| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| JACK | (I) The national flag which is flown from a jackstaff on the stem of naval ships when at anchor.(2) Pilot Jack, originally the name given to the flag, which was a Union flag surrounded by a white border, flown by ships in need of a pilot. This requirement is now met by ‘G’ flag in the International Code of Signals, yellow and blue vertical stripes.(3) Cargo jack, sometimes also known as a jack screw, an appliance used in the holds of merchant ships for moving heavy pieces of cargo and for compressing cargo such as cotton, hides, etc. into as small a space as possible to increase the carrying capacity. |
| JACKSTAFF | A short pole mast erected perpendicularly on the stem of a modern ship, or at the end of the bowsprit in the days of large sailing vessels, on which the national flag is hoisted in naval ships when at anchor. In many ships the jackstaff has a piece of gilded decoration, a crown or some other symbol, at the top. |
| JACKSTAY | A wire or hemp rope or pendant secured firmly between two points and used as a support. Thus, when using a breeches buoy for saving life from a ship aground, a jackstay is rigged between ship and shore along which the breeches buoy is hauled to and from the ship: when refuelling at sea, the oil hosepipe is suspended between the tanker and the ship being refuelled on a jackstay. When an awning is spread over a deck in hot weather as protection from the sun, it is supported centrally on a jackstay, though in this particular case the jackstay is often called a ridge- rope. Jackstays are rigged with a minimum safety factor of four, i.e., the load supported by a jackstay including its own weight should not be more than one-quarter the breaking strain of the wire or rope used. |
| JACKYARD TOPSAIL | A triangular topsail set above the mainsail in a gaff-rigged vessel, setting a larger area of sail than a jib-headed topsail as both the luff and the foot of the topsail are laced to jackyards which extend beyond the top of the mast and the peak of the gaff. |
| JACOB’S LADDER | (1) Formerly a ladder, with rope sides and steps, fitted on the after side of a topgallant mast where there are no ratlines for ascending the rigging.
(2) A term also used to describe the shakes and short fractures, rising one above another, in a defective single tree spar. (3) More recently, the name of the rope ladder which hangs from the lower boom of a warship to which ships’ boats are made fast in harbour. |
| JAUNTY | Sometimes written JONTY, the slang name for the master-at-arms in a British warship. Being responsible for the good observance of rules and regulations on board ship, and as head of the ship’s police, many seamen used to view him with suspicion and. sometimes, fear. |
| J-CLASS YACHTS | The largest class of racing yachts built under the 1925 international rating rule, sometimes known as the universal rule, with a waterline length varying from 75 to 87 feet (23-6 m). Several yachts were built in the U.S.A. under this rule, notably the three America’s Cup defenders Enterprise, Rainbow, and Ranger, while in Britain equally well known yachts such as Shamrock V, Endeavour, and Endeavour II were constructed under the rule as challengers for the cup. |
| JEERS | A heavy tackle with double or treble blocks used for hoisting the lower yards in square-rigged sailing ships, an operation known as swaying up the yards. A jeer capstan was one fitted between the fore and main masts used for heaving on the jeers, and was also the usual place of punishment in naval ships where men sentenced to flogging were strung up. on gratings, to receive their lashes from a cat-o’-nine tails. In the square-rigged ships of today, mainly used as school ships, auxiliary power is normally used in place of the jeer capstan. |
| JETSAM | The legal term for goods or equipment thrown overboard from a ship at sea. Differing from flotsam in that the goods are deliberately thrown overboard from a ship, for instance to lighten her if she is in danger, while flotsam covers goods accidentally lost overboard or which may float up from the hull of a wrecked ship. In the strict and original legal sense, jetsam is the place where such goods are thrown overboard, and not necessarily the goods themselves, and also implies total abandonment of such goods to a later finder. |
| JETTISON | The act of throwing goods or equipment overboard to lighten a ship in stress of weather or other danger. |
| JETTY | Normally considered to be a solid structure built out. Usually into the sea but in some cases along the shore as part of a port or dockyard alongside which ships can lie for loading or discharging cargo, repair, etc. But in its modern connection, some jetties, as for example jetties alongside which tankers may lie to load or discharge oil, are built out on piles in the fashion of a pier. |
| JEWEL BLOCKS | The blocks attached to eyebolts on those yards (lower and topsail yards) on which studding sails were set in square rigged ships and through which the studding sail halyards are rove. They were also used for the more lugubrious purpose of reeving the rope by which men sentenced to death were hanged at the yardarm in naval ships. |
| JEW’S HARP | A name sometimes given to the shackle with which a chain cable is attached to an anchor. It is always secured with the bow of the shackle outboard so that, when the anchor is let go. The lugs of the shackle do not catch up on the rim of the hawsehole. |
| JIBBER THE KIBBER | An old term for the act of decoying a ship ashore by means of false lights. The art was to tie a lantern to a horse’s neck and hobble one of its legs to give a motion very similar to that of a ship’s light at sea. |
| JIB-BOOM | A continuation of the bowsprit in large ships by means of a spar run out forward to extend the foot of the outer jib and the stay of the fore topgallant mast. Flying jib-boom, a further extension with yet another spar to the end of which the tack of the flying jib is hauled out and the fore royal stay secured. |
| JIB-HEADED TOPSAIL | A triangular topsail set above the mainsail in a gaff-rigged vessel. The peak of the topsail is hoisted to the masthead and the foot is stretched along the top of the gaff, so that the sail just fills the triangle formed by the masthead, the peak of the gaff, and the jaws of the gaff. |
| JIB-OF-JIBS | A sixth jib set as a jib topsail on the fore royal stay in a square-rigged ship. It is a light weather sail only set in a gentle breeze when sailing on the wind. |
| JIGGER | (1) A light tackle consisting of a double and single block, multiplying the power by four when rove to advantage and used for many small purposes on board ship. Originally it was designed to hold on to the cable as it was being hove on board in the form of a temporary stopper when anchors were weighed by hand, but in fore-and-aft rigged ships a jigger was also often used on the standing part of the throat and peak halyards to give them the final sweating up. A boom jigger was one used to rig the studdingsail booms in and out from the lower and topsail yards of square-rigged ships. It is in effect a luff tackle used with a rope of smaller size.
(2) The name given to the small sail set on a jigger mast. |
| JIGGER-MAST | A small mast set right aft in some smaller sailing craft, and a name frequently given to the after mast of a small yawl, though this is more properly called a mizen, and to the small mast set right aft in some spritsail barges. It is also the name given to the fourth mast in a five- or six-masted schooner. |
| JOCKEY POLE | A metal spar used to prevent the spinnaker guy rope fouling the stanchions on a modern yacht of beamy design. The jockey pole runs athwartship from the mast to the guy and is rigged only when the spinnaker boom is trimmed well forward, close to the forestay. |
| JOGGLE SHACKLE | A long, slightly curved shackle used in anchor work to haul the cable of one anchor round the bows of a ship when mooring to two anchors. The occasion of its use is when a mooring swivel is inserted into the two cables to prevent a foul hawse with two anchors on the ground. |
| JOHN COMPANY | A colloquial name widely used to describe the British East India Company. |
| JOLLY ROGER | The name popularly given to a flag flown by pirate ships as seen by the eyes of writers of pirate stories. It was supposed to be a white skull on a black ground, sometimes with crossed bones below the skull. There is. However, no evidence that such a flag was ever flown by a pirate ship at sea. And if there ever were a general flag which might be recognized as a pirate flag, it would probably be the plain black flag which some such ships were occasionally reported as flying from their main masthead. Another version of a pirate flag was said to be a black skeleton on a yellow field, but this may have arisen from a mistaken impression of the imperial flag of Austria, which was a black double headed eagle on a yellow field. During the 18th century a number of privateers sailed under Austrian letters of marque, which were much easier to obtain than those of other nations, and as many privateers, flying the imperial flag of Austria, behaved little better than pirates, the impression may well have gained ground that this was in fact the pirate flag. |
| JOLLY-BOAT | Possibly from the Dutch and German jolle, Swedish 70/, a small bark or boat, though this may be the derivation of the English yawl, or possibly a perversion of gellywatte, a small ship’s boat, generally of the 18th and 19th centuries, used for a variety of purposes, such as going round a ship to see that the yards were square, taking the steward ashore to purchase fresh provisions, etc. It was clinker-built, propelled by oars, and was normally hoisted on a davit at the stern of the ship. When it was included as part of a warship’s outfit of ship’s boats, it pulled six oars on three thwarts. Its equivalent in a ship of today would probably be a skiff. |
| JUGLE or JOGGLE | A notch cut in the edge of a plank to admit the narrow butt of another when planking up a wooden vessel. Its purpose is to make a more watertight joint and also to make it less likely for the butt of the plank to start or spring. |
| JUMBO | The name often used for the fore stay sail in a fore-and-aft rigged ship. It is the largest of the foresails, which perhaps explains the name, and in general terms corresponds to the Genoa jib of the modern yacht rig. |
| JUMPER | A chain or wire stay which leads down from the outer end of the jib-boom to the dolphin striker in a square-rigged ship. It provides support for the jib-boom in staying the fore topgallant mast, countering the upward pull of the fore topgallant stay, jumper stay, a truss stay which leads from the root of the lower crosstrees in a sailing vessel to the fore side of the masthead, given additional spread at the top by means of a jumper strut. |
| JUMPER STRUT | A short metal or wooden strut on a yacht’s mast canted forward at an angle of about 45° which spreads the effective angle of a short masthead or jumper stay. Its purpose is to add stiffness and support to the long mast used in Bermuda rig. |
| JUMPING, or JUMPER, WIRE | A serrated wire leading from the stem head of a submarine to the forward edge of the bridge casing above the conning-tower, and from the after edge of the bridge casing to the stern, used for cutting a way through defensive nets when submerged. Wire nets, buoyed along the top edge and suspended across the entrances to harbours and narrow straits, were used extensively during the First World War (1914-18) as defences against submarines, but when fitted with a jumping wire a submarine could force her way through. |
| JUNK | (1) A native sailing vessel common to Far Eastern seas, especially used by the Chinese and Javanese. It is a flat-bottomed, high-sterned vessel with square bows, with two or three masts carrying lugsails often made of matting stiffened with horizontal battens. The name comes from the Portuguese junco, adapted from the Javanese djong, ship. It is a very old design, with the maximum beam about one-third of the length of the ship from aft, the bow having no recognized stem but being chamfered off. It has no keel, is very full at the stern, and carries a very large rudder which, when at sea, is lowered below the depth of the bottom. The largest junks were built at least to the size of a square-rigged ship of the 18th- 19th centuries, around 3,000-4,000 tons deadweight, and were oceangoing trading vessels from China throughout the western Pacific at least as far south as the Philippine Islands. It was also, for many years, the general warship of the Chinese, being armed with guns on deck.
(2) Old and condemned rope cut into short lengths and used for making swabs, mats, fenders, oakum, etc. (3) The word applied colloquially by seamen to the salt beef and pork used on board, presumably to imply that it was old and ripe to be condemned as in the other meaning (2) of junk. |
| JURY | A temporary makeshift to bring a disabled vessel back to harbour. A jury mast is one erected to take the place of a mast which has been carried away; jury rig is the contrivance of masts and sails to get a ship under way after she has been disabled; jury rudder is a makeshift arrangement to give a ship the ability to steer when she has lost her rudder. |
| JYLSON, or JILLSON, BLOCK | A heavy sheave fitted on the foremast of fishing vessels and used to hoist the trawl off the deck before the codend, the bag containing the catch, is opened. |