LUFF ROUND, or Luff A-lee. The extreme of the movement, by which it is intended to throw the ship's head up suddenly into the wind, in order to go about, or to lessen her way to avoid danger.
LUFF-TACKLE. A purchase composed of a double and single block, the standing end of the rope being fast to the single block, and the fall coming from the double. This name is given to any large tackle not destined for any particular place, but to be variously used as occasion may require. It is larger than the jigger-tackle, but smaller than the fore and main yard-tackles or the stay-tackles. (See [Luff upon Luff].)
LUFF UPON LUFF. One luff-tackle applied to the fall of another, to afford an increase of purchase.
LUG. The Arenicola piscatorum, a sand-worm much used for bait. Also, of old, the term for a perch or rod used in land-measuring, containing 161⁄2 feet, and which may have originated the word log.
LUGAR [Sp.] A name for watering-places on the Spanish coast.
LUG-BOAT. The fine Deal boats which brave the severest weather; they are rigged as luggers, and dip the yards in tacking. They really constitute a large description of life-boat.
LUGGER. A small vessel with quadrilateral or four-cornered cut sails, set fore-and-aft, and may have two or three masts. French coasters usually rig thus, and are called chasse marées; but with us it is confined to fishing craft and ships' boats; some carry top-sails. During the war of 1810 to 1814 French luggers, as well as Guernsey privateers, were as large as 300 tons, and carried 18 guns. One captured inside the Needles in 1814, carried a mizen-topsail. The Long Bet of Plymouth, a well-known smuggler, long defied the Channel gropers, but was taken in 1816.
LUGS. The ears of a bomb-shell, to which the hooks are applied in lifting it.
LUG-SAIL. A sail used in boats and small vessels. It is in form like a gaff-sail, but depends entirely on the rope of the luff for its stability. The yard is two-thirds of the breadth at foot, and is slung at one-fourth from the luff. On the mast is an iron hoop or traveller, to which it is hoisted. The tack may be to windward, or at the heel of the mast amidships. It is powerful, but has the inconvenience of requiring to be lowered and shifted on the mast at every tack, unless the tack be secured amidships. Much used in the barca-longa, navigated by the Spaniards.
LULL. The brief interval of moderate weather between the gusts of wind in a gale. Also, an abatement in the violence of surf.