BRACE OF SHAKES. A moment: taken from the flapping of a sail. I will be with you before it shakes thrice.
BRACE PENDANTS. Are lengths of rope, or now more generally chain, into which the yard-arm brace-blocks are spliced. They are used in the merchant service to save rope, to give the blocks more freedom for slewing to their work, but chiefly because when the brace is let go, the falling chain will overhaul it, making it easier to haul in the other brace.
BRACE UP AND HAUL AFT! The order usually given after being hove-to, with fore or main top-sail square or aback, and jib-sheet flowing, _i.e._ haul aft jib-sheet, brace up the yards which had been squared, for the purpose of heaving to.
BRACK. The Manx or Gaelic name for mackerel.
BRACKETS. Short crooked timbers resembling knees, fixed in the frame of a ship's head to support the gratings; they likewise served to support and ornament the gallery. Also, the two vertical side-pieces of the carriage of any piece of ordnance, which support it by the trunnions. Called also cheeks. Also, triangular supports to miscellaneous things.
BRACKISH. Water not fresh; from the Icelandic _breke_, the sea.
BRAGGIR. The name given in the Western Islands of Scotland to the broad leaves growing on the top of the _Alga marina_, or sea-grass.
BRAILS. Ropes passing through leading blocks on the hoops of the mizen-mast and gaff, and fastened to the outermost leech of the sail, in different places, to truss it close up as occasion requires; all trysails and several of the staysails also have brails.
BRAIL UP! The order to pull upon the brails, and thereby spill and haul in the sail. The mizen, or spanker, or driver, or any of the gaff-sails, as they may be termed, when brailed up, are deemed furled; unless it blows hard, when they are farther secured by gaskets.
BRAKE. The handle or lever by which a common ship-pump is usually worked. It operates by means of two iron bolts, one thrust through the inner hole of it, which bolted through forms the lever axis in the iron crutch of the pump, and serves as the fulcrum for the brake, supporting it between the cheeks. The other bolt connects the extremity of the brake to the pump-spear, which draws up the spear box or piston, charged with the water in the tube; derived from _brachium_, an arm or lever. Also, used to check the speed of machinery by frictional force pressing on the circumference of the largest wheel acted on by leverage of the brake.