Fateful Voyage
Glossary & Nautical Dictionary
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- Nanking cloth, Nankeen
- A kind of cotton cloth, originally made at Nanking, China, from a yellow variety of cotton. Nankeen may also
refer to a (pale) yellow or buff color.
- narrows
- D: a narrow part of a strait, river, ocean current, etc.
- B: A small passage between two lands.
- navigation
- F: the art of directing the movements of a ship by the action of the wind upon the
sails.
Navigation is then applied, with equal propriety, to the arrangement of the sails, according to the state
of the wind and to the directing and measuring a ship's
course by the laws of geometry; or it may comprehend
both, being then considered as the theory and practice thereof. Since every sea officer is presumed to be
furnished with books of navigation, in which that science is copiously described, it would be superfluous
to enter into a particular detail of it in this place. As it would also be a fruitless talk to those who
are entirely ignorant of the rules of trigonometry, and those who are versed in that science generally
understand the principles of navigation already, it appears not to come within the limits of our design.
It suffices to say, that the course of a ship, and the distance she has run thereon, are measured by the
angles and sides of a right-angled plain triangle, in which the hypothenuse is converted into the distance;
the perpendicular, into the difference of latitude; the base, into the departure from the meridian; the
angle, formed by the perpendicular and hypothenuse, into the course; and the opposite angle, contained
between the hypothenuse and base, into its complement of the course. The course of the ship is determined
by the compass; and the
log line, or a solar
observation, ascertains the distance. Hence the hypothenuse
and angles are given, to find the base and perpendicular; a problem well known in trigonometry. That part
of navigation, which regards the piloting or conducting a ship along the sea coast, can only be acquired
by a thorough knowledge of that particular coast, after repeated voyages. The
bearings and distances from
various parts of the shore are generally ascertained in the night, either by lighthouses, or by the
different depths of the water, and the various sorts of ground at the bottom; as shells of different sizes
and colours, sand, gravel, clay, stones, ooze, or shingle. In the day the ship's place is known by the
appearance of the land, which is set by the
compass, whilst the distance is estimated by the
master or
pilot.
- Navy Board
- WP: (Royal Navy) ... From 1546 to 1831, the Navy Board was also the name of a body separate from the
Admiralty,
originally called Council of the Marine and presided over by the Lieutenant of the Admiralty, which was
responsible for the administrative affairs of the naval service, including the building and repair of and
supplies to naval ships. However their armament was the responsibility of an independent body, the Board of Ordnance.
In the 18th century, the Navy Board had subsidiary organisations such as the Sick and Hurt Commissioners
(responsible for naval medical services) and the Victualling Commissioners (responsible for feeding the navy).
- neap tide
- TFD: A tide that occurs when the difference between high and low tide is least; the lowest level
of high tide. Neap tide comes twice a month, in the first and third quarters of the moon.
- B: (pl.) The tides in the first and last quarter of the moon, and are not either so high, so low,
or so rapid as
spring tides.
- neaped
- TFD: Left aground on the height of a
spring tide, so that it will not float till the next spring tide;
- called also beneaped.
- netting
- F: a sort of fence, formed of an assemblage of ropes, fastened across each other, so as to leave
uniform intervals between. These are usually stretched along the upper part of a ship's
quarter, and secured
in this position by
rails and
stanchions.
- New Holland
- WP: New Holland is a historic name for the island continent of Australia. The name was
first applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman as Nova Hollandia, naming it
after the Dutch province of Holland, and remained in use for 180 years.
- nipper
- D: a short rope for
seizing an
anchor
cable to a
messenger from a
capstan.
- F: (pl.) certain pieces of flat braided
cordage, used to fasten the cable to the
voyal in a ship
of war, when the former is drawn into the ship by mechanical powers applied to the latter. These nippers
are usually six or eight feet in length, according to the size of the cable; and five or six of them are
commonly fastened about the cable and voyal at once, in order to be heaved in by the capstan. Those which
are furthest
aft are always taken off, as the cable approaches the main
hatchway; and others are at the
same time fastened on, in the fore-part of the ship, to supply their places. The persons employed to bind
the nippers about the cable and voyal, are called nipper-men; they are assisted in this office by the boys
of the ship, who always supply them with nippers, and receive the ends of those which are fastened, to walk
aft with them, and take them off at the proper place, in order to return them to the nipper-men.
- no man's land
- F: a space between the after part of the
belfrey and the fore-part of a ship's boat, when the said
boat is
stowed upon the
booms, as in a
deep-waisted vessel. These booms are laid from the
forecastle nearly to the
quarterdeck, where their after ends are usually sustained by a frame called the
gallows, which consists
of two strong posts, about six feet high, with a cross piece, reaching from one to the other,
athwartships,
and serving to support the ends of those booms,
masts, and
yards, which lie in reserve to supply the place of
others carried away, &c. The space called No man's land is used to contain any
blocks, ropes,
tackles,
&c. which may be necessary on the forecastle. It probably derives this name from its situation, as being
neither on the
starboard nor
larboard side of the ship, nor on the
waist or forecastle; but, being situated in the middle, partakes equally of all those places.
- northing
- W: A distance traveled northward.
- nun buoy
- TFD: a buoy, conical at the top, marking the right side of a channel leading into a
harbour: green in British waters but red in US waters
- F: are shaped like the middle frustum of two cones, abutting upon one common base, being casks, which
are large in the middle, and tapering, nearly to a point, at each end.
buoy
cable buoy
can buoy
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