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:

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[99] 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 space 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 ship 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 fishing 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 cutlass, 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,

BILCOCK. The northern name for the water-rail.

BILGE, or Bulge. That part of the floor in a ship—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 ship would rest[100] if laid on the ground; hence, when a ship receives a fracture in this part, she is said to be bilged or bulged.—Bilge is also the largest circumference of a cask, or that which extends round by the bung-hole.

BILGE-BLOCKS. See Sliding Bilge-blocks.

BILGE-COADS. In launching a ship, 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 ship, 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 shipped. 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 shiftings 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 ship 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 ship 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:—

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[101] 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 Yorkshire 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.

BILLET. The allowance to landlords for quartering men in the royal service; the lodging-money charged by consuls for the same.

BILLET-HEAD. A carved prow bending in and out, contrariwise to the fiddle-head (scroll-head). Also, a round piece of wood fixed in the bow or stern of a whale-boat, about which the line is veered when the whale is struck. Synonymous with bollard.

BILLET-WOOD. Small wood mostly used for dunnage in stowing ships' cargoes, also for fuel, usually sold by the fathom; it is 3 feet 4 inches long, and 71⁄2 inches in compass.

BILL-FISH. See Gar-fish.

BILL-HOOK. A species of hatchet used in wooding a ship, similar to that used by hedgers.

BILL OF EXCHANGE. A means of remitting money from one country to another. The receiver must present it for acceptance to the parties on whom it is drawn without loss of time, he may then claim the money after the date specified on the bill has elapsed.

BILL OF FREEDOM. A full pass for a neutral in time of war.

BILL OF HEALTH. A certificate properly authenticated by the consul, or other proper authority at any port, that the ship comes from a place where no contagious disorder prevails, and that none of the crew, at the time of her departure, were infected with any such distemper. Such constitutes a clean bill of health, in contradistinction to a foul bill.

BILL OF LADING. A memorandum by which the master of a ship acknowledges the receipt of the goods specified therein, and promises to deliver them, in like good condition, to the consignee, or his order. It differs from a charter-party insomuch as it is given only for a single article or more, laden amongst the sundries of a ship's cargo.

BILL OF SALE. A written document by which the property of a vessel, or shares thereof, are transferred to a purchaser.

BILL OF SIGHT, or of View. A warrant for a custom-house officer to examine goods which had been shipped for foreign parts, but not sold there.

BILL OF STORE. A kind of license, or custom-house permission, for re-importing unsold goods from foreign ports duty free, within a specified limit of time.[102]

BILLOWS. The surges of the sea, or waves raised by the wind; a term more in use among poets than seamen.

BILLS. The ends of compass or knee timber.

BILLY BOY OR BOAT. A Humber or east-coast boat, of river-barge build, and a trysail; a bluff-bowed north-country trader, or large one-masted vessel of burden.

BINARY SYSTEM. When two stars forming a double-star are found to revolve about each other.

BIND. A quantity of eels, containing 10 sticks of 25 each.

BINDINGS. In ship-building, a general name for the beams, knees, clamps, water-ways, transoms, and other connecting parts of a ship or vessel.

BINDING-STRAKES. Thick planks on the decks, in midships, between the hatchways. Also the principal strakes of plank in a vessel, especially the sheer-strake and wales, which are bolted to the knees and shelf-pieces.

BING. A heap; an old north-country word for the sea-shore, and sometimes spelled being.

BINGE, To. To rinse, or bull, a cask.

BINGID. An old term for locker.

BINK. See Benk.

BINN. A sort of large locker, with a lid on the top, for containing a vessel's stores: bread-binn, sail-binn, flour-binn, &c.

BINNACLE (formerly Bittacle). It appears evidently to be derived from the French term habittacle, a small habitation, which is now used for the same purpose by the seamen of that nation. The binnacle is a wooden case or box, which contains the compass, and a light to illuminate the compass at night; there are usually three binnacles on the deck of a ship-of-war, two near the helm being designed for the man who steers, weather and lee, and the other amidships, 10 or 12 feet before these, where the quarter-master, who conns the ship, stands when steering, or going with a free wind. (See Conn.)

BINNACLE-LIGHT. The lamp throwing light upon the compass-card.

BINOCLE. A small binocular or two-eyed telescope.

BIOR-LINN. Perhaps the oldest of our terms for boat. (See Birlin.)

BIRD-BOLT. A species of arrow, short and thick, used to kill birds without piercing their skins.

BIRD'S-FOOT SEA-STAR. The Palmipes membranaceus, one of the Asterinidæ, with a flat thin pentagonal body, of a bright scarlet colour.

BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. (See Edible Bird's Nest.)

BIREMIS. In Roman antiquity, a vessel with two rows of oars.[103]

BIRLIN. A sort of small vessel or galley-boat of the Hebrides; it is fitted with four to eight long oars, but is seldom furnished with sails.

BIRT. A kind of turbot.

BIRTH-MARKS. A ship must not be loaded above her birth-marks, for, says a maritime proverb, a master must know the capacity of his vessel, as well as a rider the strength of his horse.

BISCUIT [i. e. bis coctus, or Fr. bis-cuit]. Bread intended for naval or military expeditions is now simply flour well kneaded, with the least possible quantity of water, into flat cakes, and slowly baked.

Pliny calls it panis nauticus; and of the panis militaris, he says that it was heavier by one-third than the grain from which it was made.

BISHOP. A name of the great northern diver (Colymbus glacialis).

BISMER. A name of the stickleback (Gasterosteus spinachia).

BIT. A West Indian silver coin, varying from 4d. to 6d. In America it is 121⁄2 cents, and in the Spanish settlements is equal with the real, or one-eighth of a dollar. It was, in fact, Spanish money cut into bits, and known as "cut-money."