FILLING IN. The replacing a ship's vacant planks opened for ventilation, when preparing her, from ordinary, for sea.
FILLING POWDER. Taking gunpowder from the casks to fill cartridges, when lights and fires should be extinguished.
FILLING ROOM. Formerly a small place parted off and lined with lead, in a man-of-war magazine, wherein powder may be started loosely, in order to fill cartridges.
FILLINGS. Fir fayed in between the chocks of the head, and wherever solidity is required, as making the curve fair for the mouldings between the edges of the fish-front and the sides of the mast, or making the spaces between the ribs and timbers of a vessel's frame solid.
FILLING-TIMBERS. Blocks of wood introduced in all well-built vessels between the frames, where the bilge-water may wash.
FILLING-TRANSOM, is just above the deck-transom, securing the ends of the gun-deck plank and lower-transoms.
FILL THE MAIN-YARD. An order well understood to mean, fill the main-topsail, after it has been aback, or the ship hove-to.
FILTER. A strainer to free water from its impurities, usually termed by seamen [drip-stone] (which see).
FILUM AQUÆ. The thread or middle of any river or stream which divides countries, manors, &c.—File du mer, the high tide of the sea.
FIMBLE HEMP; female hemp, is that which is chiefly used for domestic purposes, and therefore falls to the care of the women, as carl or male hemp, which produces the flower, does to the maker of cordage.