Anson's Voyage Round the World Part 12

Tie-wig. See Wig.

Tradewind. See Winds.

Transom. A beam across the stern-post to strengthen the after part of the s.h.i.+p.

Traverse. To turn guns to the right or left in aiming.

Wake. The track left by a s.h.i.+p.

Warp. To move a vessel into another position by hauling upon a hawser attached usually to the heads of piles or posts of a wharf.

Wear (a s.h.i.+p). To bring a s.h.i.+p about by putting the helm up. The vessel is first run off before the wind and then brought to on the new tack.

Weather: 1. The windward side.

2. To go to windward of.

Wig. A bag-wig is a wig with a bag to hold the back hair. It was fas.h.i.+onable in the seventeenth century. A tie-wig is a court wig tied with ribbon at the bag.

Winds. The tradewinds are winds which blow all the year through on the open ocean in and near the torrid zone. In the northern hemisphere they blow from the north-east, in the southern from the south-east. The regularity of the tradewind is interfered with by the neighbourhood of large land ma.s.ses. Their temperature varies much more with the change of seasons than that of the ocean; and this variation produces a change in the direction of the tradewind in the hot season, corresponding distantly to a phenomenon which may be observed, daily instead of half-yearly, on the English coast in hot summer weather, when a sea breeze blows during the day and a land breeze at night. In the northern hemisphere the monsoon--as this periodic wind is called--blows from the south-west (i.e.

towards the heated continent of South Asia) from April to October, and from the north-east, as the ordinary trade wind, during the rest of the year.

Works, upper. The sides of a vessel's hull from the water-line to the covering board.