In order to form this purchase, one of the dead-eyes is fastened in the lower-end of each shroud, and the opposite one in the upper-link of each chain on the ship’s side, which is made round to receive and encompass the hollowed outer-edge of the dead-eye. After this the laniard is passed alternately through the holes in the upper and lower dead-eyes till it becomes six-fold; and is then drawn tight by the application of mechanical powers. The general disposition of the dead eyes in their channels is represented in the Elevation, plate [I]. In merchant-ships they are generally fitted with iron plates in the room of chains. These last are exhibited in fig. 16, plate [II].
The dead-eyes used for the stays, moques, have only one hole, which, however, is large enough to receive ten or twelve turns of the laniard: these are generally termed hearts, and are expressed by fig. 32.
There are also dead-eyes of another form, employed for the crow-feet, moques de trelingage. These are long cylindrical blocks, fig. 33, with a number of small holes in them, to receive the legs or lines of which the crow-foot, fig. 28, is composed.
DEAD-LIGHTS, certain wooden ports which are made to fasten into the cabin-windows, to prevent the waves from gushing into the ship in a high sea. As they are made exactly to fit the windows, and are strong enough to resist the waves, they are always fixed in, on the approach of a storm, and the glass frames taken out, which might other wise be shattered to pieces by the surges, and suffer great quantities of water to enter the vessel.
DEAD-RECKONING, in navigation, estime, the judgment or estimation which is made of the place where a ship is situated, without any observation of the heavenly bodies. It is discovered by keeping an account of the distance she has run by the log, and of her course steered by the compass; and by rectifying these data by the usual allowances for drift, lee-way, &c. according to the ship’s known trim. This reckoning, however, is always to be corrected, as often as any good observation of the sun can be obtained.
DEAD-RISING, or RISING-LINE of the floor, fleurs, those parts of a ship’s floor, or bottom, throughout her whole length, where the floor-timber is terminated upon the lower futtock. See the article Naval Architecture.
DEAD-WATER, remoux the eddy of water which appears like little whirl-pools, closing in with the ship’s stern as she sails through it.
DEAD-WOOD, contre-quille, a name given by shipwrights to certain blocks of timber laid upon the keel, particularly at the extremities afore and abaft, where these pieces are placed one upon another to a considerable height, because the ship is there so narrow as not to admit of the two half timbers, which are therefore scored into this dead wood, where the angle of the floor-timbers gradually diminishes, as approaching the stem and stern-post. See the article Naval Architecture.
In the fore-part of the ship, the dead-wood generally extends from the stemson, upon which it is scarfed to the loof-frame; and in the after-end from the stern-post, where it is confined by the knee, to the after-ballance-frame. It is connected to the keel by strong spike-nails. Those pieces are represented by e e, Pieces of the Hull, plate [I].
The dead-wood afore and abaft is equal in depth to two-thirds of the depth of the keel, and as broad as can be procured, so as not to exceed the breadth of the keel.