CABLE, To Coil a. To lay it in fakes and tiers one over the other.—To lay a cable. (See Laying.)—To pay cheap the cable, to hand it out apace; to throw it over.—To pay out more cable, to let more out of the ship.—To serve or plait the cable, to bind it about with ropes, canvas, &c.; to keep it from galling in the hawse-pipe. (See Rounding, Keckling, &c.)—To splice a cable, to make two pieces fast together, by working the several yarns of the rope into each other; with chain it is done by means of shackles.—To veer more cable, to let more out.
CABLE-BENDS. Two small ropes for lashing the end of a hempen cable to its own part, in order to secure the clinch by which it is fastened to the anchor-ring.
CABLE-BITTED. So bitted as to enable the cable to be nipped or rendered with ease.
CABLE-BITTS. See Bitts.
CABLE-BUOYS. Peculiar casks employed to buoy up rope cables in a rocky anchorage, to prevent their rubbing against the rocks; they are also attached to the end of a cable when it is slipped, with the object of finding it again.
CABLE-ENOUGH. The call when cable enough is veered to permit of the anchor being brought to the cat-head.
CABLE-HANGER. A term applied to any person catching oysters in the river Medway, not free of the fishery, and who is liable to such penalty as the mayor and citizens of Rochester shall impose upon him.
CABLE-LAID ROPE. Is a rope of which each strand is a hawser-laid rope. Hawser-laid ropes are simple three-strand ropes, and range up to the same size as cablets, as from 3⁄4 to 9 inches. (See Rope.)
CABLE-SHEET, Sheet-cable. The spare bower cable belonging to a ship. Sheet is deemed stand-by, and is also applied to its anchor.
CABLE'S LENGTH. A measure of about 100 fathoms, by which the distances of ships in a fleet are frequently estimated. This term is frequently misunderstood. In all marine charts a cable is deemed 607·56 feet, or one-tenth of a sea mile. In rope-making the cable varies from 100 to 115 fathoms; cablet, 120 fathoms; hawser-laid, 130 fathoms, as determined by the admiralty in 1830.
CABLE-STAGE. A place constructed in the hold, or cable-tier, for coiling cables and hawsers on.
CABLE-STREAM, Stream-cable. A hawser or rope something smaller than the bower, used to move or hold the ship temporarily during a calm in a river or haven, sheltered from the wind and sea, &c.
CABLE-TIER. The place in a hold, or between decks, where the cables are coiled away.
CABOBBLED. Confused or puzzled.
CABOBS, or Kebaub. The Turkish name for small fillets of meat broiled on wooden spits; the use of the term has been extended eastward, and in India signifies a hot spiced dish of fish, flesh, or fowl.
CABONS. See Kaburns.
CABOOSE, or Camboose. The cook-room or kitchen of merchantmen on deck; a diminutive substitute for the galley of a man-of-war. It is generally furnished with cast-iron apparatus for cooking.
CABOTAGE [Ital.] Sailing from cape to cape along a coast; or the details of coast pilotage.
CABURNS. Spun rope-yarn lines, for worming a cable, seizing, winding tacks, and the like.
CACAO [Sp.] The plant Theobroma, from which what is commonly termed cocoa is derived.
CACCLE, or Keccle. To apply a particular kind of service to the cable. (See Keckling.)
CACHE. A hidden reservoir of provision (to secure it from bears) in Arctic travel. Also, a deposit of despatches, &c.
CADE. A small barrel of about 500 herrings, or 1000 sprats.
CADENCE. The uniform time and space for marching, more indispensable to large bodies of troops than to parties of small-arm men; yet an important part even of their drill. The regularity requisite in pulling.
CADET. A volunteer, who, serving at his own charge, to learn experience, waits for preferment; a designation, recently introduced, for young gentlemen formerly rated volunteers of the first class. Properly, the younger son in French.
CADGE, To. To carry.—Cadger, a carrier. Kedge may be a corruption, as being carriable.
CÆSAR'S PENNY. The tip given by a recruiting sergeant.
CAFFILA. See Kafila.
CAGE. An iron cage formed of hoops on the top of a pole, and filled with combustibles to blaze for two hours. It is lighted one hour before high-water, and marks an intricate channel navigable for the period it burns; much used formerly by fishermen.
CAGE-WROCK. An old term for a ship's upper works.
CAIQUE, or Kaique. A small Levantine vessel. Also, a graceful skiff seen in perfection at Constantinople, where it almost monopolizes the boat traffic. It is fast, but crank, being so narrow that the oars or sculls have their looms enlarged into ball-shaped masses to counter-balance their out-board length. It has borne for ages the wave-line now brought out in England as the highest result of marine architecture. It may have from one to ten or twelve rowers.
CAIRBAN. A name in the Hebrides for the basking-shark.
CAIRN. Piles of stones used as marks in surveying.
CAISSON, or Caissoon. An adopted term for a sort of float sunk to a required depth by letting water into it, when it is hauled under the ship's bottom, receives her steadily, and on pumping out the water floats her. These were long used in Holland, afterwards at Venice, and in Russia, where they were known as camels (which see). Caisson is also a vessel fitted with valves, to act instead of gates for a dry dock. Used also in pontoons (which see).
CAKE-ICE. Ice formed in the early part of the season.
CALABASH. Cucurbita, a gourd abundant within the tropics, furnishing drinking and washing utensils. At Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands they attain a diameter of 2 feet. There is also a calabash-tree, the fruit not exceeding the size of oranges.
CALABASS. An early kind of light musket with a wheel-lock. Bourne mentions it in 1578.
CALALOO. A dish of fish and vegetables.
CALAMUS. See Rattan.
CALANCA. A creek or cove on Italian and Spanish coasts.
CALAVANCES [Phaseolus vulgaris. Haricot, Fr.] Small beans sometimes used for soup, instead of pease.
CALCULATE, To. This word, though disrated from respectability by American misuse, signified to foretell or prophesy; it is thus used by Shakspeare in the first act of "Julius Cæsar." To calculate the ship's position, either from astronomical observations or rate of the log.
CALENDAR. A distribution of time. (See Almanac.)
CALENDAR-TIME. On which officers' bills are drawn.
CALF. A word generally applied to the young of marine mammalia, as the whale.—Calf, in the Arctic regions, a mass of floe ice breaking from under a floe, which when disengaged rises with violence to the surface of the water; it differs from a tongue, which is the same body kept fixed beneath the main floe. The iceberg is formed by the repeated freezing of thawed snow running down over the slopes, until at length the wave from beneath and weight above causes it to break off and fall into the sea, or, as termed in Greenland, to calve. Thus, berg, is fresh-water ice, the work of years. The floe, is salt water frozen suddenly each winter, and dissolving in the summer.
CALF, or Calva. A Norwegian name, also used in the Hebrides,