2 - Glossary

Summary

This list is meant for quick reference, and includes technical terms and some obsolete words of general application. 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 Captain John Smith's Sea Grammar in the edition by K. Goell (1970), 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.

advertisement. News, notice.

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.

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

bay salt. Sea salt.

billet. Cut of firewood.

block. Pulley.

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

bowsprit. Spar extending from stem.

brigantine. Small oared warship.

brod. Round-headed nail.

cablet. Small cable.

caliver. Hand gun.

can hook. Rope or chain forming sling for cask.

chaldron. Cauldron, used as measure, viz. 32 bushels (4 quarters).

clap. Leather flange.

clench (nail). A form of ‘clinch’, having the point driven back into the material through which it has passed, forming a double-headed clamp, or hammered into a rove. In shipbuilding, used to fasten the overlapping planks or strakes in the construction of the hull (hence ‘clinker-built’).

cloveboard. A form of ‘clapboard’, i.e. a small size of split oak.

cock of brass. Socket of block or shiver.

conduct (of troops). Marshalling from place of recruitment to point of assembly, and home again. Conduct money was paid to the men per mile travelled.

crayer. Small merchantman.

crow. Crowbar.

customer. Customs collector.