M.
MAGAZINE, soute au poudres, a close room or store-house, built in the fore, or after-part of a ship’s hold, to contain the gun-powder used in battle, &c. This apartment is strongly secured against fire, and no person is suffered to enter it with a lamp or candle: it is therefore lighted, as occasion requires, by means of the candles or lamps which are fixed in the light-room contiguous to it. See that article.
MAGNET. See the article Compass.
MAIN, an epithet usually applied by sailors to whatever is principal, as opposed to what is inferior or secondary. Thus the main land is used in contradistinction to an island or peninsula; and the main-mast, the main-wale, the main-keel, and the main-hatchway, are in like manner distinguished from the fore and mizen-masts, the channel-wales, the false-keel, and the fore and after-hatchways, &c.
As the sails, yards, and rigging of the main-mast, are all described in their proper places, namely, under those particular articles, to which the reader is referred, it will be unnecessary to say any thing farther of them here.
To MAKE, is variously applied, in the sea-language, to the land, to the sails, to the ship’s course, &c.
To Make a good board. See the article Board.
To Make the land, decouvrir, is to discover it from a distant situation, in consequence of approaching it after a sea-voyage: as, “In your passage to cape Tiburon, it will be necessary to make Turk’s Island.”
To Make sail, faire plus de voiles, is to increase the quantity of sail already extended, either by letting out the reefs, and by hoisting an additional number of small sails, or by performing either of those exercises separately.
To Make sternway, aller en arriere, is to retreat or move with the stern foremost.