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

MAASH. A large trading vessel of the Nile.

MACE. A war-club of old.

MACHICOULIS. A projecting gallery over gateways, or walls insufficiently flanked: being open at the bottom between its supporting corbels, it allows of defending the foot of the wall.

MACKEREL. The Scomber vulgaris, a well-known sea-fish.

MACKEREL-BOAT. A stout clinch-worked vessel, with a large fore-sail, sprit-sail, and mizen.

MACKEREL-SKY. See [Cirro-cumulus].

MACKEREL-STURE. A northern name for the tunny, Scomber thynnus.

MACULÆ. Dark temporary spots which are very frequently observed upon the sun's disc: they are of various forms, surrounded by a lighter shade or penumbra.

MAD. The state of a compass needle, the polarity of which has been injured.

MADDY, or Maddie. A large species of mussel abundant among the rocks of the western islands of Scotland and Wales.