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

TRABALEO. Ancient coasting vessels.

TRABARIÆ. Ancient canoes, made of hollowed trees, capable of carrying two or three men.

TRACE. In fortification, the horizontal disposition of the works; also, a plan of the same.

TRACK-BOAT [from the Dutch treck-schuyt]. A vessel used on a canal or narrow stream.

TRACKING. Hauling any vessel or floating body along a canal or river by a rope dragged along the bank by men or horses.

TRACK OF A SHIP. The line of a ship's course through the water. (See [Wake].)

TRADE. Implies the constant destination of any particular merchant vessels, as the Lisbon trade, West India trade, &c.

TRADER. A vessel employed regularly in any particular branch of commerce, whether sea-borne or coasting, British or foreign.

TRADE-ROOM. A part of the steerage of a Yankee notion-trader where light goods and samples of the cargo are kept for general business.

TRADE-WINDS. Currents of air moving from about the 30th degree of latitude towards the equator. The diurnal motion of the earth makes them incline from the eastward, so that in the northern hemisphere they are from the N.E., and in the southern hemisphere from the S.E. Their geographical position in latitude varies with the declination of the sun. In some parts of the world, as the Bay of Bengal and China Sea, the action of the sun on the neighbouring land has the power of reversing the trades; the winds are there called monsoons.