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

HERISSON. A balanced barrier to a passage in a fort, of the nature of a turnstile.

HERLING. A congener of the salmon species found in Scotland; it is small, and shaped like a sea-trout.

HERMAPHRODITE or Brig Schooner, is square-rigged, but without a top forward, and schooner-rigged abaft; carrying only fore-and-aft sails on the main-mast; in other phrase, she is a vessel with a brig's fore-mast and a schooner's main-mast.

HERMIT-CRAB. A name applied to a group of crabs (family Paguridæ), of which the hinder part of the body is soft, and which habitually lodge themselves in the empty shell of some mollusc. Also called soldier-crabs.

HERMO. A Mediterranean term for the meteor called corpo santo.

HERNE. A bight or corner, as Herne Bay, so called from lying in an angle.

HERNSHAW and Herne. Old words for the heron.

HERON. A large bird of the genus Ardea, which feeds on fish.

HERRING. A common fish—the Clupea harengus; Anglo-Saxon hæring and hering.

HERRING-BONING. A method of sewing up rents in a sail by small cross-stitches, by which the seam is kept flat.