Many of these vessels are used on an illicit trade, and others employed by the government to seize them; the latter of which are either under the direction of the Admiralty or Custom-house. See a representation of a cutter of this sort in the plate referred to from the article Vessel.
Cutter is also a small boat used by ships of war. See Boat.
CUTTING-DOWN Line, a curved line used by shipwrights in the delineation of ships: it determines the thickness of all the floor timbers, and likewise the height of the dead-wood, afore and abaft. It is limited in the middle of the ship by the thickness of the floor-timber, and abaft by the breadth of the kelson; and must be carried up so high upon the stem, as to leave sufficient substance for the breeches of the rising timbers. Murray’s Ship-building.
CUT-WATER, the foremost part of a ship’s prow, formed of an assemblage of several pieces of timber, to render it broad at the upper-part, where it projects forward from the stem to open the column of water as the ship sails along, and also to make her keep to windward better, when she is close-hauled. It is otherwise called the knee of the head. See the article Stem; as also the several parts of it represented in plate [I]. Pieces of the Hull.
D.
Davit, minot, a long beam of timber, represented by a, a, plate [II]. fig. 28, and used as a crane, whereby to hoist the flukes of the anchor to the top of the bow, without injuring the planks of the ship’s side as it ascends; an operation which by mariners is called fishing the anchor. The anchors being situated on both the bows, the davit may be occasionally shifted so as to project over either side of the ship, according to the position of that anchor on which it is to be employed. The inner-end of the davit is secured by being thrust into a square ring of iron b, which is bolted to the deck, and fore-locked under the beams. This ring, which is called the span-shackle, exhibited at large by fig. 34, is fixed exactly in the middle of the deck, and close behind the fore-mast. Upon the outer-end of the davit is hung a large block c, through which a strong rope traverses, called the fish-pendant d, to whose foremost end is fitted a large iron hook e, and to its after end a tackle or complication of pullies f, the former of which is called the fish-hook, and the latter the fish-tackle.
The davit therefore, according to the sea-phrase, is employed to fish the anchor, which being previously catted, the fish-hook is fastened upon its flukes; and the effort of the tackle, being transmitted to the hook by means of the fish-pendant, draws up that part of the anchor sufficiently high upon the bow to fasten it, which is done by the Shank-painter. See that article.
There is also a davit of a smaller kind, occasionally fixed in the longboat, and employed to weigh the anchor therein.
DAY’S-WORK, cinglage, the reckoning or account of the ship’s course, during twenty-four hours, or between noon and noon, according to the rules of trigonometry. See Dead-Reckoning.
DEAD-EYE, cap de mouton, a sort of round, flattish, wooden block, see fig. 30, plate [II]. It is usually encircled with the end of a rope, or with an iron band, fig. 31, b, and pierced with three holes through the flat, in order to receive the rope called a laniard c, which corresponding with three holes in another dead-eye a, creates a purchase employed for various uses, but chiefly to extend the shrouds and stays, otherwise called the standing-rigging.