GUN-SLINGS. Long rope grommets used for hoisting in and mounting them.
GUN-STONES. An old term for cannon-balls, from stones having been first supplied to the ordnance and used for that purpose. Shakspeare makes Henry V. tell the French ambassadors that their master's tennis-balls shall be changed to gun-stones. This term was retained for a bullet, after the introduction of iron shot.
GUN-TACKLE PURCHASE. A tackle composed of a rope rove through two single blocks, the standing part being made fast to the strop of one of the blocks. It multiplies the power applied threefold.
GUNTEN. A boat of burden in the Moluccas.
GUNTER'S LINE. Called also the line of numbers, and the line of lines, is placed upon scales and sectors, and named from its inventor, Edmund Gunter. It is a logarithmic scale of proportionals, wherein the distance between each division is equal to the number of mean proportionals contained between the two terms, in such parts as the distance between 1 and 10 is 10,000, &c.
GUNTER'S QUADRANT. A kind of stereographic projection on the plane of the equinoctial; the eye is supposed in one of the poles, so that the tropic, ecliptic, and horizon form the arches of the circles, but the hour-circles are all curves, drawn by means of several altitudes of the sun, for some particular latitude, for every day in the year. The use of this instrument is to find the hour of the day, the sun's azimuth, and other common problems of the globe; as also to take the altitude of an object in degrees.
GUNWALE, or Gunnel. Nearly synonymous with [plank-sheer] (which see); but its strict application is that horizontal plank which covers the heads of the timbers between the main and fore drifts. The gunwale of a boat is a piece of timber going round the upper sheer-strake as a binder for its top-work.—Gunwale-to. Vessels heeling over, so that the gunwale is even with the water. When a boat sails with a free wind, and rolls each side, or gunwale, to the water's edge, she rolls gunwale-to.
GURGE. A gulf or whirlpool.
GURNARD. A fish of the genus Trigla, so called from its peculiar grunt when removed from the water. Falstaff uses the term "soused gurnet" in a most contemptuous view, owing to its poorness; and its head being all skin and bone gave rise to the saying that the flesh on a gurnard's head is rank poison.
GURNET-PENDANT. A rope, the thimble of which is hooked to the quarter-tackle of the main-yard; it is led through a hole in the deck, for the purpose of raising the breech of a gun, when hoisting in, to the level required to place it on its carriage.