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

BY AND LARGE. To the wind and off it; within six points.

BYKAT. A northern term for a male salmon of a certain age, because of the beak which then grows on its under-jaw.

BYLLIS. An old spelling for [bill] (which see).

BYRNIE. Early English for body-armour.

BYRTH. The old expression for tonnage. (See [Burden] or [Burthen].)

BYSSA. An ancient gun for discharging stones at the enemy.

BYSSUS. The silken filaments of any of the bivalved molluscs which adhere to rocks, as the Pinna, Mytilus, &c. The silken byssus of the great pinna, or wing-shell, is woven into dresses. In the Chama gigas it will sustain 1000 lbs. Also, the woolly substance found in damp parts of a ship.

BY THE BOARD. Over the ship's side. When a mast is carried away near the deck it is said to go by the board.

BY THE HEAD. When a ship is deeper forward than abaft.

BY THE LEE. The situation of a vessel going free, when she has fallen off so much as to bring the wind round her stern, and to take her sails aback on the other side.