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

FLIGHERS. An old law-term meaning masts of ships.

FLIGHT. A Dutch vessel or passage-boat on canals. In ship-building, a sudden rising, or a greater curve than sheer, at the cheeks, cat-heads, &c.

FLIGHT of a Shot. The trajectory formed between the muzzle of the gun and the first graze.

FLIGHT of the Transoms. As their ends gradually close downwards on approaching the keel, they describe a curve somewhat similar to the rising of the floors; whence the name.

FLINCH. In ship-building. (See [Snape].)

FLINCH-GUT. The whale's blubber; as well as the part of the hold into which it is thrown before being barrelled up.

FLINCHING, Flensing, or Flinsing. See [Flense].

FLINDERS. An old word for splinters; thus Walter Scott's Borderer—

"The tough ash-spear, so stout and true,
Into a thousand flinders flew."

FLINT. The stone of a gun-lock, by which a spark was elicited for the discharge of the loaded piece.