The Sailor's Word-Book Part 28

BEST BOWER. _See_ BOWER-ANCHORS.

BETELGUESE. The lucida of Orion, a Orionis, and a standard Greenwich star of the first magnitude.

BETHEL. _See_ FLOATING BETHEL.

BETTY MARTIN. _See_ MARTIN.

BETWEEN DECKS. The s.p.a.ce contained between any two whole decks of a s.h.i.+p.

BETWIXT WIND AND WATER. About the line of load immersion of the s.h.i.+p's hull; or that part of the vessel which is at the surface of the water.

BEVEL. An instrument by which bevelling angles are taken. Also a sloped surface.

BEVELLING. Any alteration from a square in hewing timber, as taken by the bevel, bevelling rule, or bevelling boards.--_A standing bevelling_ is that made without, or outside a square; an _under-bevelling_ within; and the angle is optionally acute or obtuse. In s.h.i.+p-building, it is the art of hewing a timber with a proper and regular curve, according to a mould which is laid on one side of its surface.

BEVELLING-BOARD. A piece of board on which the bevellings or angles of the timbers are described.

BEVERAGE. A West India drink, made of sugar-cane juice and water.

BEWPAR. The old name for buntin, still used in navy office doc.u.ments.

BEWTER. A northern name for the black-wak, or bittern.

BEZANT. An early gold coin, so called from having been first coined at Byzantium.

BIBBS. Pieces of timber bolted to the hounds of a mast, to support the trestle-trees.

BIBLE. A hand-axe. Also, a squared piece of freestone to grind the deck with sand in cleaning it; a small holy-stone, so called from seamen using them kneeling.

BIBLE-PRESS. A hand rolling-board for cartridges, rocket, and port-fire cases.

BICKER, OR BEAKER. A flat bowl or basin for containing liquors, formerly made of wood, but in later times of other substances. Thus Butler:

"And into pikes, and musqueteers, Stamp beakers, cups, and porringers."

BID-HOOK. A small kind of boat-hook.

BIEL-BRIEF. The bottomry contract in Denmark, Sweden, and the north of Germany.

BIERLING. An old name for a small galley.

BIFURCATE. A river is said to bifurcate, or to form a fork, when it divides into two distinct branches, as at the heads of deltas and in fluvial basins.

BIGHT. A substantive made from the preterperfect tense of _bend_. The s.p.a.ce lying between two promontories or headlands, being wider and smaller than a gulf, but larger than a bay. It is also used generally for any coast-bend or indentation, and is mostly held as a synonym of shallow bay.

BIGHT. The loop of a rope when it is folded, in contradistinction to the end; as, her anchor hooked the bight of our cable, _i.e._ caught any part of it between the ends. The bight of his cable has swept our anchor, _i.e._ the bight of the cable of another s.h.i.+p as she ranged about has entangled itself about the flukes of our anchor. Any part of the chord or curvature of a rope between the ends may be called a bight.

BIG-WIGS. A cant term for the higher officers.

BILANCELLA. A destructive mode of fis.h.i.+ng in the Mediterranean, by means of two vessels towing a large net stretched between them.

BILANCIIS DEFERENDIS. A writ directed to a corporation, for the carrying of weights to such a haven, there to weigh the wool that persons, by our ancient laws, were licensed to transport.

BILANDER. A small merchant vessel with two masts, particularly distinguished from other vessels with two masts by the form of her main-sail, which is bent to the whole length of her yard, hanging fore and aft, and inclined to the horizon at an angle of about 45. Few vessels are now rigged in this manner, and the name is rather indiscriminately used.

BILBO. An old term for a flexible kind of cutla.s.s, from Bilbao, where the best Spanish sword-blades were made. Shakspeare humorously describes Falstaff in the buck-basket, like a good bilbo, coiled hilt to point.

BILBOES. Long bars or bolts, on which iron shackles slid, with a padlock at the end; used to confine the legs of prisoners in a manner similar to the punishment of the stocks. The offender was condemned to irons, more or less ponderous according to the nature of the offence of which he was guilty. Several of them are yet to be seen in the Tower of London, taken in the Spanish Armada. Shakspeare mentions Hamlet thinking of a kind of fighting,

"That would not let me sleep: methought, I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes."

BILc.o.c.k. The northern name for the water-rail.

BILGE, OR BULGE. That part of the floor in a s.h.i.+p--on either side of the keel--which approaches nearer to a horizontal than to a perpendicular direction, and begins to round upwards. It is where the floors and second futtocks unite, and upon which the s.h.i.+p would rest if laid on the ground; hence, when a s.h.i.+p receives a fracture in this part, she is said to be bilged or bulged.--_Bilge_ is also the largest circ.u.mference of a cask, or that which extends round by the bung-hole.

BILGE-BLOCKS. _See_ SLIDING BILGE-BLOCKS.

BILGE-COADS. In launching a s.h.i.+p, same with sliding-planks.

BILGE-FEVER. The illness occasioned by a foul hold.

BILGE-FREE. A cask so stowed as to rest entirely on its beds, keeping the lower part of the bilge at least the thickness of the hand clear of the bottom of the s.h.i.+p, or other place on which it is stowed.

BILGE-KEELS. Used for vessels of very light draught and flattish bottoms, to make them hold a better wind, also to support them upright when grounded. The _Warrior_ and other iron-clads are fitted with bilge-keels.

BILGE-KEELSONS. These are fitted inside of the bilge, to afford strength where iron, ores, and other heavy cargo are s.h.i.+pped. Otherwise they are the same as sister-keelsons.

BILGE-PIECES. Synonymous with _bilge-keels_.

BILGE-PLANKS. Certain thick strengthenings on the inner and outer lines of the bilge, to secure the _s.h.i.+ftings_ as well as bilge-keels.

BILGE-PUMP. A small pump used for carrying off the water which may lodge about the lee-bilge, so as not to be under the action of the main pumps.

In a steamer it is worked by a single link off one of the levers.

BILGE-TREES. Another name for bilge-coads.

BILGE-WATER. The rain or sea-water which occasionally enters a vessel, and running down to her floor, remains in the bilge of the s.h.i.+p till pumped out, by reason of her flat bottom, which prevents it from going to the well of the pump; it is always (especially if the s.h.i.+p does not leak) of a dirty colour and disgusting penetrating smell. It seems to have been a sad nuisance in early voyages; and in the earliest sea-ballad known (_temp._ Hen. VI.) it is thus grumbled at:--

"A sak of strawe were there ryght good, For som must lyg theym in theyr hood, I had as lefe be in the wood W'out mete or drynk.

For when that we shall go to bedde, The pumpe was nygh our bedde's hedde; A man were as good to be dede As smell thereof ye stynk."

The mixture of tar-water and the drainings of sugar cargo is about the worst perfume known.

BILL. A weapon or implement of war, a pike or halbert of the English infantry. It was formerly carried by sentinels, whence Shakspeare humorously made Dogberry tell the sleepy watchmen to have a care that their bills be not stolen. Also, the point or tapered extremity of the fluke at the arm of an anchor. Also a point of land, of which a familiar instance may be cited in the Bill of Portland.

BILLAT. A name on the coast of Yorks.h.i.+re for the piltock or coal-fish, when it is a year old.

BILL-BOARDS. Doubling under the fore-channels to the water-line, to protect the planking from the bill of the anchor.