4 - Glossary

Summary

This list is meant for quick reference, and includes technical terms and some obsolete words of general application. More extensive comment on certain words and expressions is made at their first occurrence within the text (as noted here), and terms appearing once only are mostly dealt with at that point. This is not a general dictionary, but has application only to the present volume. Since its purpose is to help the reader rather than highlight the editors’ ignorance, uncertain terms are not included. This applies both to words which could not be interpreted (and therefore printed within inverted commas in the text), and to items described in commonplace words but the precise application of which cannot be stated. The definitions derive chiefly from OED and Capt. John Smith's Sea Grammar in the edition by K. Goell, assisted by previous NRS volumes and the glossary in Professor Rodger's Safeguard of the Sea. D. King, J. B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes, A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian's Seafaring Tales (New York, 1995) is also useful, though its definitions reflect eighteenth-century usages which were sometimes different from those of the sixteenth.

Admiral. Sometimes used for a ship commanded by an Admiral; Vice-

Admiral likewise.

advertisement. News, notice.

Almain. German.

annoy (of an enemy). Cause harm (not jocular).

arrearages. Arrears.

Augmentations (court of). Government department which between 1536 and 1554 administered the properties of the dissolved monasteries and confiscations from the church; its residual functions were absorbed by the Exchequer.

axe, axle-tree. Axle.

balet. Small bale.

band (of pitch, tar). A form of ‘bond’, meaning thickness, hence binding quality.

base. Small gun, usually wrought-iron and breech-loading, firing cast lead shot.

batch. Vessel for brewing, hence batch hoop.

bay salt. Sea salt.

beakhead. Horizontal projection of stem.

beetle. Wooden mallet.

bilboes. Iron shackles linked by a central bar, for restraining prisoner by the ankles.

billet. Cut of firewood.

block. Pulley.

bolter. Coarse cloth used for sifting meal.

bonaventure (in full bonaventure mizzen). Aftermost mast of a fourmasted ship.

bonnet. Additional section of canvas laced to sail (commonly to a corse) to catch wind.

bouge. Bulge of wooden barrel, or the barrel itself; related to ‘budge’. See above, pp. 163 n. 2, 183 n. 2.

bowline. Rope keeping sail taut when sailing into the wind.