The Sailor's Word-Book / An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc.

by W. H. Smyth

SAGITTARIUS. The ninth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of November.

SAGUM. An ancient military cloak.

SAIC. A sort of Greek ketch, which has no top-gallant nor mizen sails, but still spreads much canvas.

SAIL. The terms applicable to the parts of a sail comprise:—Seaming the cloths together; cutting the gores; tabling and sewing on the reef, belly, lining, and buntline bands, roping, and marling on the clues and foot-rope. The square sails comprise courses, top-sails, topgallant-sails, royals, skysails on each mast. The fore and aft, are jibs, staysails, trysails, boom main-sails and fore-sails, gaff top-sails, to which may be added the studding-sails and the flying kites. Also, a distant ship is called a sail.

SAIL BURTON. A purchase extending from topmast-head to deck, for sending sails aloft ready for bending; it usually consists of two single blocks, having thimbles and a hook; a leading block on the slings through which the fall leads to bear the top-sail clear of the top-rim.

SAIL HO! The exclamation used when a strange ship is first discerned at sea—either from the deck or from the mast-head.

SAIL-HOOK. A small hook used for holding the seams of a sail while in the act of sewing.

SAILING. The movement of a vessel by means of her sails along the surface of the water. Sailing, or the sailings, is a term applied to the different ways in which the path of a ship at sea, and the variations of its geographical position, are represented on paper, all which are explained under the various heads of great circle sailing, Mercator's sailing, middle latitude sailing, oblique sailing, parallel sailing, plane sailing.

SAILING, Order of. The general disposition of a fleet of ships when proceeding on a voyage or an expedition. It is generally found most convenient for fleets of ships of war to be formed in three parallel lines or columns. But squadrons of less than ten sail of the line are placed in two lines.

SAILING CAPTAIN. An officer in some navies, whose duties are similar to those of our masters in the royal navy.