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

BEZANT. An early gold coin, so called from having been first coined at Byzantium.

BIBBS. Pieces of timber bolted to the hounds of a mast, to support the trestle-trees.

BIBLE. A hand-axe. Also, a squared piece of freestone to grind the deck with sand in cleaning it; a small holy-stone, so called from seamen using them kneeling.

BIBLE-PRESS. A hand rolling-board for cartridges, rocket, and port-fire cases.

BICKER, or Beaker. A flat bowl or basin for containing liquors, formerly made of wood, but in later times of other substances. Thus Butler:

"And into pikes, and musqueteers,
Stamp beakers, cups, and porringers."

BID-HOOK. A small kind of boat-hook.

BIEL-BRIEF. The bottomry contract in Denmark, Sweden, and the north of Germany.

BIERLING. An old name for a small galley.

BIFURCATE. A river is said to bifurcate, or to form a fork, when it divides into two distinct branches, as at the heads of deltas and in fluvial basins.