DEVIATION. A voluntary departure from the usual course of the voyage, without any necessary or justifiable cause: a step which discharges the insurers from further responsibility. Liberty to touch, stay, or trade in any particular place not in the usual course of the voyage must be expressly specified in the contract, and even this is subordinate to the voyage. The cases of necessity which justify deviation are—1, stress of weather; 2, urgent want of repairs; 3, to join convoy; 4, succouring ships in distress; 5, avoiding capture or detention; 6, sickness; 7, mutiny of the crew. It differs from a change of voyage, which must have been resolved upon before the sailing of the ship. (See [Change].)—Deviation is also the attraction of a ship's iron on the needle. It is a term recently introduced to distinguish a sort of second variation to be allowed for in iron vessels.
DEVIL. A sort of priming made by damping and bruising gunpowder.
DEVIL-BOLTS. Those with false clenches, often introduced into contract-built ships.
DEVIL-FISH. The Lophius piscatorius, a hideous creature, which has also obtained the name of fish-frog, monk-fish, bellows-fish, sea-devil, and other appellatives significant of its ugliness and bad manners. There is also a powerful Raia, which grows to an immense size in the tropics, known as the devil-fish, the terror of the pearl-divers. Manta of Spaniards.
DEVILRY. Spirited roguery; wanton mischief, short of crime.
DEVIL'S CLAW. A very strong kind of split hook made to grasp a link of a chain cable, and used as a stopper.
DEVIL'S SMILES. Gleams of sunshine among dark clouds, either in the heavens or captain's face!
DEVIL'S TABLE-CLOTH. See [Table-cloth].
DEVIL TO PAY AND NO PITCH HOT. The seam which margins the water-ways was called the "devil," why only caulkers can tell, who perhaps found it sometimes difficult for their tools. The phrase, however, means service expected, and no one ready to perform it. Impatience, and naught to satisfy it.
DEW-POINT. A meteorological term for the degree of temperature at which the moisture of the atmosphere would begin to precipitate; it may be readily ascertained by means of the hygrometer.