When a very little boy I sailed in the _Derwent_, a small schooner engaged in carrying bottles from Sunderland to London. The bottles were taken in from the factory where they were made, stowed in the hold of the schooner and transported to a wharf at Wapping. Bottles are a clean kind of freight, and our skipper being a very particular kind of a man the _Derwent_ was kept as bright as a new pin outside and inside, alow and aloft. On this dashing little vessel I was cook and cabin boy. There was no regular galley on deck, simply an iron cooking stove erected on the foreside of the mainmast; and on that in storm and calm I boiled and baked for a crew of four for more than a year—in fact till I quit the coasting trade and signed away foreign. My skipper took me under his special guidance. The grub had to be well cooked and the deck kept spotless or I used to suffer. Skipper and mate were epicures after a fashion, so I had to keep my weather eye open.
My experience in merchant vessels and pleasure craft has fitted me to write with some small assumption of authority on the subject of sea cooking.
Some of my methods may seem queer and perhaps grotesque, but condemn them not till you have tested them in the crucible of experiment.
Aback—A sail's condition when the sheet is to windward and it drives the vessel astern.
Abaft—The position toward the stern of any object or point such as "abaft the mast" or "abaft the binnacle."
Ahoy!—An interjection used in hailing a vessel, such as "_Vigilant_ ahoy!"
Atrip—When the anchor is broken out of the ground.
Avast—Stop, discontinue. As "avast hauling" (stop hauling).
Balance reef—A diagonal reef in a fore-and-aft sail extending from throat to clew.
Batten down—Covering hatches with tarpaulins and securing them with battens.
Beam ends—A vessel is said to be on her beam ends when knocked down by a squall to an angle of about 45 degrees.
Belay—To make fast a rope or fall of a tackle.
Below—Greenhorns call it "downstairs" and seamen laugh at them.
Bilge—The round in a vessel's timbers where they turn from her sides toward the keel.
Binnacle—A case in which the compass is contained.
Block and block—When the blocks of a tackle are hauled close together.