Hold to Hounding

The interior of a vessel below the lower deck.

To keep the vessel's sails shivering.

To keep the sails full.

To check the progress of a boat by keeping the oars in the water with the blades vertical, and the oar itself at right angles to the keel.

When a piece of work is only imperfectly executed, such, for example, as leaving patches of the old paint on a boat that has been scraped, these patches are called holidays.

A curling sea like breakers on a shore.

A sailor's name for a parson. (See Sky Pilot.)

A large flat stone used for cleaning the ship's decks by dragging it to and fro. (See Testament.)

Anything is said to be home when it is hauled out as far as it can go, as the clew of a gaff topsail when it is sheeted to the sheave hole in the end of the gaff.

An anchor comes home when it does not get a hold but drags along over the bottom in kedging instead of allowing the vessel to be walked up to it. The same applies to a ship's anchor when heaving in the chain.

The home port of a vessel is that in which, or the nearest to which, the managing owner resides, established by law for the issuing of marine documents. When a vessel returns from a foreign to any port in her own country such port is known as a home port.

The name of the rise in the quarter-deck which gives more head room to the cabin; a covering of wood or canvas for a hatch, companionway or skylight.

A name by which the jaws of the booms and the ends of the cross-trees are known.

An iron bar or span fastened to the deck for the fore, main and spanker sheet blocks of a fore-and-aft vessel to travel on, also for the traveler of the fore staysail. A deck horse is often wrongly called a deck traveler, as it is the ring which travels on the horse. English seamen refer to a deck horse as a leefange.

The raised grating platforms on the quarter-deck, close against the bulwarks, to be found on vessels not provided with a bridge, and on which the officer of the deck stands to issue his orders when working ship.

(See White Caps.)

A floating hulk, used, as its name implies, as a hospital for seamen.

Up to June 26, 1884, a tax of forty cents per month was exacted by law from every person belonging to the crew of an American documented vessel, but on the above date the law was repealed.

The hounding of a mast is all that is contained between the heel and the lower part of the head.