SHIP

Amongst people who are unacquainted with marine distinctions, this term is of very vague and indiscriminate acceptation: and indeed sailors themselves, submitting occasionally to the influence of custom, receive it according to this general idea. In the sea-language, however, it is more particularly applied to a vessel furnished with three masts, each of which is composed of a lower mast, top-mast, and top-gallant-mast, with the usual machinery thereto belonging.

The design of this work being professedly to treat of the construction, mechanism, furniture, movements, and military operations of a ship, we may properly consider the present article as a general recapitulation of the whole subject.

The plans, elevations, and sections used in the construction of a ship; the principal pieces of which she is composed; and the qualities requisite to answer the several purposes of navigation, are described, or referred to, in Naval ARCHITECTURE: and the application of this theory to practice is treated in the article Ship-BUILDING.

The machinery and furniture with which she is equipped are variously diffused throughout this work, and naturally spring from one another, like a multitude of branches from one general trunk. See MAST, SAIL, YARD, RIGGING, ANCHOR, &c.

The qualities by which she is enabled to encounter a tempestuous sea are treated in the article BALLAST and TRIM; and her several movements therein are explained under NAVIGATION, DRIFT, SAILING, TACKING, LEEWAY, PITCHING, and ROLLING.

Considered as a moveable fortress or citadel, her military operations are copiously described in CANNON, CANNONADE, ENGAGEMENT, LINE, and RANGE; and as her efforts are occasionally like those of a mine, or bombardment, the reader is also referred to the articles FIRE-SHIP and MORTAR.

The vessels which are usually comprehended under the general name of ship, besides those of the line of battle, are galleons, frigates, hag-boats, cats, barks, pinks, and fly-boats; all of which are defined in their proper places, except the hag-boat, that only differs from a frigate-built ship in the figure of the stern, which has a great resemblance to that of the cat, as being in a middle degree between the former and the latter. See also the article QUARTER.

Reference Works