CRACK-SHIP. One uncommonly smart in her evolutions and discipline, perhaps from the old English word for a fine boy. Crack is generally used for first-rate or excellent.

CRADLE. A frame consisting of bilge-ways, poppets, &c., on the principle of the wedge, placed under the bottom of a ship, and resting on the ways on which it slips, thus launching her steadily into the water, at which time it supports her weight while she slides down the greased ways. The cradle being the support of the ship, she carries it with her into the water, when, becoming buoyant, the frame separates from the hull, floats on the surface, and is again collected for similar purposes.

CRADLES. Standing bedsteads made up for wounded seamen, that they may be more comfortable than is possible in a hammock. Boats' chocks are sometimes called cradles.

CRAFT [from the Anglo-Saxon word cræft, a trading vessel]. It is now a general name for lighters, hoys, barges, &c. , employed to load or land any goods or stores. —Small craft. The small vessels of war attendant on a fleet, such as cutters, schooners, gunboats, &c.

, generally commanded by lieutenants. Craft is also a term in sea-phraseology for every kind of vessel, especially for a favourite ship. Also, all manner of nets, lines, hooks, &c. , used in fishing.

CRAG. A precipitous cliff whose strata if vertical, or nearly so, subdivide into points.

CRAGER. A small river lighter, mentioned in our early statutes.

CRAGSMAN. One who climbs cliffs overhanging the sea to procure sea-fowls, or their eggs.

CRAIG-FLOOK. The smear-dab, or rock-flounder.

CRAIK, or Crake. A ship; a diminutive corrupted from carrack.

CRAIL. See Kreel.

CRAIL-CAPON. A haddock dried without being split.

CRAKERS. Choice soldiers (temp. Henry VIII.) Perhaps managers of the crakys, and therefore early artillery.

CRAKYS. An old term for great guns.

CRAMP. A machine to facilitate the screwing of two pieces of timber together.

CRAMPER. A yarn or twine worn round the leg as a remedy against cramp.

CRAMPETS. The cramp rings of a sword scabbard. Ferrule to a staff.

CRAMPINGS. A nautical phrase to express the fetters and bolts for offenders.

CRAMPOON. See Creeper.[221]

CRANAGE. The money paid for the use of a wharf crane. Also, the permission to use a crane at any wharf or pier.

CRANCE. A sort of iron cap on the outer end of the bowsprit, through which the jib-boom traverses. The name is not unfrequently applied to any boom-iron.

CRANE. A machine for raising and lowering great weights, by which timber and stores are hoisted upon wharfs, &c. Also, a kind of catapult for casting stones in ancient warfare. Also, pieces of iron, or timber at a vessel's sides, used to stow boats or spars upon. Also, as many fresh or green unsalted herrings as would fill a barrel.

CRANE-BARGE. A low flat-floored lump, fitted for the purpose of carrying a crane, in aid of marine works.

CRANE-LINES. Those which formerly went from the spritsail-topmast to the middle of the fore-stay, serving to steady the former. Also, small lines for keeping the lee backstays from chafing against the yards.

CRANG. The carcass of a whale after being flinched or the blubber stripped off.

CRANK, or Crank-sided. A vessel, by her construction or her stowage, inclined to lean over a great deal, or from insufficient ballast or cargo incapable of carrying sail, without danger of overturning. The opposite term is stiff, or the quality of standing well up to her canvas. —Cranky expresses a foolish capriciousness. Ships built too deep in proportion to their breadth are notoriously crank.

—Crank by the ground, is a ship whose floor is so narrow that she cannot be brought on the ground without danger.

CRANK-HATCHES. Are raised coamings on a steamer's deck, to form coverings for the cranks of the engines below.

CRANK-PIN. In steam machinery, it goes through both arms of the crank at their extremities; to this pin the connecting-rod is attached.

CRANKS of a Marine Engine; eccentric, as in a turning-lathe. The bend or knee pinned on the shafts, by which they are moved round with a circular motion. Also, iron handles for working pumps, windlasses, &c. Also, erect iron forks on the quarter-deck for the capstan-bars, or other things, to be stowed thereon. Also, the axis and handle of a grindstone.

Also, an old term for the sudden or frequent involutions of the planets in their orbits.

CRANK-SHAFT. In a steamer. (See Intermediate Shaft.)

CRAPPO, or General Crapaud. Jack's name for a Frenchman, one whom he thinks would be a better sailor if he would but talk English instead of French.

CRARE, or Crayer. A slow unwieldy trading vessel of olden times. Thus Shakspeare, in Cymbeline, with hydrographic parlance:—

CRATER of a Mine. Synonymous with funnel (which see).[222]

CRAVAISE. An Anglo-Norman word for cray-fish.

CRAVEN. An old term synonymous with recreant (which see).

CRAWL. A sort of pen, formed by a barrier of stakes and hurdles on the sea-coast, to contain fish or turtle. On the coast of Africa, a pen for slaves awaiting shipment.

CRAWLING OFF. Working off a lee-shore by slow degrees.

CRAY-FISH. A lobster-like crustacean (Astacus fluviatilis) found in fresh-water.

CRAZY. Said of a ship in a bad state.

CREAK. The straining noise made by timbers, cabin bulk-heads, and spars in rolling.

CREAR. A kind of Scotch lighter. (See Crare.)

CREEK. A narrow inlet of the sea shoaling suddenly. Also, the channels connecting the several branches of a river and lake islands, and one lake or lagoon with another. It differs from a cove, in being proportionately deeper and narrower. In law, it is part of a haven where anything is landed from the sea.

CREEL, or Crue, for fishing. See Kreel.

CREENGAL. See Cringle.

CREEPER. A small grapnel (iron instrument with four claws) for dragging for articles dropped overboard in harbour. When anything falls, a dish or other white object thrown immediately after it will greatly guide the creeping.

CREES. See Kris.

CREMAILLEE. More commonly called indented (which see), with regard to lines or parapets.

CRENELLE. A loop-hole in a fortress.

CRENG. See Krang.

CREOLE. This term applies in the West Indies and Spanish America, &c., to a person of European and unmixed origin, but colonial born.

CREPUSCULUM. See Twilight.

CRESPIE. A northern term for a small whale or a grampus.

CRESSET. A beacon light set on a watch-tower.

CRESSIT. A small crease or dagger.

CREST. The highest part of a mountain, or range of mountains, and the summit of a sea-wave.

CREW. Comprehends every officer and man on board ship, borne as complement on the books. There are in ships of war several particular crews or gangs, as the gunner's, carpenter's, sail-maker's, blacksmith's, armourer's, and cooper's crews.

CRIB. A small berth in a packet.

CRICK. A small jack-screw.

CRIMPS. Detested agents who trepan seamen, by treating, advancing money, &c., by which the dupes become indebted, and when well plied with liquor are induced to sign articles, and are shipped off, only discovering their mistake on finding themselves at sea robbed of all they possessed.[223]

CRINGLE. A short piece of rope worked grommet fashion into the bolt-rope of a sail, and containing a metal ring or thimble. The use of the cringle is generally to hold the end of some rope, which is fastened thereto for the purpose of drawing up the sail to its yard, or extending the skirts or leech by means of bowline bridles, to stand upon a side-wind. The word seems to be derived from the old English crencled, or circularly formed. Cringles should be made of the strands of new bolt-rope.

Those for the reef and reef-tackle pendant are stuck through holes made in the tablings.

CRINKYL. The cringle or loop in the leech of a sail.

CRIPPLE, To. To disable an enemy's ship by wounding his masts, yards, and steerage gear, thereby placing him hors de combat.

CRISS-CROSS. The mark of a man who cannot write his name.

CROAKER. A tropical fish which makes a cris-cris noise.

CROAKY. A term applied to plank when it curves much in short lengths.

CROCHERT. A hagbut or hand cannon, anciently in use.

CROCK [Anglo-Saxon, croca]. An earthen mess-vessel, and the usual vegetables were called crock-herbs. In the Faerie Queene Spenser cites the utensil:—

CROCODILES. A designation for those who served in Egypt under Lord Keith.

CROJEK. The mode of pronouncing cross-jack (which see).

CRONNAG. In the Manx and Erse, signifies a rock that can be seen before low-water.

CROOKED-CATCH. An iron implement bent in the form of the letter S.

CROOKS. Crooked timbers. Short arms or branches of trees.

CROONER. The gray gurnard (Trigla gurnardus), so called on account of the creaking noise it makes after being taken.

CROSS-BARS. Round bars of iron, bent at each end, used as levers to turn the shank of an anchor.

CROSS-BAR-SHOT. The famed cross-bar-shot, or properly bar-shot, used by the Americans: when folded it presented a bar or complete shot, and could thus be placed in the gun. But as it left the muzzle it expanded to a cross, with four quarters of a shot at its radial points. It was used to destroy the rigging as well as do execution amongst men.

CROSS-BITT. The same as cross-piece (which see).

CROSS-BORED. Bored with holes alternately on the edges of planks, to separate the fastenings, so as to avoid splitting the timbers or beams.

CROSS-BOW. An ancient weapon of our fleet, when also in use on shore.

CROSS-CHOCKS. Large pieces of timber fayed across the dead-wood amidships, to make good the deficiency of the heels of the lower futtocks.

CROSS-FISH. A northern name for the asterias or star-fish; so called from the Norwegian kors-fisk. Also, the Uraster rubens.[224]

CROSS-GRAINED. Not straight-grained as in good wood; hence the perverse and vexatious disposition of the ne'er-do-wells. As Cotton's Juno—

CROSS-HEAD. In a steamer's engine, is on the top of the piston-rod athwart the cylinder; and there is another fitted to the air-pump, both having side-rods. (See Cylinder Cross-head.)

CROSSING A SHIP'S WAKE. When a ship sails over the transient track which another has just passed, i.e. passes close astern of her.

CROSSING THE CABLES IN THE HATCHWAY. A method by which the operation of coiling is facilitated; it alludes to hempen cables, which are now seldom used.

CROSS IN THE HAWSE. Is when a ship moored with two anchors from the bows has swung the wrong way once, whereby the two cables lie across each other.—To cross a vessel's hawse is to sail across the line of her course, a little ahead of her.

CROSSJACK-YARD [pronounced crojeck-yard]. The lower yard on the mizen-mast, to the arms of which the clues of the mizen top-sail are extended. The term is applied to any fore-and-aft vessels setting a square-sail, flying, below the lower cross-trees. It is now very common in merchant ships to set a sail called a cross-jack upon this yard.

CROSS-PAWLS. See Cross-spales.

CROSS-PIECE. The transverse timber of the bitts. Also, a rail of timber extending over the windlass of some merchant-ships from the knight-heads to the belfry. It is furnished with wooden pins to fasten the running-rigging to, as occasion requires. —Cross-pieces.

Short pieces laid across the keel of a line-of-battle ship, and scarphed to the lower ends of the first futtocks, as strengtheners.

CROSS-SEA. A sea not caused by the wind then blowing. During a heavy gale which changes quickly (a cyclone, for instance), each change of wind produces a direction of the sea, which lasts for some hours after the wind which caused it has changed, so that in a part of the sea which has experienced all the changes of one of these gales, the sea runs up in pyramids, sending the tops of the waves perpendicularly into the air, which are then spread by the prevailing wind; the effect is awfully grand and dangerous, for it generally renders a ship ungovernable until it abates.

CROSS-SOMER. A beam of timber.