| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| G.R.T. | Gross Register Tonnage. |
| GABBARD | The, a sandbank lying off the coast of Suffolk, England, to seaward of Orfordness, and the name given to a battle of the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-4), fought on 2-3 June 1653 between an English fleet of 100 ships and five fireships commanded by the generals-at-sea George Monck and Richard Deane, and a Dutch fleet of ninety-eight ships and six fireships under the command of Admiral Marten Tromp. The Dutch fleet was sighted at daylight on 2 June but owing to the lightness of the wind it was 11 a.m. before action was joined. Deane was killed at the very beginning of the action. Fighting continued until 6 p.m. when the enemy hauled off with the loss of three or four ships. During the night the English were reinforced by a squadron of about eighteen fresh ships commanded by Robert Blake, and in the morning they steered to cut off the Dutch from their home ports. The wind still remained light and it was not until noon that fire was opened. By 4 p.m. the Dutch fleet was in a state of great confusion and in full retreat, being hotly pursued until it was too dark to see. In all eleven ships of the Dutch fleet were captured and nine were destroyed, 1,360 prisoners being taken. In the English fleet no ship was lost or even seriously damaged, the total casualties being 126 killed and 236 wounded. The action is also sometimes known as the battle of North Foreland, as it was off this point that most of the decisive fighting took place. The Gabbard was the place where the Dutch fleet was first sighted by the English. |
| GADES | The name by which Cadiz was known during the period of its occupation by the Romans. The name occurs in the many histories and accounts of the port up to the 14th century. |
| GAFF | A spar to which the head of a four-sided fore-and-aft sail is laced and hoisted on the after side of a mast. The forward end, against the mast, is built up laterally to form jaws, or pivoted to a wrought iron saddle, to fit round the mast. To hold the gaff against the mast in all conditions. |
| GALE | A wind blowing at a speed of between 34 and 47 knots, force 8 and 9 on the Beaufort Scale. Winds of this strength are usually divided into two general descriptions, a gale when the wind speed is between 34 and 40 knots and a strong gale when it blows between 40 and 47 knots. Gales are associated with depressions, and when the synoptic evidence indicates an approaching depression deep enough to produce gale force winds, gale warnings are broadcast to shipping giving the probable area and strength. Although winds of above 47 knots are officially designated as storms, they are usually still broadcast as gale warnings of force 10 or above. An indication of gale strength winds is also provided by the state of the sea. When the waves are high and the crests begin to break into spindrift, a gale is blowing. Crests beginning to topple and roll over, with dense streaks of foam along the direction of the wind, are signs of a strong gale. See meteorology. |
| GALIZABRA | A particular design of ship used by the Spanish in the 17th and 18th centuries. Galizabras were of similar size to a frigate, fast, weatherly, and very heavily armed. Their purpose was to bring the treasure over from America and the Indies to Spain, sailing independently and relying on their speed and gun power to avoid capture, thus saving the long, slow, and costly process of using the fleet to escort the annual flota. |
| GALLEY PEPPER | The sailor’s name for the soot and ashes which used on occasions to fall accidentally into the victuals while they were being cooked. |
| GALLEY SLAVE | A prisoner sold in the slave market and condemned to serve in the war galleys, where he pulled one of the oars, being secured to his rowing bench by a fetter round his ankle chained to an iron bar at deck level. |
| GALLIGASKINS | The wide breeches worn by seamen in the old sailing warship days, also known as petticoat-trousers. They were most prevalent in the 16th and 17th centuries, but did not finally disappear in warships until the beginning of the 19th century. Being made of canvas, the wide apron-like front was a protection for the men lying out on the yards when the weather was wet. See sailors’ dress, slops, tarry-BREEKS. |
| GALLIOT | Originally a small galley, rowed by sixteen or twenty oars, with a single mast and sail, used in the 17th and 18th centuries to chase and capture enemy ships by boarding in wartime, the entire crew being armed to form a boarding party. During the 18th century it became the accepted term for a small Dutch trading vessel, the hull built barge fashion with a bluff, rounded bow, fitted with leeboards, and foreand-aft rigged on a single mast, often with a sprit. They are still used in Holland and North Germany almost entirely for local coastal traffic in much the same way as barges in Britain. |
| GALLOWS | (1) A raised wooden frame consisting of two uprights and a cross-piece on which the spare booms and spars in a square-rigged ship rested. These booms ran from near the forecastle along the waist of the ship and were used for the stowage of the ship’s boats, giving rise to the name ‘booms’ as the proper place for the stowage of boats on board. (2) A temporary wooden structure erected on the counter of small fore-and-aft rigged sailing craft on which the main boom is stowed and secured when the vessel is at anchor or lying on a mooring. See also boom crutch. (3) Inverted U-shaped iron or steel frames fitted in pairs on one or both sides of a steam or diesel trawler and carrying a large sheave to take the trawl warps. They are colloquially known as “the galluses’. (4) Gallowbitts, a wooden frame fitted in the days when fishing drifters operated under sail and lowered their masts to rest on these bitts when lying to their nets in order to ease the strain on the warp by which the nets were secured to the drifter. |
| GAMMON IRON | A circular iron band used to hold a bowsprit to the stem of a sailing vessel. When a bowsprit is fitted in a yacht, the gammon iron has two metal sheaves fixed on either side which act as fairleads for the anchor cable. |
| GANGWAY | Originally the name given to the platforms on either side of the skids in the waist of a ship, on which her boats were stowed, connecting the quarter-deck to the forecastle. It provided a convenient means of walking from one to the other without descending to the deck level of the waist. By extension it has today come to mean the movable passage way operated from the shore by which passengers and crews can enter or leave a ship when she lies alongside a wharf or pier. It is also widely used to describe the companion ladders, which are rigged down a ship’s side when she lies to an anchor, for embarking or disembarking with boats or launches communicating with the shore. |
| GANTLINE | The modern corruption of girtline, a single whip originally used to hoist to the masthead or hounds the standing rigging which was to be secured there while the ship was fitting-out, and also to hoist the riggers, in boatswain’s chairs, to do the work. The gantline was also used for hoisting sails in square-rigged ships from the deck when required to be bent on to their yards, as they were far too heavy to be carried up the rigging by the topmen. |
| GARBOARD or GARBOARD STRAKE | The first plank on the outer hull of a wooden vessel next to the keel, into which it is rabbeted. It runs from the stem to the sternpost, and is similarly rabbeted into those timbers. The term was also used in wooden ships to describe the first seam nearest the keel, the most difficult of all to caulk. ‘Here is the most dangerous place in all the ship to spring a leak, for it is almost impossible to come to it withinboard’ (Mainwaring. Seaman’s Dictionary. 1644). Similarly, in steel ship construction, the plates next to the keel are known as the garboard plates. It seems to have been a garbled version of ‘gathering-board’ and came into the English languagefrom the Dutch gaarboord, itself derived from gadaren, to gather, and boord, board. |
| GARLAND | A sea term with many meanings.(1) A collar of rope round a mast to support the standing rigging and prevent it from chafing the mast. In the early sailing days when ships only had single pole masts, the tops were circular or semi-circular platforms built round the masts, and that part of the pole mast above the top was known as the topmast. The only mark on the mast above the top was the garland which supported the stays, and that part of the pole mast above the garland was known as the ‘top-garland’ mast, which may have become topgallant. (2) The wreath of carved wood, most often in the form of foliage, which for decorative purposes surrounded the circular ports cut in the sides of the forecastle and quarter-deck of warships for the upper deck guns. (3) The racks between the gun carriages and around the hatches on the gundecks of wooden warships, with holes cut for the stowage of shot, were known as shot garlands. (4) A small circular net extended by a wooden hoop slung from the beam above each mess in a warship in which seamen could stow their provisions to keep them beyond the reach of cats, cockroaches, rats, etc. It would also take a can of beer, rum, or flip since as it swung with the movement of the ship there was no danger of spillage. See also wedding garland. |
| GARNET | A tackle used in a square-rigged ship for hoisting in casks and provisions. It was rigged from a guy or pendant made fast to the mainmast head with a block seized to the mainstay over the hatchway. In some merchant ships the tackle was large enough to be used for loading and unloading cargo as well as provisions. |
| GARTERS | Seamen’s slang for the bilboes, or irons, which were used to secure men under punishment by leg-irons shackled to a long bar. |
| GASKET | A rope, plaited cord, or strip of canvas used to secure a sail, when furled, to a yard or boom of a vessel. In large square-rigged ships gaskets were passed with three or four turns round both sail and yard, with the turns spaced well out. The bunt gasket, which had to hold the bunt or heaviest part of a square sail when furled, was sometimes made of strong netting. In the old seamanship manuals of the 17th and early 18th centuries the word is sometimes written as caskets. The modern term, used in yachts, is ‘tier’. |
| GATE VESSEL | A small ship, often a trawler or similar vessel, which operates the central section of an anti-submarine boom, consisting of submarine nets, across the entrance to a harbour or anchorage in time of war. There are two such ships, one at each end of the central section, and they lower this section of the net to the bottom when required to enable ships to pass through the boom, rehoisting it and thus closing the boom when the ship has passed. |
| GAUSS | A wooden sailing vessel of 721 tons, rigged as a three-masted schooner with auxiliary steam engines, used by Erich von Drygalski’s German Antarctic expedition of 1901-3. She was the second vessel ever to winter in the Antarctic. See also belgica. |
| GAUSSIN ERROR | A magnetic compass error temporarily induced through the soft iron in a ship when she has been steering one course for a long time, or has been lying in one direction alongside a pier or wharf. It can be counteracted by the temporary adjustment of the compass correctors mounted close to the compass. |
| GELLYWATTE | A very old seaman’s term for the boat used by the captain of a ship when he went ashore. By some it is thought to be the original name by which the jolly-boat, which first came into use in the 18th century, was known. |
| GENERAL AVERAGE | A term in marine insurance for the adjustment of a loss when cargo on board a ship belonging to one or more owners has been sacrificed for the safety of the whole, whereby the amount of the loss is shared by all who have shipped cargo in the vessel. A case for general average would occur, for example, if the deck cargo of a ship had to be jettisoned to safeguard the ship in rough weather. There are strict rules which bind a claim for general average; the loss must have been voluntary and not accidental, must not have been caused by any fault on the part of the owner claiming general average, must have been necessary and successful in saving the remainder of the cargo, and must have been made by order of the master of the ship. |
| GERMAN MILE | A sea measurement used mainly by Dutch navigators in the 17th and early 18th centuries. It was equal in length to 4 nautical miles. |
| GHOST | The art of making headway in a sailing ship without any apparent wind to fill her sails. By taking advantage of such breaths of wind as may occur, a well-trimmed sailing vessel can often make quite an appreciable way through the water, appearing to move, or ghost, even in a flat calm. |
| GHOSTER | A light-weather sail set in yachts hanked to the topmast stay for use in very light winds. It is very similar in shape to either a genoa or a yankee, according to choice, but with its luff extending the whole length of the stay instead of short of the masthead as is often the case with a genoa or yankee. It is made of much lighter cloth, usually 6-oz Terylene, than a genoa and is suitable for use in winds of up to force 2 on the Beaufort Scale. |
| GIBRALTAR | A rocky promontory which guards the western entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. It takes its name from Jebel Tariq, the mount of Tariq, which commemorates its capture by Tariq ben Zaid in 711. It was he who ordered fortifications to be constructed on the rock, and these have been enlarged and improved throughout the centuries as Gibraltar became the scene of attack and defence. Gibraltar was captured by British forces under the command of Admiral Sir George Rooke in 1704, almost as an afterthought and in theory in the interests of the Archduke Charles of Austria, but after its capture Rooke hoisted the British flag over the fort. Since that year Gibraltar has been the subject of many sieges, the best known being thatof 1779-83, when its defence was conducted by General Sir George Elliot with great skill and fortitude. After its capture in 1704, Gibraltar was developed as a principal naval base for use by the British Navy, a purpose which it still serves. It has a naval repair yard and dry-docks, and though not truly a port in the context of trade, is used as a port of call and fuelling port by many commercial steamship lines. |
| GIG | A light, narrow ship’s boat, built for speed, originally clinker-built but within more recent years frequently of carvel construction, rowing four or six oars single-banked. It had steps or tabernacles for two short masts which could be shipped when required, setting two lug or lateen sails. Such ship’s boats are a rarity today, the small petrol or diesel engine having largely superseded oars and sails. Some six-oared gigs, originally used for salvage work in the Scilly Isles, are beautifully preserved there and are still used for inter-island races. |
| GIMBALS | Two concentric metal rings which form the mounting and suspension for compasses, and chronometers on board ship. The rings are mounted on knife edges, the bearings of one being fixed fore and aft in the ship’s line and the other athwartships, thus allowing the compass or chronometer to remain level irrespective of the rolling or pitching of the ship. Gimbals are also used to mount table lamps, cooking stoves, etc., in small vessels. The earliest description of a gimbal mounting dates from the beginning of the 17th century. |
| GIMBLET or GIMBLETING | The action of turning an anchor around on its fluke in the days before stockless anchors and when they were stowed at sea on a bed. It was a necessary operation in order to get the anchor into position so that it would lie flat on its bed before being secured for sea. The origin of the term appears to be that the action of turning the anchor by rotating the stock resembled that of turning a gimlet by hand. |
| GIN BLOCK | A sheave in a metal cruciform frame used as a whip for general purposes, such as shifting cargo. They are usually used with a chain rather than with rope. |
| GINGERBREAD or GINGERBREADWORK | The gilded scroll work and carving with which the hulls of large ships, particularly warships and East Indiamen of the 15th to 18th centuries, were decorated. ‘To take some of the gilt off the gingerbread’, an act which diminishes the full enjoyment of the whole. For illus. |
| GIRD | To haul in or to bind something together with the object of securing more space. It is an expression used particularly in regard to rigging and more especially to the rigging of a square-rigged ship, where extra space was needed to brace the lower yards round when sailing close-hauled. The standing rigging of a mast when it reached the hounds often formed a limit to the degree a lower yard could be braced round; if this rigging could be girded in to the mast, extra space for the yard was made and it could be braced sharper. See also catharpings. |
| GIRDLE | An additional thickness of planking secured along the wales, or bends, of a wooden ship about her waterline for the purpose of giving her more stability in the water. It was a common practice in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the art of shipwrightry was still largely experimental, to build ships too narrow in the beam to carry their sail. This was particularly the case when topmasts and topgallant masts became a commonplace and the amount of sail carried increased accordingly. The word was used both as a noun and a verb; a ship was girdled when she was fitted with a girdle. See also furring. |
| GIRT | A ship is girt when she is moored with two anchors out with both cables hauled in so taut that they prevent her swinging to wind or tide. The cables as they grow out tautly to the anchors catch her forefoot as she attempts to swing and prevent any such movement. It is a situation easily corrected by veering one of the cables slightly. |
| GLOBULAR PROJECTION | A form of map making in which the central meridian and the periphery are arbitrarily marked off in equal parts for lines of latitude to be drawn, and the equator equally divided up to accommodate the meridians of longitude. The resultant map shows less distortion of land areas than other methods of projection, but is useless for plotting distances or directions. See also arrowsmith, Aaron; gnomonic chart; mercator, Gerardus. |
| GNOMONIC CHART | A chart of great utility in great-circle sailing based on the gnomonic projection. This is a perspective projection in which part of a spherical surface is projected from the centre of the sphere on to a plane surface tangential to the sphere’s surface. The principal property of this projection is that great circle arcs are projected as straight lines. In order to draw a great circle on a Mercator chart—the projection being a relatively complex curve always concave to the equator—the route is first drawn on a gnomonic chart by connecting the plotted positions of the places of departure and destination with a straight line. Positions of a series of points on this line are taken from the gnomonic chart and marked on the Mercator chart. A fair curve is then drawn through these points, this being the required projection of the great circle route on the Mercator chart. The gnomonic chart became popular with the publication by Hugh Godfray in 1858 of two polar gnomonic charts covering the greater part of the world, one for the northern, and the other for the southern hemisphere. Although it was generally believed that Godfray was the original inventor of this method of great circle sailing, it is interesting to note that a complete explanation of the construction of a polar gnomonic chart, with a detailed example of a great circle route from the Lizard to the Bermudas, appeared in Samuel Sturmey’s Mariners’ Mirror, of 1669. Gnomonic charts are also used navigationally for the plotting of wireless directional bearings which follow a great circle route. |
| GOOSENECK | A metal fitting on the inboard end of a boom of a sailing vessel by which it is connected to a metal ring round the base of the mast on which the sail, spread by the boom, is set. It has reference only to the fore-and-aft sailing rig or to the spanker of a square-rigged ship. The fitting allows for the swing of the boom sideways and is also hinged to allow the boom upward movement. It is a device of some antiquity, being known to Falconer and included in his Marine Dictionary of 1771. |
| GOOSE-WINGS | Originally the clews of a course or topsail of a square-rigged ship used to scud under when the wind was too strong for the whole sail, fully reefed, to be used. With the bunt of the sail hauled up to the yard, only the clews would remain spread. More recently, as goose-winged, a term applied in fore-and-aft rigged sailing craft to indicate the jib or staysail being boomed out on the opposite side to the mainsail in a following wind to present the largest possible area of sail to the wind. The assumption in such a case is that the vessel concerned does not carry, or does not wish to set, a spinnaker, which is the most efficient means of getting the most out of a following wind in foreand-aft rig. |
| GORES | (1) Cloths of canvas which are cut on an angle to increase the breadth or depth of a square sail or to shape the leech of a fore and aft sail. In a four-sided fore-and-aft sail, the leech is always longer than the luff, and some cloths must be cut on an angle whether they are seamed vertically or horizontally. (2) Angular pieces of plank in a wooden vessel inserted to fill up the planking at any part requiring it. |
| GRAIN | A five-pronged harpoon attached to a line and carried on board many ships in the days of sail for fishing, particularly for catching dolphins. The fisherman usually climbed out on to the jib-boom or the bumpkin and drove the grain into the dolphin as it flashed beneath him. |
| GRAPNEL or GRAPPLE | A small four-pronged anchor often used as such in dinghies and similar small boats. Grapnels were also used in the sailing navy days to hold a ship alongside an enemy for the purpose of boarding her by hooking them in the rigging or over the gunwale, and particularly by fireships when attaching themselves to their victims, but when used for this purpose the four arms were barbed like fishhooks. A grapnel can also be used for. Dragging the bottom for articles lost overboard. |
| GRASS-LINE | A rope made of sisal, not particularly strong but with the property of floating on the surface of the water. It has several uses at sea, particularly in cases of rescue and salvage, when a grass-line floated down across the bows of a disabled ship in rough weather can be easily picked up and used to haul across a towing cable. It is used by naval ships when streaming a fogbuoy. It is also of value in small sailing or rowing vessels in a following sea; when a length of grassline is towed astern it acts as a drogue and steadies the vessel down so that the seas pass under her and do not carry her along dangerously on the crests of the waves. Similarly, when a small boat approaches a shore on which waves are breaking, a grass-line towed astern provides an extra grip on the water and helps to prevent the boat being turned broadside on to the breakers, rolled over, and capsized. |
| GRATICULE | (1) The network of projected parallels of latitude and meridians on a map or chart. (2) The scale, traditionally made from filament spun by spiders, inserted into submarine periscopes, rangefinders, and marine binoculars. |
| GRAVE | (1) The operation of burning off the accumulated weed growing on a ship’s bottom after she has been some time in the water and paying over her cleaned bottom with tar. Graving a ship was synonymous with breaming. The word has also given its name to a graving dock, in older days a dry-dock in which ships were graved. (2) The operation of inserting a new piece of timber, known as a graving piece, in place of timber which has rotted in the hull of a wooden vessel. |
| GRAVING DOCK | A permanent dock with walls usually constructed of stone or concrete, and sealed in the normal way with a caisson. The term originates from the old practice of graving a ship’s bottom, i.e., burning off the accumulated weed and paying it over with tar. For this purpose, ships were either laid aground at the top of the tide and graved as the tide fell, or docked for graving, in a permanent dock which could be closed after the ship had entered, and pumped dry, the ship’s hull resting on a line of keel blocks. |
| GREAT CIRCLE | The largest circle which can be inscribed on the surface of a sphere. In terms of the earth, the equator, and all the meridians of longitude, since they pass through both poles, are great circles, i.e., the centres of all these circles lie at the centre of the earth. It follows therefore that any circle inscribed around the earth which has its centre at the centre of the earth is a great circle. These circles are of great importance in the art of navigation. The shortest distance between any two points on the earth’s surface lies along the great circle which passes through them both. Wireless signals, and hence wireless directionfinding bearings, follow the path of great circles. |
| GREAT CIRCLE SAILING | A method of navigating a ship along the shortest distance between the point of departure and the point of arrival, subject of course to no land or other navigational hazard lying between the two points. On any sphere, the shortest distance between any two points is the circumference of the circle which joins them and whose centre is at the centre oCthe sphere. In terms of the earth, this is a great circle, and if it were possible for a ship to sail along the great circle connecting her point of departure with her point of arrival, she would sail the shortest distance between the two. But unless both these points lie on the equator, which is of course a great circle, and along which she can steer a steady course due east or west, she cannot do this unless she sails a continuing curve, permanently altering course to keep herself on the great circle. The theory of great circle sailing has been known and understood almost from the days when it was realized that the earth was a sphere, and it is described in many of the early books written about the art of navigation. But it was of little use to a ship which depended on the wind and her sails to get from one place to another. It was quite impossible for any such ship to adhere to a predetermined course, and she had to make the best of her way according to the vagaries of the wind. But when, during the 19th century, steam began to take the place of sails as the means of ship propulsion and enabled a ship to steer a course irrespective of the wind, the economies of great circle sailing in terms of fuel consumption and time on voyage were quickly appreciated. One of the properties of a gnomonic chart is that a great circle appears on it as a straight line, and a ship’s navigator, if he wants to plot a great circle track on a Mercator chart, which he uses for navigation, needs to join his point of departure and his point of arrival by a straight line drawn on a gnomonic chart and then to transfer a series of positions on this straight line, read off in latitude and longitude, on to his Mercator chart. These positions will then lie on a curve, which he can sketch in. Although he will not be able to steer his ship along this exact curve, he can approximate to it with a number of short, straight courses, known as rhumb lines, which are chords of the great circle and which appear as straight lines on a Mercator chart. If he keeps his ship on these straight courses, always altering course to the next one when necessary, he will be keeping his ship as close as conveniently possible to the great circle joining the two points. By this means he is sailing the shortest reasonable course between them, thus saving fuel and time. |
| GREENWICH MEAN TIME (G.M.T.) | The present basis of all navigational measurement of time by which the results of observations of heavenly bodies are worked out and the position of a ship fixed at sea. It was not until 1880 that international agreement was reached to accept the longitude of Greenwich as the prime meridian from which all time at sea should be measured; until that year many maritime nations had their own prime meridians, resulting in a variety of navigational times according to the nationality of the particular ship whose position was being fixed. That of France, for example, was the meridian of Paris, that of Spain the Azores. Greenwich Mean Time, therefore, now means the exact time which is being recorded at Greenwich at any moment of local time around the earth. This exact Greenwich Time is discoverable on GRENVILLE 355 board ship by means of chronometers, in conjunction with their known rate of change, and/or by the many periodical time signals broadcast by wireless from a multitude of stations all around the earth. |
| GREGALE | A Mediterranean wind blowing from the north-east, usually in sudden squalls and particularly associated with Malta and Sicily. |
| GRID or GRIDIRON | A stage usually in a boat builder’s yard on the water’s edge, formed by cross beams, which is above water at low tide. Flat-bottomed vessels, particularly barges and the like, are floated over it at high water and secured, and as the tide ebbs the vessel rests on the grid where, at low water, her bottom is exposed for repairs or cleaning. |
| GRIPES | Broad plaited bands of small rope used to secure boats on deck when at sea and to hold a ship’s lifeboats steady against the davits. For boats normally stowed on deck the gripes are secured to ringbolts on the deck, passed over the boat, and set up on the other side by lanyards. When securing a lifeboat, the gripes are made fast to the tops of the davits and crossed diagonally outside the boat before being secured to the bottom of the other davit. |
| GROMMET | A ring formed by laying up a single strand of rope three times, and used originally to fasten the upper edge or luff of a sail to its stay. Its place for this purpose has been taken by the modern spring-loaded hank or clip-hook. Grommets have various other uses on board ship and, when the two sides of one are brought together by a serving, it forms a couple of connected eyes, always a useful article to have available on deck. In boatwork grommets are used to hold the oars to thole pins when rowing. |
| GROUND TACKLE | A general term embracing all the gear (anchors, cables, etc.) carried by a ship to enable her to anchor or to moor. By some it is also held to include permanent moorings for ships and smaller vessels including trots, but more usually the term refers only to a vessel’s own means of anchoring. |
| GROUND TIER | The lowest tier of casks stowed in the holds of a ship. Before the days of refrigeration and fresh water tanks, most of the provisions carried for a voyage (beef, pork, flour, etc.. and particularly fresh water) had to be carried in casks, and in view of the very long periods during which a ship under sail alone might remain at sea in those days, sufficient provisions for six months were usually carried. Several tiers of casks were necessary to carry this amount, and they were known as ground, second, third, etc., to the top tier. |
| GROUP | A navigational term which indicates the number of exposures of a fixed navigational light. Whether from lighthouse, lightship, or lighted buoy, in each cycle of operation. |
| GROW | The term used of an anchor cable referring to the direction in which it lies in relation to the ship when a ship is at anchor, e.g., ‘the cable grow?’, a frequent question from the bridge forward on the starboard side. ‘How does the cable grow?, a frequent question from the bridge of a ship to the officer in charge of the forecastle when weighing anchor, for a ship pulls herself up to her anchor when it is being weighed and it is necessary for the navigator or pilot to know where her bows will be when the anchor is a-trip. |
| GROWLER | A piece of low-lying ice floating in the sea in high northern or southern latitudes which is difficult to see from a ship approaching it because of its dark colour. Growlers are formed of blocks of ice which have broken away from the ice pack or from icebergs, and have been blown or have drifted clear. |
| GUARD-SHIP | A warship stationed at a port to act as a guard; in earlier days in the British Navy it was the ship in which men brought in by the press were received. It was usually the flagship of the port admiral. A guard-boat is a boat which goes the round of the fleet at night to ensure that a proper watch is kept on all ships. As it approaches each ship it is hailed by the watch on deck; failure to do so indicates a slack watch and trouble usually follows. |
| GUDGEON, orig. GOOGING | The metal plate carrying an eye bolted on to the sternpost of a vessel which takes the pintle of the rudder to allow it free movement in either direction in those vessels in which the rudder is hung either from the sternpost or the transom. Normally two gudgeons and two pintles are fitted to hold a rudder steady. In almost all ships today, even the smallest, a balanced rudder is fitted and so pintles and gudgeons are not required, since the rudder is fixed to a rudder post which rises through the vessel’s counter. Gudgeons and pintles are today used only in boats and very small yachts. The main value of this fitting, apart from its simplicity, is that the rudder can be easily unshipped when not in use. |
| GUEST-ROPE | A rope thrown to a boat from a ship, either to tow her or to enable her to make fast alongside; it is also sometimes known as a guess-rope or gift-rope. |
| GUN TACKLE | A tackle comprising a rope rove through two single blocks with the standing part of the rope made fast to the strop of one of the blocks. It multiplies the power exerted on the fall of the tackle by three when rove to advantage. Its original use was to run out a gun after it had been loaded so that the muzzle projected through the gunport ready for firing, but being a useful tackle for many purposes it is still widely used in ships and yachts. |
| GUNWALE | (1) A piece of timber going round the upper sheer strake of a boat to bind in the top work. (2) The plank which covers the heads of the timbers in a wooden ship. (3) In modern terms, the projection above the upper deck level of the two sides of a small vessel as a means of preventing the influx of seawater when the vessel heels over. |
| GUY | (1) A rope or tackle used to control the lateral movement of a derrick. Normally four guys are attached to the moving end of a main derrick, two to direct it forward on the port or starboard side, known as the port fore and starboard fore guys, and two to direct it aft on the port or starboard sides, known as the port after and starboard after guys. (2) A rope or wire led forward from a boom as part of the running rigging of a fore-and-aft rigged vessel. In sailing yachts a guy, called a boom guy, may be rigged between the end of the boom and a point well forward when running before the wind, particularly in light winds or when the yacht is rolling in a swell, to prevent the sheet from going slack and the boom swinging excessively; a spinnaker boom nearly always needs a boom guy (or spinnaker guy) because this sail is less under control by the sheet than a mainsail. |
| GYN | A form of temporary derrick used on board ship which consists of three spars with their heels splayed out and their heads lashed together to form a tripod. A gyn can lift heavier weights than sheer legs but can be used only for a straight lift and cannot be traversed as can sheer legs. |