CROSS-CHOCKS. Large pieces of timber fayed across the dead-wood amidships, to make good the deficiency of the heels of the lower futtocks.
CROSS-FISH. A northern name for the asterias or star-fish; so called from the Norwegian kors-fisk. Also, the Uraster rubens.
CROSS-GRAINED. Not straight-grained as in good wood; hence the perverse and vexatious disposition of the ne'er-do-wells. As Cotton's Juno—
"That cross-grained, peevish, scolding queen."
CROSS-HEAD. In a steamer's engine, is on the top of the piston-rod athwart the cylinder; and there is another fitted to the air-pump, both having side-rods. (See [Cylinder Cross-head].)
CROSSING A SHIP'S WAKE. When a ship sails over the transient track which another has just passed, i.e. passes close astern of her.
CROSSING THE CABLES IN THE HATCHWAY. A method by which the operation of coiling is facilitated; it alludes to hempen cables, which are now seldom used.
CROSS IN THE HAWSE. Is when a ship moored with two anchors from the bows has swung the wrong way once, whereby the two cables lie across each other.—To cross a vessel's hawse is to sail across the line of her course, a little ahead of her.
CROSSJACK-YARD [pronounced crojeck-yard]. The lower yard on the mizen-mast, to the arms of which the clues of the mizen top-sail are extended. The term is applied to any fore-and-aft vessels setting a square-sail, flying, below the lower cross-trees. It is now very common in merchant ships to set a sail called a cross-jack upon this yard.
CROSS-PAWLS. See [Cross-spales].