HEAVE THE LOG. Determine the ship's velocity by the log line and glass.

HEAVE-TO, To. To put a vessel in the position of lying-to, by adjusting her sails so as to counteract each other, and thereby check her way, or keep her perfectly still. In a gale, it implies to set merely enough sail to steady the ship; the aim being to keep the sea on the weather bow whilst the rudder has but little influence, the sail is chiefly set on the main and mizen-mast; as hove-to under a close-reefed main-topsail, or main-trysail, or driver. It is customary in a foul wind gale, and a last resource in a fair one.

HEAVING AHEAD. Is the act of advancing or drawing a ship forwards by heaving on a cable or rope made fast to some fixed point before her.

HEAVING AND SETTING. Riding hard, pitching and sending.

HEAVING ASTERN. Causing a ship to recede or go backwards, by heaving on a cable or other rope fastened to some fixed point behind her. This more immediately applies to drawing a vessel off a shoal.[378]

HEAVING A STRAIN. Working at the windlass or capstan with more than usual exertion.

HEAVING DOWN. (See Careening.) The bringing one of a ship's sides down into the water, by means of purchases on the masts, in order to repair any injury which is below her water-line on the other.

HEAVING IN. Shortening in the cable. Also, the binding a block and hook by a seizing.

HEAVING IN STAYS. The act of tacking, when, the wind being ahead, great pressure is thrown upon the stays.

HEAVING KEEL OUT. The utmost effect to be produced by careening, viz. to raise the keel out of the water in order to repair or clean it. (See Heaving Down.)

HEAVING OUT. The act of loosing or unfurling a sail; particularly applied to the staysails; or in the tops, footing the sail out of the top.

HEAVING TAUT. The act of turning the capstan, &c., till the rope applied thereto becomes straight and ready for action.

HEAVING THROUGH ALL. The surging or slipping of the cable when the nippers do not hold.

HEAVY DRIFT-ICE. Dense ice, which has a great depth in the water in proportion to its size, and is not in a state of decay, therefore dangerous to shipping.

HEAVY GALE. A strong wind, in which a ship is reduced to storm-staysails and close-reefed main-topsail. Force 10.

HEAVY METAL, or Heavy Ordnance. Ordnance of large calibre.

HEAVY SEA. High and strong waves.

HEBBER-MAN. An old name for a fisherman on the Thames below London Bridge, who took whitings, smelts, &c., commonly at ebbing-water.

HEBBING-WEIR. Contrivances for taking fish at ebbing-water.

HECK-BOAT. The old term for pinks. Latterly a clincher-built boat with covered fore-sheets, and one mast with a trysail.

HECKLE. Said to be from the Teutonic heckelen, to dress flax for rope-making. Also, an artificial fly for fishing.

HECKLE-BACK. A name of the fifteen-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus spinachia.

HEDA. An early term for a small haven, wharf, or landing-place.

HEDAGIUM. A toll or duty paid at the wharf for landing goods, &c.

HEDGEHOGS. A name formerly applied to vessels which rowed with many oars. Also, small stunted trees unfit for timber.

HEEL. The after end of a ship's keel, and the lower end of the stern-post to which it is connected. Also, the lower end of any mast, boom, bowsprit, or timber. Also, that part of the end of the butt of a musket which is uppermost when at the firing position. —To heel.

To lie over, or incline to either side out of the perpendicular: usually applied to a ship when canted by the wind, or by being unequally ballasted. (See Crank, Stiff, and Trim.

HEEL-BRACE. A piece of iron-work applicable to the lower part of a rudder, in case of casualty to the lower pintles.

HEELING GUNWALE TO. Pressing down sideways to her upper works, particularly applied to boats running before a heavy sea, when they may roll their weather gunwales to.

HEEL-KNEE. The compass-piece which connects the keel with the stern-post.

HEEL-LASHING. The rope which secures the inner part of a studding-sail boom to the yard; also, that which secures the jib-boom.

HEEL OF A MAST. The lower end, which either fits into the step attached to the keel, or in top-masts is sustained by the fid upon the trestle-trees. Heeling is the square part of the spar through which the fid hole is cut.

HEEL-ROPE. That which hauls out the bowsprit in cutters, and the jib and studding-sail booms, or anything else where it passes through the heel of the spar, except in the case of top-masts and topgallant-masts, where it becomes a mast-rope.

HEELS. Having the heels of a ship; sailing faster.

HEEL-TACKLES. The luff purchases for the heels of each sheer previous to taking in masts, or otherwise using them.

HEEVIL. An old northern term for the conger.

HEFT. The Anglo-Saxon hæft; the handle of a dirk, knife, or any edge-tool; also, the handle of an oar.

HEIGHT. Synonymous with hill, and meaning generally any ground above the common level of the place. Our early navigators used the word as a synonym of latitude.

HEIGHT of the Hold. Used for the depth of the hold.

HEIGHT OF BREADTH. In ship-building, is a delineation generally in two lines—upper and lower—determining the height of the broadest place of each timber.

HELIACAL. A star rises heliacally when it first becomes visible in the morning, after having been hidden in the sun's rays; and it sets heliacally when it is first lost in the evening twilight, owing to the sun's proximity.

HELIER. A cavern into which the tide flows.

HELIOCENTRIC. As seen from, or having reference to, the centre of the sun.

HELIOMETER. An instrument designed for the accurate measurement of the diameters of the sun or planets.

HELIOSTAADT, or Heliotrope. This instrument reflects the sun's rays by a silvered disc, used in the great trigonometrical surveys. It has been visible at 100 miles' distance, from Cumberland to Ireland.

HELL-AFLOAT. A vessel with a bad name for tyranny.

HELM. Properly is the tiller, but sometimes used to express the rudder, and the means used for turning it, which, in small vessels and boats, is merely a tiller, but in larger vessels a wheel is added, which supplies the[380] leverage for pulling the tiller either way; they are connected by ropes or chains. —A-lee the helm, or Down with the helm! So place the tiller that the rudder is brought on the weather side of the stern-post. These, and the following orders, were established when tillers extended forward from the rudder-head, but now they often extend aft, which requires the motion of the tiller to be reversed.

With the latter style of tiller the order "down with the helm" is carried out by bringing the tiller up to the weather side of the ship; which being done, the order "Helm's a lee" follows. —Bear up the helm. That is, let the ship go more large before the wind. —Ease the helm. To let the helm come more amidships, when it has been put hard up or down.

—It is common to ease the helm before a heavy sea takes the ship when close-hauled. —Helm amidships, or right the helm. That is, keep it even with the middle of the ship, in a line with the keel. —Helm over. The position of the tiller to enable a vessel steaming ahead to describe a curve.

—Port the helm. Place the tiller so as to carry the rudder to starboard. (See A-lee the helm. )—Shift the helm. Put it from port to starboard, and vice versâ, or it may be amidships.

—Starboard the helm. Place the tiller so as to carry the rudder to port. —Up with the helm. Place the tiller so as to carry the rudder to leeward. (See A-lee the helm.

HELMED. An old word for steered; it is metaphorically used by Shakspeare in Measure for Measure.

HELMET. A piece of defensive armour; a covering for the head.

HELM-PORT. The round hole or cavity in a ship's counter, through which the head of the rudder passes into the trunk.

HELM-PORT TRANSOM. The piece of timber placed across the lower counter, withinside the height of the helm-port, and bolted through every timber for the security of that part of the ship.

HELMSMAN. The timoneer, or person, who guides the ship or boat by the management of the helm. The same as steersman.

HELM-WIND. A singular meteorological phenomenon which occurs in the north of England. Besides special places in Cumberland and Westmoreland, it suddenly rushes from an immense cloud that gathers round the summit of Cross-Fell, covering it like a helmet. Its effects reach the sea-board.

HELMY. Rainy [from an Anglo-Saxon phrase for rainy weather].

HELTER-SKELTER. Hurry and confusion. Defiance of good order. Privateerism.

HELVE. The handle of the carpenter's mauls, axes, and adzes; also of an oar, &c.

HELYER. See Helier.

HEMISPHERE. Half the surface of a globe. The celestial equator divides the heavens into two hemispheres—the northern and the southern.

HEMP. Cannabis sativa. A manufactorial plant of equal antiquity with flax. The produce of hemp in fibre varies from three to six hundred weight per acre, and forms the best of all cordage and ropes. It is mixed[381] with opium in the preparation of those rich drugs called hashishe in Cairo and Constantinople.

Those who were in the constant use of them were called hashishin (herb-eaters); and being often by their stimulative properties excited almost to frenzy and to murder, the word "assassin" is said to have been derived by the crusaders from this source. While the French army was in Egypt, Napoleon I. was obliged to prohibit, under the severest penalties, the sale and use of these pernicious substances.

HENDECAGON. A right-lined figure with eleven sides; if it be regular, the sides and angles are all equal.

HEN-FRIGATE. A ship wherein the captain's wife interfered in the duty or regulations.

HEN'S-WARE. A name of the edible sea-weed Fucus esculentus.

HEP-PAH, or Hippa. A New Zealand fort, or space surrounded with stout palisades; these rude defences have given our soldiers and sailors much trouble to reduce. (See Pah.)

HEPTAGON. A right-lined figure with seven sides; if it be regular, the sides and angles are all equal.

HERCULES. The large mass of iron by the blows of which anchors are welded.

HERE-AWAY. A term when a look-out man announces a rhumb or bearing of any object in this quarter.

HERE-FARE [Anglo-Saxon]. An expedition; going to warfare.

HERISSON. A balanced barrier to a passage in a fort, of the nature of a turnstile.

HERLING. A congener of the salmon species found in Scotland; it is small, and shaped like a sea-trout.

HERMAPHRODITE or Brig Schooner, is square-rigged, but without a top forward, and schooner-rigged abaft; carrying only fore-and-aft sails on the main-mast; in other phrase, she is a vessel with a brig's fore-mast and a schooner's main-mast.

HERMIT-CRAB. A name applied to a group of crabs (family Paguridæ), of which the hinder part of the body is soft, and which habitually lodge themselves in the empty shell of some mollusc. Also called soldier-crabs.

HERMO. A Mediterranean term for the meteor called corpo santo.

HERNE. A bight or corner, as Herne Bay, so called from lying in an angle.

HERNSHAW and Herne. Old words for the heron.

HERON. A large bird of the genus Ardea, which feeds on fish.

HERRING. A common fish—the Clupea harengus; Anglo-Saxon hæring and hering.

HERRING-BONING. A method of sewing up rents in a sail by small cross-stitches, by which the seam is kept flat.

HERRING-BUSS. A peculiar boat of 10 or 15 tons, for the herring fishery. (See Buss.)[382]

HERRING-COB. A young herring.

HERRING-GUTTED. See Shotten-herring.

HERRING-HOG. A name for the porpoise.

HERRING-POND. The Atlantic Ocean.

HETERODROMOUS LEVERS. The windlass, capstan, crank, crane, &c.