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

CHELYNGE. An early name of the cod-fish.

CHEQUE, or Check. An office in dockyards. Cheque for muster, pay, provision, desertion, discharged, or dead—under DDD. or DSq^d.

CHEQUE, Clerk of the. An officer in the royal dockyards, who goes on board to muster the ship's company, of whom he keeps a register, thereby to check false musters, the penalty of which is cashiering.

CHEQUERED SIDES. Those painted so as to show all the ports; more particularly applicable to two or more rows.

CHERIMERI. In the East, a bribe in making a contract or bargain.

CHERRY. A species of smelt or spurling, taken in the Frith of Tay.

CHESIL. From the Anglo-Saxon word ceosl, still used for a bank or shingle, as that remarkable one connecting the Isle of Portland with the mainland, called the Chesil Beach.

CHESS-TREE. A piece of oak fastened with iron bolts on each top-side of the ship. Used for boarding the main-tack to, or hauling home the clues of the main-sail, for which purpose there is a hole in the upper part, through which the tack passes, that extends the clue of the sail to windward. Where chain has been substituted of late for rope, iron plates with thimble-eyes are used for chess-trees.

CHEST OF CHATHAM. An ancient institution, restored and established by an order in council of Queen Elizabeth, in 1590, supported by a contribution from each seaman and apprentice, according to the amount of his wages, for the wounded and hurt seamen of the royal navy, under the name of smart-money.

CHEST-ROPE. The same with the guest or gift rope, and is added to the boat-rope when the boat is towed astern of the ship, to keep her from sheering, i.e. from swinging to and fro. (See [Guess-warp].)