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

FLOOR-GUIDE. In ship-building, is a ribband placed between the floor and the keel.

FLOOR-HEAD. This, in marine architecture, is the third diagonal, terminating the length of the floors near the bilge of the ship, and bevellings are taken from it both forward and abaft. The upper extremities of a vessel's floor-timbers, plumb to the quarter-beam.

FLOOR-HOLLOW. The inflected curve of the floor, extending from the keel to the back of the floor-sweep, which the floor does not take.

FLOOR-PLANS. In naval architecture, are longitudinal sections, whereon are represented the water-lines and ribband-lines.

FLOOR-RIBBAND. This is an important fir-timber which runs round a little below the floor-heads, for the support of the floors.

FLOOR-RIDERS. Knees brought in from side to side over the floor ceiling and kelson, to support the bottom, if bilged or weak, for heavy cargo.

FLOORS, or Floor-timbers. Those parts of the ship's timbers which are placed immediately across the keel, and upon which the bottom of the ship is framed; to these the upper parts of the timbers are united, being only a continuation of floor-timbers upwards.

FLOOR-SWEEPS. The radii that sweep the heads of the floors. The first in the builder's draught, which is limited by a line in the body-plan, perpendicular to the plane of elevation, a little above the keel; and the height of this line above the keel is called the dead-rising.

FLOP, To. To fall flat down: as "soused flop in the lee-scuppers."

FLORY-BOATS. A local term for boats employed in carrying passengers to and fro from steamers which cannot get alongside of a quay at low-water.