pinnace, small and fast warship employed in the sixteenth century for scouting and dispatch duties.
– The Dictionary of Nautical Literacy
Tag Archives: sailing
TACKLE, … a machine formed by the communication of a rope with an assemblage of blocks, and known in mechanics by the name of pulley.
Tackles are used in a ship to raise, remove, or secure weighty bodies; to support the masts; or to extend the sails and rigging.
TAIL-BLOCK, a small single block, having a short piece of rope attached to it, by which it may be fastened to any object at pleasure; either for convenience, or to increase the force applied to the said object, as explained in the first part of the article tackle.
– Wm. Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1780).
This week, a double gift for Christmas!
HORSE … a thick rope, extended in a perpendicular direction near the fore or after-side of a mast, for the purpose of hoisting or extending some sail thereon. When it is fixed before a mast, it is calculated for the use of a sail called the square-sail … When the horse is placed abaft or behind a mast, it is intended for the try-sail of a snow, and is accordingly very rarely fixed in this position, except in those sloops of war which occasionally assume the form of snows, in order to deceive the enemy.
SNOW, (senau, Fr.) is generally the largest of all two-masted vessels employed by Europeans, and the most convenient for navigation … When the sloops of war are rigged as snows, they are furnished with a horse, which answers the purpose of the try-sail-mast, the fore-part of the sail being attached by rings to the said horse, in different parts of its heighth.
– Wm. Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1780).
I just stumbled on this fantastic website for a museum that I really wish was a lot closer than Nova Scotia: The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, just in case you missed the title of this blog entry.
For those often confused by references to sailing vessels in fiction, the site’s tall ships page has a nice guide to sailing rigs that explains the difference between schooners and the five basic types of square-rigged vessels, using silhouettes.
(Teaser for the uninitiated: despite the term “tall ship,” not all large sailing vessels are technically “ships.”)
Jollies Another name for the Royal Marines. Originally all soldiers carried on board a British warship were known as “jollies,” with a “tame jolly” being a militiaman and a “royal jolly” a marine.
– Ship to Shore: A Dictionary of Everyday Words and Phrases Derived from the Sea by Peter D. Jeans.
HAVE A JOLLY CHRISTMAS!
DISEMBOGUE To sail out of the mouth or strait of a gulf.
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– The Pirate Dictionary by Terry Breverton.
jackass A kind of heavy rough boat used in NEWFOUNDLAND. Also, U.S. Navy name for a HAWSE-bag, a canvas bag filled with OAKUM used to plug the HAWSE-HOLES to keep seawater out.
jackass rig Any rig of a sailing ship that substantially differs from the one normally associated with that type of ship.
– A Sea of Words : A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales by Dean King with John B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes.