STIFF BOTTOM. A clayey bottom.
STIFF BREEZE. One in which a ship may carry a press of sail, when a little more would endanger the spars.
STIFFENING ORDER. A custom-house warrant for making a provision in the shipping of goods, before the whole inward cargo is discharged, to prevent the vessel getting too light.
STILL WATER. Another name for slack-tide; it is also used for water under the lee of headlands, or where there is neither tide nor current.
STING-RAY. A fish, Trygon pastinaca, which wounds with a serrate bone, lying in a sheath on the upper side of its tail; the wound is painful, as all fish-wounds are, but not truly poisonous, and the smart is limited by superstition to the next tide.
STINK-BALLS. A pyrotechnical preparation of pitch, rosin, nitre, gunpowder, colophony, assafœtida, and other offensive and suffocating ingredients, formerly used for throwing on to an enemy's decks at close quarters, and still in use with Eastern pirates, in earthen jars or stink-pots.
STIPULATION. A process in the instance-court of the admiralty, which is conventional when it regards a vessel or cargo, but prætorian and judicial in proceedings against a person.
STIREMANNUS. The term in Domesday Book for the pilot of a ship or steersman.
STIRRUP. An iron or copper plate that turns upwards on each side of a ship's keel and dead-wood at the fore-foot, or at her skegg, and bolts through all: it is a strengthener, but not always necessary.
STIRRUPS. Ropes with eyes at their ends, through which the foot-ropes are rove, and by which they are supported; the ends are nailed to the yards, and steady the men when reefing or furling sails.