BUNTLINES. Ropes attached to the foot-ropes of top-sails and courses, which, passing over and before the canvas, turn it up forward, and thus disarm the force of the wind; at one-third from each clue, eyelet-holes are worked in the canvas, and by grummets passed through, a toggle is secured on both bights: to this buntline-toggle the buntline attaches by an eye or loop. When the sails are loosed to dry, the bowlines, unbent from the bridles, are attached to these toggles, and haul out the sails by the foot-ropes like table-cloths. The buntline is rove through a block at the mast-head, passes through the buntline span attached to the tye-blocks on the yard to retain them in the bunt, or amidships, down before all, and looped to the toggles aforesaid. By aid of the clue-lines, reef-tackles, and buntlines, a top-sail is taken in or quieted if the sheets carry away, but more especially by the buntlines, as the wind has no hold then to belly the canvas.
BUNTLINE-SPANS. Short pieces of rope with a thimble in one end, the other whipped; the buntlines are rove through these thimbles: they are attached to the tie-blocks to keep the sail in the bunt when hauled up.
BUNTLINE-TOGGLES. _See_ BUNTLINES and TOGGLE.
BUNT SLAB-LINES. Reeve through a block on the slings of the yard or under the top, and pass abaft the sail, making fast to its foot. Their object is to lift the foot of a course so as to see underneath it, or to prevent it from chafing. Something of the same kind is used for top-sails, to keep them from rubbing on the stays when flapping in a calm.
BUOY. A sort of close cask, or block of wood, fastened by a rope to the anchor, to show its situation after being cast, that the ship may not come so near it as to entangle her cable about its stock or flukes.--_To buoy a cable_ is to make fast a spar, cask, or the like, to the bight of the cable, in order to prevent its galling or rubbing on the bottom. When a buoy floats on the water it is said to watch. When a vessel slips her cable she attaches a buoy to it in order afterwards to recover it. Thus the blockading squadrons off Brest and in Basque Roads frequently slipped, by signal, and each in beautiful order returned and picked up their cables.--_To stream the buoy_ is to let it fall from the ship's side into the water, which is always done before the anchor is let go, that it may not be fouled by the buoy-rope as it sinks to the bottom.--_Buoys_ of various kinds are also placed upon rocks or sand-banks to direct mariners where to avoid danger.