| TERMS | MEANING: |
|---|---|
| TABERNACLE | A wooden or metal trunk fixed to the deck of a sailing vessel to support a mast which has its heel at deck level and is not stepped below decks. It is used in cases where it is necessary occasionally to lower the mast to deck level, as in inland waters for passing under bridges, etc. The mast is pivoted on a steel pin which passes through the top of the tabernacle, the forward side of the tabernacle being left open to allow the heel of the mast to swing forward as the mast is lowered aft. A slightly different fitting, known as a lutchet but serving the same purpose, is used in spritsail barges and wherries. |
| TABLE | The sailmaker’s term for sewing reef bands and buntline bands on to sails to add additional strength to the sail where the reef points are fixed and to prevent chafe in a square sail where the buntline lies along the canvas. It is only the larger sails, particularly in square rigged ships, that have these bands tabled on to them. |
| TABLING | The name given to an extra strip of canvas sewn around the edges of sails to reinforce them where the boltrope is sewn on. |
| TACK | (1) A board or reach sailed in a sailing vessel with the wind kept on one side of the vessel.
(2) The name given to the lower forward corner of a fore-and-aft sail. (3) In square-rigged ships, it was the name of the rope used to hold in the weather lower corners of courses and staysails when sailing close-hauled. Also, when studdingsails were set, it was the name given to the rope employed to haul out the lower outer clew of the sail to the boom-end. |
| TACK | The operation of bringing a sailing vessel head to wind and across it so as to bring the wind on the opposite side of the vessel. During this manoeuvre the vessel is said to be in stays, or staying, or coming about. When a sailing vessel wishes to make up to windward, she can only do so by tacking, crossing the wind continuously to make a series of legs, of which the net distance gained is to windward. |
| TACKLE | A purchase in which two or more blocks are used in order to multiply the power exerted on a rope. The gain in power is equivalent to the number of parts which enter and leave the moving block of the tackle, depending on whether the tackle is rigged to advantage or disadvantage. Tackles are employed for most lifting or moving jobs in a vessel, from trimming the sails in a sailing vessel to shifting cargo in a merchant ship. They are of many varieties, depending partly on their particular purpose, e.g., a luff tackle, and partly on the number and nature of the blocks used. |
| TACKLINE | A six-foot length of signal line with signal clips at each end. It is used, mainly in naval vessels, for inserting in a flag signal hoist to indicate a break in the signal, and that the flags below it form a new signal. All flags used in signals at sea have a clip at each end of the hoist so that they can be clipped quickly to each other to form a particular signal; the clips on the tackline are of the same pattern and can be clipped equally quickly to signal flags when it is required to insert a break in the hoist. |
| TACTICAL DIAMETER | The distance a ship is displaced to port or starboard of her original line of advance after a turn of sixteen points (180°) under full helm at full speed. |
| TAKE A CAULK | A slang expression used by seamen meaning to sleep on deck, either legitimately during a make and mend or when off watch below, or illegitimately if the chances of discovery are slight. The probable origin of the expression is that the deck seams of a ship, which are caulked, are horizontal, the normal position of a man when he sleeps. |
| TALURIT SPLICING | A modern method of splicing wire rope when a thimble or eye is required in the end. The end of the wire is threaded through a non-corrosive alloy ferrule of a size convenient for the wire and then threaded back to form a loop round the thimble. The ferrule is then gripped lightly in a hydraulic press while the wire is pulled through to make the loop the required size or to lie closely round the thimble. Further pressure is then exerted to make the metal of the ferrule flow round the strands of the wire thus holding each firmly in position, and the splice is complete. |
| TANKER | A ship designed specifically to carry liquid cargoes, particularly oil, in bulk at sea. She is essentially a ship of the 20th century, as the growth of the use of oil for fuel on a large scale, calling for bulk carriage from the oil producing countries, dates from the first decade of the century with the development of the automobile and the flying machine. |
| TAR | (1) The residue after distillation of the gum extracted from pine trees and used, among many other purposes, for the preservation of the standing rigging of a square-rigged ship and also for preserving hemp rope, which is liable to rot when wet.
(2) An affectionate name for a sailor, derived from their habit in the days before the issue of official uniform of treating their canvas coats and hats with tar as a protection against the weather. It was a contraction of tarpaulin. |
| TAUT | The maritime word meaning tight, usually in relation to a sailing vessel’s rigging or the hauling of ropes. Thus, a ship’s rigging is taut when it is set up as hard as it will go; a rope is hauled taut when it is bar tight. A square-rigged ship sailing on a taut bowline means that she is sailing as close to the wind as she will go, the bowlines on the weather clews of the sails being hauled up taut as far forward as possible in order to brace the yards round on the masts to form an acute angle in relation to the fore-and-aft line of the ship. The word is used for many similar meanings, as ‘He’s a taut hand’, meaning ‘he’s a stern disciplinarian’; ‘the ship is run on a taut string’, meaning that she is a smart ship and well disciplined. |
| TERRITORIAL WATERS | That area of sea adjacent to the coasts of nations which is under the full control of the nation concerned. A compromise between the claims of certain nations to exercise dominion over seas and oceans, and those of other nations which claimed that all areas of sea should be free to all ships, which was a point of argument, and even war, between nations during the 1 6th and 1 7th centuries, was found in a suggestion made in 1702 by Bynkershoek, in his book De dominio maris. He proposed that a nation should exercise dominion over the adjacent seas only to the extent that she could defend them from the shore, which was taken as the existing range of a cannon, and agreed to be three miles. This universally agreed limit remained in force until the mid-20th century, when certain nations unilaterally declared an extension to their territorial waters, mainly to protect their inshore fisheries. The generally accepted figure in recent years, though as yet without international agreement, is 1 2 miles, but with certain reservations for fishing rights within that limit where such fishing has been historically exercised. More recently still, some nations have claimed a big extension of territorial waters of up to 200 miles, either to protect prolific fishing grounds, as for example the cod fishing off Iceland, or for other reasons, such as the existence of oilfields under the seabed. A United Nations conference on the Law of the Sea is to discuss the extent of a new limit in 1976. |
| THIMBLE | A circular or heart-shaped ring, usually of iron or aluminium, grooved on the outside to receive a rope which is spliced round it to form an eye. A thimble spliced into the boltrope of a sail forms a cringle. |
| THOLE PIN | A wooden pin fixed in the gunwale of a boat to which, by means of a grommet, an oar is held when rowing. A more usual method is to use two thole pins close together, with the oar between them when rowing. They form a substitute for a crutch or a rowlock. |
| THOROUGH FOOT | (1) A method of taking out a large number of turns in a rope after it has been unduly twisted. If the turns are left-handed, the rope is coiled down left-handed and the end dipped through the coil. If the coil is then hauled out, the turns will be taken out. If the turns are right-handed the rope is coiled down right handed, and the same process will remove the turns.
(2) A method of joining two ropes when they have an eye spliced into their ends. The eye of rope A is passed through the eye of rope B and the bight of rope B passed through the eye. |
| THROAT | The name given to the upper foremost corner of a four-sided fore-and-aft sail, and sometimes also to the jaws of a gaff. |
| THROAT HALYARDS | Those halyards used to hoist the throat of a sail or the jaws of a gaff. |
| THROAT SEIZINGS | The name given to those seizings, put on with twine or spunyarn, which hold the hook and/or thimble in the strop which binds a block, and similarly the seizing with which two parts of a rope are bound together to form an eye in the bight. |
| THRUM | A sail or piece of canvas is thrummed by sewing short lengths of rope yarn to it by their bights for use as a collision mat. Smaller thrummed mats are sometimes used in the standing rigging of the larger sailing vessels to prevent chafe in those places where sails or parts of the running rigging may come in contact with it. |
| THUMB CLEAT | A small cleat with a single arm, fixed near the end of a yardarm of a square rigged ship to hold the topsail reef-earings from slipping, or sometimes seized to parts of the standing rigging to form a hook from which to suspend the bight of a rope, for example, the truss pendants on the lower masts. By looping them over a thumb cleat in the rigging, they are held secure and out of the way of other running rigging. Thumb cleats are also often fitted to the booms of sailing vessels as a means of securing the outhaul when the foot of the sail has been hauled out taut. |
| THUMB KNOT | Another name for an overhand knot, which is no more than laying the end of a rope over its own part and bringing the end under and through the loop thus made. It is sometimes used in place of a figure-of-eight knot to prevent the end of a rope or fall unreeving through a block, but most good seamen advise against its use because of its liability to jam. |
| THWART | The transverse wooden seat in a rowing boat on which the oarsman sits. Thwarts are normally supported by grown wooden knees (i.e., grown so that the grain of the wood follows the curve of the knee), fitted to the ribs of the two sides. In the larger ships’ boats, such as launches, cutters, etc., they are additionally supported by hanging knees, fixed to the ribs above the level of the thwarts so that the thwart is held securely between a knee above it and one below it. |
| TIDAL ATLAS | Collections of twelve charts covering the same area, each chart showing the direction of the tidal streams in the area for each hour while the tide rises or falls at a standard port, which in Great Britain is usually Dover. The directions are shown by arrows, figures against the arrows indicating the speed in knots. Where only one figure is given, it indicates the rate at springs; where two figures are given, the higher is the spring rate, the lower is the rate at neaps. Tidal atlases are included in some nautical almanacs, and many are published separately. |
| TIDE | The rise and fall of the sea as a result of the attraction of the sun and moon. The largest rise and fall of tide, known as spring tides, occur when the sun and moon are in line and act together; the smallest rise and fall, known as neap tides, when the sun and moon are in positions at right-angles to each other, thus exerting less combined attraction. In each case the influence of the moon upon the tides is two and a half times greater than that of the sun. The average level of the surface of the sea between high and low tide is known as the Mean Sea Level (M.S.L.). Tides operate on a time period of 6 hours 20 minutes from high to low water or vice versa, and the total movement of the sea level between one high water and its succeeding one, a period of 12 hours 40 minutes, is known as the tidal oscillation. It follows that the true definition of high water is the highest level reached by the sea in one tidal oscillation, and of low water, the lowest level reached in one tidal oscillation. The direction of the tide is entirely vertical, the horizontal movement of the water as tides rise and fall being known as a tidal stream. |
| TIDE TABLES | A publication, in three main parts, of the British Hydrographic Department of the Navy, giving predictions for the time and height of high and low water for every standard port in the world and tables of tidal constants for intermediate ports. Tide Tables was first produced in 1833, and since 1938 tidal predictions have been based on harmonic analysis of tidal flows. Tide Tables is published annually. |
| TIDE-RACE | A sharp acceleration in the speed of flow of a tide by reason of a break or fault in the bottom formation, where the depth of water rises or falls suddenly, as over rocky ledges below water. |
| TIDE-RIP | Short waves or ripples caused by eddies made by a tide as it flows or ebbs over an uneven bottom, or at sea where two currents meet. Waves in a tide-rip do not break whereas in an over fall they do, this being the principal difference between the two. |
| TIDE-RODE | The situation of a vessel lying at anchor when she is swung to her anchor by the force of the tide. It contrasts with wind-rode, when it is the force of the wind, irrespective of the tide, which swings her to her anchor. |
| TIDEWAY | A name given to a main fairway in tidal waters, where the direction of ebb and flow of the tide is straight up and down the fairway. |
| TIDING OVER | An old expression to describe the method of working the tides, in the days of square-rigged ships, to make progress against a contrary wind, especially with reference to the English Channel where the prevailing wind, being south-westerly, is foul for ships proceeding down Channel. It involved anchoring during the flood, or east-running tide, weighing anchor at high water and beating to windward, relying on the strength of the ebb or west-running tide to carry the ship in the required direction. When the tide turned, the ship anchored again until the next high water, when the process was repeated. |
| TILLER | A wood or metal bar which fits into or round the head of the rudder and by which the rudder is moved as required. Until the introduction of the steering-wheel in the late 17th century, all ships, no matter how large, were steered by a tiller, which grew in length and size so that it needed many more men to control it when sailing in a large ship in a high wind. Today, tillers are used only in small craft, wheel steering having been adopted for all vessels of any size. |
| TILLER HEAD | That part of a tiller which is farthest away from the rudder head and is thus the point of maximum moment. |
| TILLER ROPES | The lines, made of rope, hide, or chain, which lead from the rudder head, or an extension fitted to it, to the barrel of the steering-wheel, whereby the rudder is moved as the wheel is put over. In large ships, the movement of the wheel does not operate the rudder direct, but activates a steering engine which puts the rudder over in accordance with the amount of movement of the wheel. |
| TILT | The name often given to a small boat’s canvas awning covering the stern sheets to give protection to passengers from the glare of the sun. |
| TIMBER HEADS | The prolongation of some of the timbers in the hull of a wooden ship above the deck level so that they project above the gunwale to serve as bitts. |
| TIMBER HITCH | A method of securing a rope round a spar by taking the standing part of a rope round the spar with a half hitch round itself and the end tucked three or four times round its own part. This forms a running, but self-jamming, eye. |
| TIMBERS | The frames or ribs of a ship, connected to the keel, which give a ship’s hull both its shape and its strength. In wooden ships of any size, the timbers are made of several pieces of wood scarfed together to the required shape. In steel ships the frames are of steel angle iron, bent to the desired shape by heat treatment. |
| TOGGLE | A strong wooden pin, in older days usually made of lignum vitae, occasionally still used through the bight of a rope to hold it in position and for similar purposes. Its main use was during the days of sail, particularly in warships in battle, when toggles were fixed in the running parts of the topsail sheets and in the jeers, so that if the rope were shot away, the yards might still be held aloft by the toggles. The typical duffle-coat, widely worn at sea, is buttoned by small toggles threaded through beckets. |
| TONNAGE | Originally the charge for the hire of a ship at so much a ton of her burthen, and also a tax, first levied in 1303 by Edward I of England on all imports brought by ship into England, and a second tax, known as tunnage, levied in 1347 by Edward III, of three shillings on each tun of wine imported. |
| TOPMAST | In sailing vessels, that mast next above the lower mast, the second division of a complete mast. Many of the larger warships in the steam era used to carry a topmast, but in general the practice today in most steam vessels is to step only a lower mast, although in the larger naval ships, of cruiser size and above, a fitted topmast is included, which is either a continuation of one of the struts of the tripod lower mast or a separate mast stepped on the top. This is called a fitted topmast as it cannot normally be housed or struck, and is thus a permanent fitting. |
| TOPMEN or YARDMEN | Seamen whose station in the watch-bill, in the days of square rigged sailing vessels, was on the masts and yards. They were the picked men of a ship’s company, with the upper yardmen, those who worked on the topsail and topgallant sail yards, the aristocrats of the lower deck. |
| TOPPING-LIFT | A rope or flexible wire tackle by which the end of a spar is hoisted or lowered. In yachts a topping-lift is usually attached at or near the after end of the boom, and takes the weight of the boom while the sail is being hoisted or stowed. Twin topping-lifts may sometimes be rigged so that when the sail is being set the lift on the lee side can be slacked away clear of the sail, while the weather lift takes the weight of the boom. It has been common practice in the U.S.A. for twin topping-lifts to be joined by one or two loops of light line which pass loosely beneath the boom. Known as lazyjacks, these lines prevent the sail from bellying out to leeward as it is being hoisted or lowered, a convenience for a shorthanded crew. |
| TOPSAIL | The sail set, in square-rigged ships, on the topsail yard, next above the course and the second in ascending order from the deck. In many of the square-rigged ships, two topsails were often set, a lower and an upper topsail. In the larger fore-and-aft gaff-rigged sailing vessels, a topsail was set above the mainsail, either in the form of a jib-headed topsail, or set on a jackyard. |
| TOPSIDES | (1) That part of the side of a ship which is above the main wales. The term referred particularly to square-rigged sailing warships, where the main wales ran level with the bottom of the upper deck gunports. In its modern meaning it usually refers to that portion of the ship’s side which rises above the upper deck though the term is often loosely used to refer to the upper deck itself; ‘I’m going topsides’: ‘I’m going on the upper deck.
(2) The sides of yachts, above the boot-topping, are also known as the topsides. |
| TOW | The operation of hauling another vessel through the water by means of a towing hawser made fast astern of the towing vessel and in the bows of the vessel towed. When used as a noun, it signifies the vessel or vessels being towed. |
| TOWAGE | The charge made by a tug owner for towing another vessel. In the case of salvage at sea, it is the amount of the bargain struck between the master of a tug and the master of the ship requiring assistance in the form of a tow. |
| TRADE WINDS | Steady regular winds which blow in a belt between approximately 30° N. and 30° S. of the equator. They are caused by the action of the sun on and near the equator in heating the atmosphere and causing it to rise, the heavier air to north and south coming in to fill the vacuum thus caused. If the earth did not revolve, these winds would come directly from the south in the southern hemisphere and the north in the northern, but as the speed of revolution is greater at the equator than in higher latitudes. These winds coming in are diverted towards the west. As a result, the trade winds in the southern hemisphere blow from the south-east, and in the northern from the north-east. They are known as trade winds from the great regularity with which they blow, thus assisting the ships which used to carry the trade around the world in the days before steam propulsion. |
| TRAIL-BOARD | A carved board fitted one on each side of the stem of a square-rigged ship, which helped to support the figurehead. In the older ships they were always richly carved and often gilded; later the carving became more simple and austere. |
| TRAIN | The name given to the after part of a wooden gun-carriage as used in sailing warships. It was to an eyebolt in the train of the carriage that the train-tackle was hooked during battle. |
| TRAVELLER | (1) The ring of a lower sheet block, when shackled to a horse on the deck or counter of a sailing vessel, and thus free to travel from side to side of the horse according to the direction in which the sail is trimmed, is usually known as a traveller.
(2) A metal ring fitted to slide up and down a spar or to run in and out on a boom or gaff to extend or draw in the tack or clew of a sail. Thus, a traveller is normally fitted to a long bowsprit so that the tack of the jib can be hauled out when being set. (3) A metal ring, to which a hook is welded, by which a lugsail is hoisted with a halyard, a strop around the yard to which the sail is laced being attached to the hook and the ring sliding up the mast. (4) Another name for a parrel, by which the yards in square-rigged ships are held close to the mast. (5) A rope about three feet in length with a thimble spliced in one end, used to control the swing of a topgallant yard during hoisting or lowering in a square rigged ship. Two of these travellers were fixed on each backstay, the thimbles travelling up and down them; the rope tails being secured to the ends of the topgallant yard to stop it swinging backwards and forwards while being swayed up or struck down at sea. |
| TRAWL | A large net in the form of a bag with its mouth held open with otter boards or a beam, which is towed by a trawler along the bottom of the sea, or at other desired depths, at the ends of warps, to catch bottom-lying or pelagic fish. It is so designed that fish, once in the mouth of the trawl, are prevented from escaping by net baffles and are swept down to the cod-end of the trawl. After a predetermined time the trawl is hauled by its warps to the surface and brought on board, the cod-end being hoisted above the fish deck of the trawler. When the cod-end is opened, the fish fall to the deck. |
| TRAWL LINES | A method of fishing for cod on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland which, in spite of its name, had nothing to do with trawling. A long line, buoyed at each end, was moored on the banks, and at short intervals along its length it carried smaller lines each with a baited hook. The trawl lines were laid by dories which were carried in the Banks fishing schooners which operated mainly out of Gloucester, Massachusetts. |
| TRAWLER | A fishing vessel specially designed to operate a trawl for the catching of bottomlying fish. Before the introduction of steam, and later diesel, propulsion and power, a sailing trawler could operate a trawl to a depth of 30-40 fathoms, a modern steam or diesel-powered trawler can fish to a depth of 500 fathoms, and considerably greater depths than this have been fished experimentally with a trawl to try to discover new varieties of edible fish to satisfy a growing demand. |
| TRIM | The way in which a ship floats on the water, in relation to her fore-and-aft line, whether on an even keel or down by the head or by the stern. Most ships of any size have trimming tanks built into them, by which the vessel’s trim can be adjusted as required by admitting or pumping out seawater acting as fore-and-aft ballast. |
| TRIM | (1) The act of flooding or emptying trimming tanks, known in a submarine as auxiliary ballast tanks, in order to adjust the trim of a vessel so as to bring her to the required fore-and-aft line of flotation.
(2) The act of setting the sails of a sailing vessel by means of the sheets in fore-and-aft rig, or the yards by means of the braces in square-rigged vessels, so that they lie at the best angle to the fore-and-aft line to take the fullest advantage of the wind. |
| TRIP AN ANCHOR | The operation of breaking out the flukes of a ship’s anchor if they are caught in any obstruction on the bottom which prevents the anchor being weighed in the normal way. When this happens, the anchor can be tripped by being hauled up clear of the obstruction by the anchor buoy-rope, which is always made fast to the crown of the anchor. This buoy-rope is by some erroneously called a tripping line. |
| TROPICAL STORMS | Intense storms which occur in tropical and sub-tropical latitudes in all oceans except the South Atlantic. They never occur on the equator itself, and very rarely within about eight degrees of the equator. They consist of fairly small but intense depressions around which the wind circulates anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern, the normal directions for depressions in the two hemispheres, frequently at hurricane strength (64 knots and over on the Beaufort scale). This wind always causes very heavy seas, with torrential rain and driven spray reducing the visibility almost to nothing. Like all other depressions their rate of advance can be anything up to about 25 knots and in the same way there is an area of calm in the centre or eye of the storm. Because of their extreme intensity, with the area of storm concentrated in a small area, they can be immensely destructive. Their position can be estimated, as with all other depressions, by the application of Buys Ballot Law. The season for tropical storms in the northern hemisphere is June to November, with maximum frequency in August and September; in the southern hemisphere the normal season is from December to May, with February and March being the months of maximum frequency. An exception to this general rule is the Arabian Sea where tropical storms normally occur at the times of change of the monsoon. May and June, and October and November. Tropical storms have different names in different oceans. They are known as hurricanes in the western North Atlantic, eastern North Pacific, and western South Pacific; as cyclones in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, south Indian Ocean, and in the vicinity of North-West Australia; and as typhoons in the western North Pacific. |
| TRUE | The direction of the North Pole from any place on the earth’s surface, or of any course or bearing in its relation to the North Pole. The true direction of the North Pole is an important function of all navigation, since all marine charts are drawn with their meridians of longitude passing through this pole, and as a result all courses and bearings laid down on the chart for navigational purposes must also relate to this pole. There is, however, another north pole, known as the north magnetic pole, and it is to this pole, which is constantly changing its position, that a magnetic compass points. Therefore, when using a magnetic compass for navigation, a correction must always be applied to any reading of the compass, whether it be a course or bearing, to relate it to the true North Pole before it can be laid down on a chart. This difference is known as variation, and since the position of the magnetic pole is constantly changing, so also does the amount of variation to be applied as a correction. |
| TUG | A relatively small and heavily built vessel of considerable engine power used for the towage of ships at sea or to assist in manoeuvring them in confined spaces, particularly when berthing or unberthing. They were known originally by the generic name of tug-boat, but the suffix was dropped very early on and the single word tug was in use at least by 1817, very shortly after the genesis of the type which, of course, did not appear until the application of steam power to maritime propulsion. The first steam vessels in the Royal Navy, the Comet and Monkey, purchased in 1822, were tugs used for towing the ships of the line out of harbour when the wind was unfavourable. |
| TURBINE | A marine rotary propulsion engine in which a jet of steam is directed on to blades set at an angle in a drum connected either direct or through gearing to the propeller shaft. The action of the steam on the blades revolves the drum and by this means the drive is transmitted to the propellers. Turbine engines were invented by the Hon. Charles Parsons in the last decade of the 19th century, and demonstrated in his small Turbinia at the Diamond Jubilee Review of the British Navy in 1897. Because of their simplicity and favourable power-to-weight ratio in comparison with the steam reciprocating engines which were, until then, the only means of harnessing steam power, they were very quickly adopted by ship owners and by navies as the most efficient means of steam propulsion at sea. |
| TURK’S HEAD | An ornamental knot to provide a stopper on the end of a rope. It is a continuation of a simple manrope knot by tucking the strands of the rope a second time. A running turk’s head is formed by making the knot around the other part of the rope. |
| TURTLE DECK | The upper deck of a vessel constructed with a pronounced curve from the centre line of the vessel down to the sides. Its purpose is to assist the flow of any seawater shipped over the bows down to the scuppers. The early torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers all had pronounced turtle decks since, with very little freeboard, they were apt to ship quantities of water over their bows when proceeding at speed. |
| TWICE LAID | (1) The name given to rope made from a selection of the best yarns from old rope which has been unlaid,
(2) A sea dish made from salt fish left over from the previous day’s rations and mashed up with potatoes or yams. It was not one of the most popular of dishes with seamen. |
| TWO BLOCKS | A maritime term to describe a purchase in which there is no more travel by reason of the moving block having been hauled up to the standing block. By extension it has also come to mean a rope or wire which has been hauled to its maximum tautness. A similar term with the same meaning is ‘chockablock’. |
| TYE | A single rope attached to the centre of the lower yard, led through a block on the masthead and secured to the jeers, to transmit the pull of the jeers to the yard when it was being swayed up to its position on the mast. They were used largely in merchant ships during the days of sail, the jeers in men-of-war having their upper blocks permanently secured to the masthead and thus not requiring a tye to transmit their power. In larger merchant ships with a very heavy lower yard, the tye was rove through a block on the yard and then led through two single blocks at the masthead, one on the forward side and one on the after side of the mast, the two falls being then secured to two jeers. The yard could then be swayed up by hauling both jeers together. Such an arrangement was necessary in the larger merchant vessels of the time since, carrying much smaller crews compared with men-of-war, they were always limited in available manpower for hoisting such heavy weights as a lower yard. |
| TYPHOON | The title of one of the best-known short stories of Joseph Conrad. It was first serialized in the Pall Mall Magazine and published in book form under the title Typhoon and Other Stories in 1902. The story is regarded as a classic of sea literature and tells the story of Captain MacWhirr, who takes his ship through the eye of a typhoon because he is too unintelligent and unimaginative to heed the weather forecasts. |