on the same general lines as a quadrant or sextant, and used specifically for making lunar observations. Its arc subtended a fifth of a circle, or 72°, hence its name, and because of its reflecting property was able to measure angles of up to 144°. |