| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| PACIFIC IRON | (1) The cast-iron cappings at the yardarms of a square-rigged ship which support the studdingsail boom irons and to which a Flemish horse is made fast. (2) The ‘gooseneck at the deck end of a cargo derrick which permits movement of the derrick in any required direction is also known as a Pacific Iron. |
| PACKET | A shortened form of packet-boat which was originally a vessel plying regularly between two ports for the carriage of mails, but available also for goods and passengers. In the 16th century. State letters and dispatches were known as “the Packet”, and a Treasury account of 1598 gave details of “Postes towards Ireland. Hollyheade, allowance as well for serving the packett by lande as for entertaining a bark to carie over and return the packet x pounds the moneth”. They were essentially mail boats, and were also known as post-barks. |
| PADDLE STEAMER | A steam vessel in which propulsion is by a pair of paddle-wheels mounted amidships or a single paddle-wheel at the stern, driven by reciprocating engines. |
| PAINTER | A length of small rope in a boat used for securing it when alongside a pier or jetty or a ship, at the gangway, astern, or the lower boom. The inboard end is usually spliced with a thimble to a ringbolt in the stem of the boat, the outboard end being stopped from unravelling with a whipping or, more fancifully, by being pointed. |
| PALM | (1) The triangular face of the fluke of an Admiralty pattern anchor. (2) The sailmaker’s thimble used in sewing canvas, consisting of a flat thimble in a canvas or leather strip with a thumb hole. The whole is worn across the palm of the hand, which gives it its name. |
| PAMPERO | A violent squall, accompanied by heavy rain, thunder, and lightning, which blows up with great suddenness on the pampas of the Rio de la Plata plain and frequently drifts out to sea where it blows with the force of a hurricane, the wind usually coming from the south-west. The great five-masted barque France was struck by a pampero in 1901 and later foundered as a result of the damage she sustained. |
| PANAMA PLATE | A metal plate bolted to the lugs of a fairlead to close the gap between them when there is any risk of a hawser or warp jumping out, as for example when a ship is secured alongside a high quay and the hawser comes down through the fairlead at a steep angle. It originated in the Panama Canal where ships have to secure to the sides of the many locks at constantly varying heights as the level of the water in the locks is raised or lowered. |
| PAPAGAYO | A gale from the north-east which occasionally blows with great force off the coast of Central America, often without any adequate signs to warn a navigator of its imminence. |
| PARALLAX | In its navigational meaning, an altitude correction necessary to moon altitude observations, owing to the relative proximity of the moon to the earth. The true altitude of a heavenly body is a measure of an arc of a vertical circle contained between the celestial horizon of an observer and the true direction of the body from the earth’s centre. For all celestial bodies except the moon, their true directions from the earth’s centre are regarded as being the same as from the observer located on the earth’s surface. This is acceptable because of the great distances between the earth and these bodies compared with the radius of the earth, i.e., the distance between the earth’s centre and an observer on its surface. For the moon, however, the angle subtended at the moon between lines which terminate respectively at the observer and at the earth’s centre may be as much as nearly a degree of arc. The parallax correction for moon sights depends upon the distance between the earth and moon, the latitude of the observer, and the altitude of the moon. Tables of parallax for moon observations are normally included in all compilations of nautical tables. |
| PARASELENE | Sometimes known as a “mock moon’, a weakly coloured lunar halo, a result of refraction through ice crystals, identical in form and optical origin to the solar parhelion, which is frequently observed in high latitudes. It is often taken as a sign of approaching wet weather. |
| PARHELION | Sometimes known as ‘mock sun’ or ‘sun dog”, either or both of two luminous spots having a reddish tinge on the inner edge, that appear on both sides of the sun, usually in high latitudes. The effect is caused by the refraction of sunlight within hexagonal ice crystals whose axes are vertical. |
| PARTNERS | A framework, consisting of stout plank, secured to the decks of wooden ships round the holes through which pass the masts or the spindle of the capstan, thus strengthening the deck in these places to assist in taking the strain when the masts carry a press of sail or the capstan is heaving in some considerable weight. |
| PASSARADO | An old name for the rope used to haul down the sheet blocks of the fore and main courses of a square-rigged ship when they were hauled aft. This was done when it was required to sail the ship large. The name may possibly have come from the Adriatic, where a ‘passaro’ was the lacing used to make fast the foot of a sail to the yard of a trabacolo. |
| PASSAREE | A rope used in square-rigged ships when running before the wind, with the lower studding-sail booms rigged, to haul out the clews of the foresail to the ends of those booms in order to get the maximum spread of that sail. |
| PATERNOSTER | The framing of a chain pump as fitted on board older sailing ships before the introduction of steam. It was by the paternoster that the two copper tubes, in which the chain with its washers worked, were held firmly in position, warships of the Tudor Navy to line the fore and after castles. They were usually painted with the heraldic arms of the admiral, captain, or other noblemen on board, and in later Tudor times were extended to line the waist of the ship as well as the fore and after castles. They were primarily intended as a protection for men on deck against small shot from enemy ships, and were made of poplar, which did not splinter when pierced. Later they became much more of a form of ship decoration than of protection in days when warships were highly carved, gilded, and painted. They were copied from the shield protection which lined the gunwales of the Viking long ships. |
| PAWLS | A series of metal dogs, hinged at one end, at the bottom of the barrel of a capstan, which drop into scores in a pawl-ring round the capstan at deck level and prevent it from taking charge and overrunning when being used for weighing an anchor or lifting a heavy load. |
| PAY | (1) To pour hot pitch into a deck or side seam after it has been caulked with oakum, in order to prevent the oakum getting wet. (2) To dress a mast or yard in a sailing vessel with tar or varnish, or with tallow in the case of masts on which sails are frequently hoisted or lowered. (3) To cover the bottom of a vessel with, in older days, a mixture of sulphur, rosin, and tallow or in modern days, an antifouling mixture. |
| PAY OFF | (1) A sailing vessel’s head pays off when it falls further off the direction of the wind and drops to leeward. It is a term used particularly in relation to tacking when the bows of the ship have crossed the wind and she continues to turn away from the wind until she reaches the position when her sails are full and drawing. (2) To close the accounts of a naval ship when she reaches the end of a commission and all officers and men receive the balance of all pay owing to them, or in the case of a merchant ship, to close the accounts at the end of a voyage. |
| PAY OUT | The act of slackening a cable or rope so that it can run out freely to a desired amount. It differs from casting off in that when a rope or cable is paid out it is re-secured in a new position, when it is cast off it is let go completely. |
| PEAK | (1) The upper, after corner of the four sided fore-and-aft sail extended by a gaff. The halyards used to hoist the outer end of a gaff sail are known as peak halyards. For illus. see sail. (2) The bill or end of the palm of an anchor; the ‘k’ is not pronounced when used in connection with an anchor and the word is often written as pea. |
| PEGGY-MAST | Sometimes written as pegy-, pygy-, or pege-mast, occasionally a short mast or, more usually, a yard, to which a pennon was attached in very early warships. It was current during the 15th century but had fallen into disuse by the mid- 16th century with the growth in the size of ships and consequently in the number of places from which a pennon could be flown. In the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer for Scotland for 1496, there is an entry for “one barel of pyk (pitch) and one pegy mast to the said schip’. |
| PELORUS | A circular ring fitted to the rim of a compass bowl and carrying two sighting vanes, used for the taking of azimuths (bearings) of celestial objects. The ring can be easily revolved and the compass bearing read off by sighting the vanes on the required object. Alternatively, the ring can be fitted to a ‘dumb’ compass which can be set by hand to the course of the ship before taking a bearing. |
| PENDANT | (1) A strop, or short length of rope or wire with a thimble spliced into the end, fixed on each side of the main- and foremasts of a square-rigged ship just below the shrouds, and to which the main and fore tackles were hooked. They received their name as they hung vertically downwards as low as the catharpings. (2) Any length of rope or wire used in those places where it is required to transmit the power of a purchase to a distant object. Generally they have a thimble or a block spliced into one end. They usually also have a qualifying name attached to indicate their use, as a cat pendant, used in catting an anchor, a mooring pendant, used to haul the end of a chain cable round the bows of a ship when two anchors are down and it is required to insert a mooring swivel. |
| PENDANT | Sometimes written and always pronounced pennant, a narrow tapering flag used for signaling or to designate some particular purpose. There are ten numbered pendants and fourteen special pendants used in British naval signaling, and ten numbered pendants and an answering pendant in the International Code of Signals. |
| PENNON | A long, coloured streamer flown from the mastheads or yardarms of warships in the 15th and 16th centuries on occasions of state or national importance. Although it is not particularly a naval word, naval pennons are very much longer than those flown ashore, being on occasions as much as 60-80 feet in length. |
| PERISCOPE | A long metal tube containing an arrangement of lenses and prisms which magnifies and deflects the light vertically downwards and into the eye of an observer below. Their naval use is particularly in submarines, and their employment gives the ability to see above the surface when the submarine is submerged, the periscope being capable of being raised or lowered by hydraulic power as required. A periscope normally extends to a distance of about 40 feet above the hull of the submarine, and this governs the maximum depth (known as periscope depth) at which it can be used. |
| PETTY OFFICER | The naval equivalent of the rank of sergeant in military forces. In the British Navy they are divided into two grades, chief petty officer and petty officer. The word petty comes from the French petit, small. |
| PHOSPHORESCENCE | A glowing condition of the sea when the surface is broken by a wave, the dipping of oars, the bow wave and wake of a ship, etc. The cause of phosphorescence is not completely established but is generally considered to be a secretion emitted by jellyfish and other similar dwellers in the sea when disturbed. Which emits light through oxidization when the surface of the sea is broken. It is known that many deep sea fish can become phosphorescent when excited, and in some varieties of mollusc the secretion of a glandular organ not only glows through the transparent body but continues to glow after being ejected into the water. |
| PICKLE | (1) The salt brine in which beef and pork was immersed in casks to preserve it for use as daily rations in the days of sail. (2) The salting of naval timber for masts and yards in dockyards by letting it float in seawater in mast docks or mast ponds in order to improve its durability and strength. Occasionally chloride of zinc was used for this purpose. |
| PIER | A structure, usually of timber and supported on wooden piles, built out into the sea at seaside resorts as an attraction for holidaymakers and for excursion steamers to come alongside. Some jetties, which basically are solid structures, were named piers, particularly where two of them may form the arms embracing a small harbour, just as some piers, which basically are open structures, may be called jetties, as for example some jetties alongside which tankers may lie to load or discharge oil. |
| PIERHEAD JUMP | An expression indicative of joining a ship at the last possible moment because of a sudden and unexpected appointment to her. Charles Powell, the central character in Joseph Conrad’s novel Chance, entered into a new world of experience with a totally unexpected pierhead jump into the ship Ferndale. |
| PILE-DRIVER | (1) A machine, normally worked by steam or compressed air, used to drive piles into the ground. Though by no means exclusively maritime, it has a considerable nautical use in dock and harbour construction, coastal defences against the sea, and for similar uses. (2) A name given to a ship which, by reason of her short length, cannot ride two consecutive waves and pitches violently into the second. |
| PILLAGE | By an ancient law of the sea. The right of the captors of a ship taken in prize to take to themselves everything found above the main deck except the furniture and guns of the vessel. It was a right which, not unnaturally, could lead to great abuse as, in the heat and excitement of capture, there were few to swear what was, or was not, found above the main deck. In many cases the holds of captured ships were broken open and the contents strewn on the upper deck, to be picked up a moment later and claimed as pillage. |
| PILLOW | A block of timber fixed to the deck of a sailing vessel just inside the bow on which the inner end of the bowsprit was supported. Its use was to take any wear on the deck caused by the working of the bowsprit. |
| PILOT | A qualified coastal navigator taken on board a ship at a particular place for the purpose of conducting her into and from a port or through a channel, river, or approaches to a port. In all maritime nations the jurisdiction over pilots is invested in national authorities who specify the conditions under which pilots must be taken on board and the pilotage fees to be charged. In many ports and navigable waterways, local regulations make it compulsory for ships over a certain size to embark a pilot. |
| PILOTAGE | From the Dutch peillood, sounding lead, the act of navigating a vessel coastwise, especially when the land is close aboard and the water shallow. The expert pilot is able to navigate his vessel in and out of harbour using his local knowledge of the disposition of channels and shoals and their land- and sea-marks; and of tides and currents and other factors which influence safe navigation. At most harbours licensed pilots are available, and the services of these expert craftsmen are invariably engaged by masters of vessels who are unfamiliar with local conditions. |
| PINCH | The operation of sailing a vessel so close to the wind that the luffs of the sails are continually lifting. There are obviously some few occasions when it is desirable to pinch a sailing vessel, as for instance when it would be possible by pinching a little to fetch a mark or other desired point of sailing without having to make a tack, but in general a sailing vessel loses speed quite considerably when she is being pinched. |
| PINK | A small square-rigged ship with a narrow and overhanging stern, often used for the carriage of masts. In the 15th and 16th centuries the name was loosely applied to all small ships with narrow sterns, a fairly common design in those days, and later was adopted by the Danish Navy to describe a small warship in which the stern was broadened out at upper deck level to accommodate quarter guns, though still remaining narrow below. Before the days of motor and steam herring drifters, the Dutch herring boats from Scheveningen were also called pinks. |
| PINNACE | (1) A small vessel of about 20 tons dating from the 16th century, with two masts normally square-rigged on both but occasionally with a lugsail on the main. Later the square rig was abandoned for a schooner rig. They carried oars as well as sails and were used frequently as advice boats taking messages from a senior officer to other ships under his command. They were also used, perhaps a little recklessly, as small ships accompanying the early voyages of exploration, and although in his Principal Navigations Hakluyt describes the small Squirrel in which Sir Humphrey Gilbert lost his life on his return from Newfoundland in 1583 as a frigate, she was more accurately a pinnace. See also fox, Luke. (2) A ship’s boat which, in the days of sailing ships, was rowed with eight oars but later was increased in length to accommodate sixteen oars. The larger variety were able to step a mast when required and set a sloop rig. They were discarded as ships’ boats when the small petrol or diesel engines were developed to provide motive power in place of oars and sails. |
| PINTLE | A vertical metal pin attached to the leading edge of the rudder of a small boat. Normally two pintles are fitted to such a rudder, and they drop into gudgeons, or rings, fixed to the boat’s stern, when the rudder is placed, or hung, in position. This method of hanging a rudder allows it to be swung as desired through the use of the tiller. An advantage of this form of hanging a rudder is that it can be unshipped when not required. |
| PIPE | Another name for the boatswain’s whistle, on which, in naval ships, a call was piped as a prelude to an order to the crew. Many orders had their own particular cadences on the pipe, by which they were identified. The pipe was of silver and worn by boatswain’s mates on a long silver chain around their necks. |
| PIPE | The operation of making a call on a boatswain’s pipe or whistle. In naval ships, a call on the pipe normally preceded any order given to the crew, usually with a particular cadence to identify particular orders. |
| PIPE COT | A hinged cot fitted in many yachts and small vessels where the space available does not permit the inclusion of a fixed bunk. When not in use they are folded up and secured against the vessel’s side. |
| PIPE DOWN | The call on the boatswain’s pipe, made last thing at night in a naval vessel, for the hands to turn in, for silence on the mess-decks, and for the lights to be extinguished. It is also a term used by sailors when they want to stop a man talking or making a nuisance of himself. |
| PIRACY | The act of taking a ship on the high seas from the possession or control of those lawfully entitled to it. The operative word in that definition is ‘lawfully’, as the international law of the sea accepts the declaration, by a belligerent power, of a state of blockade as a legitimate reason for the detention of any ship, whether neutral or belligerent, suspected of carrying contraband. Without that legal right, every such act would by definition rank as piracy. |
| PITCH | A ship pitches when a wave lifts her bows and then, after passing down her length, subsequently lifts her stern, giving her a fore and aft motion. |
| PLAIN SAILING | An expression which has come into the English language to mean anything that is straightforward and easy. The origin of the term arose from the plane charts of the 16th century which were drawn on the assumption that the earth was flat, even though by then all navigators knew that it was not. It was not until the first Mercator chart was produced in 1569 that the solution to the chartmaking problem of how to draw meridians as parallel lines without distorting the navigational process was solved, but for more than a century after Mercator, most navigators continued to use plane charts for their navigation, usually explaining their errors in longitude calculation on an easily invented ocean current. The use of these charts was known as plane sailing, often written as plain sailing, and since the use of this type of chart did not involve any calculations to convert departure into difference of longitude, it was obviously easier for the navigator. |
| PLANK SHEER | The outermost deck plank covering the gunwale of a wooden vessel or the plank covering the timber heads of the frames when they are brought up above the level of the gunwale. Another name for the plank sheer, particularly in the construction of yachts, is covering board. |
| PLAT | (1) From the verb, to plait or weave, braided rope which used to be made from foxes and wound round the cable where it lay in the hawse holes to protect it from wear when the ship rode to her anchor in a rough sea. This was, of course, before the days of chain cable and referred only to the hemp cables used in those days. (2) From the verb to plot, in the sense of plotting a ship’s ‘course or position on a chart, an old name. c. 1 7th century, for a chart or map, usually, but not necessarily, engraved. ‘Thence home, and took my Lord Sandwiches Draught of the Harbour of Portsmouth down to Ratcliffe to one Burston, to make a plat for the King and another for the Duke and another for himself which will be very neat.’ S. Pepys, Diary, 18 February 1665. |
| PLATE | (1) The steel sheets used in the construction of a ship and riveted to the frames and deck beams to form the sides and decks. In most modern ship construction, the plates are welded together instead of being riveted. Armour plate, the thick plates of case-hardened steel used for side, deck, and turret armour in the construction of warships. (2) The name sometimes given to the dagger- or centre board of a sailing boat. (3) A strip of bronze or iron bolted to the sides of a sailing vessel and carrying the lower deadeyes of each pair of shrouds, if the standing rigging is secured by deadeyes and lanyards, or the lower ends of the rigging screws if these are used. They are more generally known as chain-plates. |
| PLEDGET | A string of oakum rolled from the picked fibre and ready for use in the caulking of a deck or side seam of a wooden vessel. It is inserted into the seam after it has been opened with a reeming iron, rammed hard home, and then payed with pitch to make a watertight joint between the planks. |
| PLIMSOLL MARK or LINE | A mark painted on the sides of British merchant ships which indicates the draught levels to which a ship may be loaded with cargo for varying conditions of season and location. The Plimsoll Mark shows six loading levels, those which may be used in tropical fresh water; fresh water; tropical sea water; summer, sea water; winter, sea water; and winter, North Atlantic, for vessels under 100 metres (330 ft) in length. This mark is accompanied by another, consisting of a circle bisected by a horizontal line with letters which indicate the registration society. In Britain, these are normally LR, indicating Lloyd’s Register. The horizontal line on the registration mark indicates the summer freeboard and so is in line with the level marked S on the Plimsoll Mark. The Plimsoll Mark was made compulsory in Britain under the conditions of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1876. Passed after a long and bitter parliamentary struggle conducted by Samuel Plimsoll, M.P. a champion of better conditions for seamen. |
| PLOTTING SHEET | A sheet of plain or squared paper on which a navigator plots position lines obtained from nautical astronomical observations to facilitate finding his ship’s position. Since the scale of most navigational ocean charts is too small to allow of accurate results when used for plotting position lines, navigators generally use a plotting sheet on which they can select the most convenient scale, say one inch to one mile, with which to plot their intercepts and position lines. By using such a scale, either the differences of longitude and latitude or the bearing and distance between the ship’s dead reckoning and observed positions can be accurately measured off on the plotting sheet and then transferred direct to the chart. |
| PLUG | (1) A tapering piece of wood or a screwed metal stopper, used to stop the drain hole in the bottom of a small boat. Warships of the sailing navy carried a number of wooden plugs of varying sizes to stop the shot holes after battle, particularly those below the waterline. It was one of the carpenter’s duties after battle to inspect the hull for shot holes and hammer home the plugs. (2) The name given to the pattern, or male former, on which the hulls of small craft, such as yachts and harbour boats, are moulded in fibre glass. |
| POINT | A division of the circumference of the magnetic compass card, which is divided into thirty-two points, each of 1 1° 15?. The compass card shows four cardinal points (N., S., E., W.) and four half cardinal points (NE, SE, SW, NW.), the remaining twenty-four divisions being full points. Each point on the card is subdivided into half and quarter points. When boxing the compass, the points are always read from the cardinals and half-cardinals, and the points and their nomenclature, from north to east, in the first, or north-east, quadrant of the card, are N., N. by E., NNE., NE. by N., NE., NE. by E., ENE., E. by N., E. and so on for the other quadrants. |
| POINT | The operation of tapering the end of a rope to prevent it becoming fagged out and also to make it morehandy for reeving through a block. The rope is unlayed for a short distance from the end and the strands gradually thinned down until they finish in a point. The length of the pointing is then whipped with a West Country whipping to hold the strands together. |
| PONTOON | (1) A flat-bottom boat often used as a lighter or ferry. (2) A boat of special design to support a temporary road or foot bridge across a river. (3) A hollow, watertight structure used in salvage for its lifting power when the water it contains is pumped out. (See also caisson.) (4) A floating structure frequently used at the ends of fixed piers or alongside quays so that it rises and falls with the tide to provide ease of access.(5) A low, flat vessel fitted with cranes, tackles, and capstans which was used in the days of sail to haul down, or careen, ships for bottom cleaning or repair. |
| POOP | From the Latin puppis, stern, the name given to the short, after most deck raised above the quarterdeck of a ship. In square-rigged ships it formed the roof of the coach, or round house, where the master normally had his cabin. Only the larger sailing ships had poops, but the name has survived and is often used to describe any raised deck right aft in the ship. It is, in fact, sometimes wrongly used to describe that part of the deck which lies at the after end of a ship, regardless of whether raised or not. |
| POOP | A ship is pooped, or pooping, when a heavy sea breaks over her stern or quarter when she is scudding before the wind in a gale. It is a situation of considerable danger, particularly in a ship heavily laden, as it usually comes about when the speed of the ship is approximately the same as the speed of the following sea, so that the rudder has little or no grip on the sea. In such cases, a sea which poops a ship is very apt to swing her off course until she is broadside on the sea, with the danger of rolling over. It is dangerous also in smaller craft, such as yachts, as a pooping sea will bring a great weight of water inboard. The danger of being pooped in a heavy following sea can always be reduced by slowing down the ship’s speed in relation to the speed of the sea by towing a drogue. |
| POOP ROYAL | A short deck above the after end of the poop seen in many French and Spanish warships during the days of sailing navies, where the master or pilot had his cabin. It was known to English shipwrights as a topgallant poop, possibly because the gunports were usually decorated with garlands, a typical English practice with regard to upper deck gunports. Some of the largest British warships incorporated this deck to accommodate the upper coach. |
| PORT | (1) The name of the left-hand side of a vessel as viewed from aft. The name probably owes its derivation to the fact that the old fashioned merchant ships had a loading, or lading, port on their left-hand side, and the later sailing warships also had their entry port on that side. Originally, the left-hand side of the ship was known as the larboard side, but this was changed officially to port in 1844 to avoid any confusion with the similar sounding starboard, or right-hand, side. But the word port had been used for this purpose very much earlier than this, and Rear Admiral Robert Fitzroy is usually credited with its introduction into the British Navy in H.M.S. Beagle in 1828. Mainwaring, in his Seaman’s Dictionary (1625), indicates the use of the word for helm orders some 300 years earlier, and has: ‘Port. Is a word used in Conding the Ship . . . they will use the word steddy a-port, or Steddy a-Starboard.’ The theory that the word port was chosen to replace larboard because a vessel burns a red light the colour of port wine—at night on her left-hand side is demonstrably false, as the word port was used in this connection long before ships burned navigation lights at night. (2) A harbour with facilities for berthing ships, embarkation and disembarkation of passengers, and the loading and unloading of cargo. |
| PORT GYBE | A fore-and-aft rigged sailing vessel is sometimes said to be on the port gybe, instead of on the port tack, when the wind comes from abaft the beam on the port side. |
| PORT SILLS or CILLS | The name given to the lengths of timber used for lining the top and bottom edges of the gunports in sailing men-of war. |
| PORT TACK | The situation of a sailing vessel with her sails trimmed for a wind which comes over the port side of the vessel. Although the verb ‘to tack’ postulates a vessel sailing close hauled, a vessel on any point of sailing is on the port tack if the wind comes over her port side. |
| PORT-LAST or PORTOISE | A word meaning level with the gunwale, in connection with the yards of a sailing vessel. An order to ‘lower the yards a port last, or a portoise’ was to lower them down to the gunwale. For a ship to ride a port last or a portoise was for her to ride out a gale with her lower yards struck down. |
| PORTS | Square holes cut in the sides of the sailing ships of war through which the guns were fired, or for other purposes such as bridle-ports in the bows, entry ports in the waist, and stern ports between the stern timbers. When not in use they were closed by port-lids which were hinged along the top edge. This term is often wrongly applied to the circular openings in the sides of modern ships with a hinged glass ‘window’ and an inner metal deadlight for use in heavy weather. The uninitiated often call these portholes; the proper term is scuttle. |
| POSITION LINE | A line drawn on a chart or plotting sheet, as a result of a bearing or sight, on which the ship from which the bearing or sight is taken must lie. A position line is usually indicated by a single arrow head at each end, this serving to distinguish it from other lines on the chart or plotting sheet. |
| POUCHES | An old name for the small bulkheads, often temporary, erected in the holds of a cargo ship when a shifting cargo, such as corn or coal, is taken on board, their purpose being to prevent movement of the cargo when the ship rolls or pitches. In the older sailing days, pouches were fitted in warships before they were careened for bottom cleaning so that the shingle ballast which most of them carried, shifted by hand to help heel the ship, should not run back to the centre line. |
| PRAAM, PRAM, or PRAME | (1) A small two or three masted ship used by the French for coast defence purposes during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793-1815). They were flat-bottomed, drew very little water, and carried from ten to twenty guns, being used as floating batteries or gunboats as a defence against coastal raids or assaults. The majority were ketchrigged. (2) A lighter used in Holland and in the Baltic for loading and unloading merchant vessels lying at anchor in the ports. They were first mentioned in this role as far back as the 14th century. (3) A small ship’s boat of the 16th- 18th centuries.4) A dinghy usually used as a small tender to a yacht, frequently with a truncated or sawn-off bow. |
| PRATIQUE | A certificate given to a ship when she arrives from a foreign port when the port health officer of the port of arrival is satisfied that the health of all on board is good and that there are no cases of notifiable diseases in the ship. A ship remains in quarantine on arrival in port until she has been granted her certificate of pratique. |
| PREVENTER | The name given to any additional rope or wire rigged temporarily to back up any standing rigging in a ship in heavy wind and weather. It is most usually associated with sailing vessels, and particularly with the mast stays of such ships. |
| PREVENTIVE SERVICE | The official name in Britain during the 17th. 18th. and 19th centuries of the establishment of coastguards and customs round the coasts for the prevention of smuggling. All other nations had, of course, similar establishments. It was in Britain both shore and sea based, revenue cutters being used at sea to run down and examine vessels suspected of carrying and landing goods which had not paid the customs duties. |
| PRICK | (1) The operation of sewing an additional central seam between the two seams which are normally employed to join the cloths of a sail. This was normally only done when the sails were worn and the original stitching weakened by long wear. See sailmaker’s stitch. (2) Also the operation of rolling up leaf tobacco in canvas and serving it with tarred twine to compress it as solidly as possible; when matured and cut with a knife it was a favourite smoke or chew of old tars. Those prepared to sacrifice a portion of their rum ration in which to soak the tobacco before it was served always professed to enjoy it the more. A quantity of tobacco in its canvas and serving was known as a prick, qualified by the weight of leaf tobacco thus treated, as a half-pound prick, pound prick, etc. |
| PRIME | In general nautical terms, the operation of making ready in relation to immediate use. A lead is primed before taking a sounding by inserting a piece of tallow or soft soap into the cavity at the end so that as it strikes the bottom it will pick up sand, shells, or small stones to give a navigator information of the nature of the bottom. In the days of hand pumps on board, the pump was primed by having water poured into the barrel so that the leather washers would take up firmly on the lining of the barrel. When muzzle-loading guns were used in warships, they were made ready for firing by being primed, with the cartridge pierced with a priming iron to expose the powder and a pinch of gunpowder, or later a quill firing-tube, inserted in the vent hole. When used as an adjective in the term ‘a prime seaman’, it means one who is fully trained and able to hand, reef, and steer. |
| PRIMING IRON | A thin piece of iron with a point at one end and a wooden handle at the other which was thrust down the vent hole of a muzzle-loading cannon when loaded in order to pierce the cartridge and expose the powder so that when the quick match was put to the powder train or, later, the quill-tube inserted and fired, the powder in the cartridge would ignite. |
| PROA | In the Malay language the term for all types of ship or vessel, from sampan to square-rigged kapal, but generally looked upon by Westerners as the vessel used by pirates in eastern waters. They carried a very large triangular, usually lateen, sail and an outrigger to prevent excessive heel. |
| PROPELLER | The rotating screw of a steamship by which she is forced through the water. The first mechanical propulsion of a ship had been by means of sternwheels or paddle-wheels (see paddle steamer), but these were accompanied by considerable disadvantages as, when a ship so fitted rolled in a sea, one paddle would be lifted out of the water while the other was deeply submerged, thus putting a tremendous strain on the engine. It was this fact that led to efforts to design a means of propulsion which would be permanently submerged and thus capable of being driven without putting too varying a strain on the engine. The principle of the Archimedes screw was well enough known, and it was an adaptation of this principle which eventually produced the answer. Four engineers are usually credited with its invention, all at about the same period between 1833 and 1836. They were the Englishman Robert Wilson, the Frenchman Frederic Sauvage, the Swede John Ericsson, and another Englishman, Francis Pettit Smith, whose invention was finally awarded a patent. His invention was eagerly taken up by most of the big steamship lines and by most navies in the world, and the propeller has developed through the years into a remarkably efficient means of transforming a ship’s engine power into forward thrust through the water. |
| PROTEST | A formal document drawn up by the master, first mate, and a proportion of the crew of a merchant ship at the time of her arrival at a port, and sworn before a notary public, or a consul in a foreign port, that the weather conditions during a voyage were such that if the ship or cargo sustained damage it did not happen through neglect or misconduct on their part. It is a safeguard against the owners of the ship being held accountable for the damage, if any, if the cause of it was stress of wind and weather. One of the conditions of such a protest is that the cargo hatches must not be removed until a survey has been carried out. |
| PROVISO | The old name for a stern warp. When a ship lay to a single anchor in the stream with her stern held fast to the shore by a warp, she was said to be moored a-proviso. |
| PUDDENING | A thick matting made of yarns, oakum, etc., which was used in places where there was a danger of chafing. Another form of puddening was fastened round the main and foremasts of square-rigged sailing warships directly below the trusses of the yards, both to guard against undue chafe and to prevent the yards from falling if the lifts were shot away in battle. It was made by taking a length of rope twice the circumference of the mast and splicing the two ends together to form a strop, thus doubling it in thickness. A thimble was then seized into each end and the doubled rope was parcelled and served to an extent where it was thickest in the middle, tapering to each end. With a lanyard attached to one thimble it was held to the mast with both thimbles on the fore side of the mast and fixed firmly in position by reeving the lanyard alternately through the thimbles and drawing the two ends together as tautly as possible. As an extra precaution to prevent it slipping under the weight of the yard if the lifts or slings were shot away, a garland was passed over it to bind it even more securely to the mast. |
| PUFF-BALL | A slang name used by seamen in sail to describe a bonnet laced to the foot of a square sail. It was also sometimes known as a ‘save-all’. |
| PUFFER | A small steam vessel with a capacious hold, built mainly on the River Clyde, Scotland, for the carriage of general cargoes among the lochs and islands of the western coast of Scotland. The engines, placed right aft at the rounded stern, were normally tandem (or monkey) compound engines with a single vertical boiler. Many Clyde puffers were used as harbour tenders and liberty boats by the British fleet at Scapa Flow and other Scottish naval bases and anchorages during both the First and Second World Wars. |
| PULL | The operation, in most navies, of rowing with an oar in a boat. For some naval reason, boats are not rowed, they are pulled. Perhaps this may have come about because most naval seamen at the oars in a boat are not very much concerned with the finer points of rowing, such as feathering the oar at the end of a stroke, but are more concerned with getting the blade square into the water and pulling it through with maximum force. |
| PULPIT | (1) A raised platform in the bows of the old-fashioned oared whaleboat from which the harpoon was launched by hand. (2) A metal tubular frame, U-shaped in plan, at a yacht’s stemhead or bow, carrying the forward ends of the lifelines or guardrails for the safety of hands working on the foredeck. A similar frame mounted above a yacht’s taffrail or stern and carrying the after ends of the guardrail is colloquially termed a pushpit. |
| PUMP | An essential piece of mechanism on board ship, used for emptying the bilges of any water which may have collected in them. Three types of pumps were fitted in the old sailing vessels to clear the bilges. A small hand-pump, similar to those used ashore, was placed near the mainmast, used when there was only very little water in the bilge and a short spell of pumping would clear it. It was a slow and laborious method. Several ships, particularly those of Holland and Germany, additionally used a burrpump, also known as a bilge-pump, in which a spar of wood about six feet long had a burred end to which a leather was fixed. Two men standing over the pump thrust the spar down into the box in which the bilge-water collected, and six men then hauled it up by a rope fixed to the spar, thus lifting the, water which lay on top of the leather. The third type was the chain-pump, which worked on a similar system to the burr-pump but with an endless motion so that there was no need for men to thrust it down into the bilge-box on each stroke. This was a most efficient pump, and two men working on it could lift a ton of water in 55 seconds. Modern pumps in ships are driven by either steam or electricity, capable of lifting some hundreds of tons of water an hour; most yachts are fitted with a centrifugal pump which for the same amount of effort can lift several times as much water as a plunger-type pump, though several also have a two-stroke hand-pump for use when only a small amount of water needs to be pumped out. |
| PUNT | (1) A small flat-bottomed craft, built in the form of a floating platform or stage, used originally by seamen and artificers when caulking a waterline seam, breaming the side of a ship, or repairing the bottom. (2) A small wooden boat, with sharp pointed bows and stern and a very low freeboard, used by wildfowlers in estuaries and local waters for setting-up to ducks or geese, either with a punt-gun mounted in the bows or with hand-guns. It is propelled with small paddles fitted over the hands, the punter lying full length in the punt in order to remain hidden from the quarry. (3) A flat-bottomed pleasure boat with square ends and drawing very little water used on rivers and propelled by poling. |
| PURCHASE | A mechanical device to increase power or force, whether by means of levers, gears, or blocks or pulleys rove with a rope or chain. In its maritime meaning it is only the last of these which is known as a purchase, a rope rove through one or more blocks by which the pull exerted on the hauling part of the rope is increased accordingly to the number of sheaves in the blocks over which it passes. Where two or more blocks are involved in the purchase, it is generally known as a tackle (pronounced taykle). Though there are exceptions to this general rule when two double or two treble blocks are used, these being known as twofold and three-fold purchases respectively. The blocks of a tackle are known as the standing block and moving block, the rope rove through them is known as the fall and is divided into three parts known as the standing, running, and hauling parts. The amount by which the pull on the hauling part is multiplied by the sheaves in the blocks is known as the mechanical advantage. |
| PURSE NET | A fishing net of which the bottom can be drawn together after shooting to form a purse so that the fish enclosed cannot escape. They are much used in ring netting when fish congregate in schools or shoals, or are brought together by night by bright lights fitted in the fishing craft. |
| PURSER | (1) The old name by which the paymaster and officer responsible for provisions and clothing (see slops), in both the British and U.S. Navies, was known. He was normally appointed by warrant, and in the old days before the reforms of the seaman’s victuals, received his emolument partly by a small direct salary and partly by a commission on the issue of the daily victualling allowance. This was achieved by calculating the purser’s pound (in weight) at 14 ounces while the victuals were drawn from store at a weight of 16 ounces to the pound. His commission, therefore, was the equivalent of 12t per cent. Many pursers became rich men under this rule, which was a perennial cause of unrest, and sometimes mutiny, in naval ships. (2) The rank of purser is still used in the merchant service and applies to the officer in charge of the financial side of administering a ship’s company and. particularly, a ship’s passengers. |
| PUSSER’S MEDAL | The sailor’s name for a food stain on clothing. The purser (usually known as ‘pusser’) was responsible for issuing all food in a ship according to the daily scale of rations laid down. |