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

P.M. [Lat. post meridiem.] Post meridian, or after mid-day.

P.O. Mark for a petty officer.

POCHARD. A kind of wild duck.

POCKET. A commercial quantity of wool, containing half a sack. Also, the frog of a belt.

POD. A company of seals or sea-elephants.

POGGE. The miller's thumb, Cottus cataphractus.

POHAGEN. A fish of the herring kind, called also [hard-head] (which see).

POINT. A low spit of land projecting from the main into the sea, almost synonymous with promontory or head. Also, the rhumb the winds blow from.

POINT A GUN, To. To direct it on a given object.

POINT A SAIL, To. To affix points through the eyelet-holes of the reefs. (See [Points].)