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

FUTTOCK-HOLES. Places through the top-rim for the futtock-plates.

FUTTOCK-PLANK. The first plank of the ceiling next the kelson; the limber-strake.

FUTTOCK-PLATES. Iron plates with dead-eyes, crossing the sides of the top-rim perpendicularly. The dead-eyes of the top-mast rigging are set up to their upper ends or dead-eyes, and the futtock-shrouds hook to their lower ends.

FUTTOCK-RIDERS. When a rider is lengthened by means of pieces batted or scarphed to it and each other, the first piece is termed the first futtock-rider, the next the second futtock-rider, and so on.

FUTTOCKS, or Foot-hooks. The separate pieces of timber which compose the frame. There are four futtocks (component parts of the rib), and occasionally five, to a ship. The timbers that constitute her breadth—the middle division of a ship's timbers, or those parts which are situated between the floor and the top timbers—separate timbers which compose the frame. Those next the keel are called ground-futtocks or navel-timbers, and the rest upper futtocks.

FUTTOCK-SHROUDS, or Foot-hook Shrouds. Are short pieces of rope or chain which secure the lower dead-eyes and futtock-plates of top-mast rigging to a band round a lower mast.

FUTTOCK-STAFF. A short piece of wood or iron, seized across the upper part of the shrouds at equal distances, to which the cat-harping legs are secured.

FUTTOCK-TIMBERS. See [Futtocks].

FUZE. Formerly called also fuzee. The adjunct employed with shells for igniting the bursting charge at the required moment. Time-fuzes, prepared with some composition burning at a known rate, are cut or set to a length proportionate to the time which the shell is destined to occupy in its flight; concussion and percussion fuzes ignite the charge on impact on the object: the former by the dislocation of some of its parts throwing open new passages for its flame, and the latter by the action of various mechanism on its inner priming of detonating composition. They are made either of wood or of metal, and of various form and size according to the kind of ordnance they are intended for. Time-fuzes of special manufacture are also applied to igniting the charges of mines, subaqueous blasts, &c.

FUZZY. Not firm or sound in substance.