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

HULLOCK of a Sail. A small part lowered in a gale.

HULL-TO. The situation of a ship when she is lying a-hull, or with all her sails furled.

HULLY. A long wicker-trap used for catching eels.

HUMBER-KEEL. A particular clincher-built craft used on the Humber.

HUMLA-BAND. A northern term for the grommet to an oar-pin or thole.

HUMMOCK. A hill with a rounded summit or conical eminence on the sea-coast. When in pairs they are termed [paps] by navigators (which see).

HUMMOCKS OF ICE. Protuberant lumps of ice thrown up by some pressure upon a field or floe, or any other frozen plane. The pieces which rise when large fragments come in contact, and bits of pack are frozen together and covered with snow.

HUMMUMS. From the Arabic word hammam, a bagnio or bath.

HUMP-BACKED WHALE. A species of whalebone whale, the Megaptera longimana, which attains to 45 or 50 feet in length, and is distinguished by its low rounded dorsal fin.

HURD. The strand of a rope.