The pilots now their Azimuth attend.
The magnetical Azimuth, a term which astronomers have borrowed from the Arabians, is the apparent distance of the sun from the north or south point of the compass; and this is discovered, by observing with an azimuth compass, when the sun is ten or fifteen degrees above the horizon.
[Page 54], l. 22.
White as the clouds beneath the blaze of noon.
Before the art of coppering ships’ bottoms was discovered, they were painted white. The wales are the strong flanks which extend along a ship’s side, at different heights, throughout her whole length, and form the curves by which a vessel appears light and graceful on the water: they are usually distinguished into the main-wale, and the channel-wale.
[Page 58], l. 7.
Deep-blushing armors all the tops invest.
In our largest merchantmen, the tops, or platforms, which surround the heads of the lower mast, (for every ship’s mast, taken in its apparent length, consists of the lower mast, the top-mast, and top-gallant mast) are fenced on the aft, or hinder side, by a rail of about three feet high, stretching across, supported by stanchions; between which a netting is usually constructed, the outside of which was formerly covered with red baize, or canvass painted red, and was called the top armor; being a sort of blind against the enemy for the men who were there stationed. This name is now nearly lost, and the netting is always covered with black canvass.