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

STEERING-SAIL. An incorrect name for a studding-sail.

STEER LARGE, To. To go free, off the wind. Also, to steer loosely.

STEER SMALL, To. To steer well and within small compass, not dragging the tiller over from side to side.

STEERSMAN. The helmsman or timoneer; the latter from the French timon, helm.

STEEVING. Implies the bowsprit's angle from the horizon: formerly it stood at an angle of 70 to 80 degrees, and was indeed almost a bow mast or sprit. Also, the stowing of cotton, wool, or other cargo, in a merchantman's hold with a jack-screw.

STEM. The foremost piece uniting the bows of a ship; its lower end scarphs into the keel, and the bowsprit rests upon its upper end. The outside of the stem is usually marked with a scale of feet and inches, answering to a perpendicular from the keel, in order to ascertain the ship's draught of water forward.—False stem. When a ship's stem is too flat, so that she cannot keep a wind well, a false stem, or gripe, is fayed on before the right one, which enables her to hold a better wind.—From stem to stern, from one end of the ship to the other.—To stem, to make way against any obstacle. "She does not stem the tide," that is, she cannot make head against it for want of wind.

STEM-KNEE. In ship-building, the compass-timber which connects the keel with the stem. (See [Dead-wood Knees].)

STEMSON. An arching piece of compass-timber, worked within the apron to reinforce the scarph thereof, in the same manner as the apron supports that of the stem. The upper end is carried as high as the upper deck, the lower being scarphed on to the kelson.

STEP. A large clamp of timber fixed on the kelson, and fitted to receive the tenoned heel of a mast. The steps of the main and fore masts of every ship rest upon the kelson; that of the mizen-mast sometimes rests upon the lower-deck beams.—To step a boat's mast. To erect and secure it in its step in readiness for setting sail.

STEP OF THE CAPSTAN. A solid block of wood fixed between two of the ship's beams to receive the iron spindle and heel of the capstan.