BLACK-HOLE. A place of solitary confinement for soldiers, and tried in some large ships.
BLACK-INDIES. Newcastle, Sunderland, and Shields.
BLACKING. For the ship's bends and yards. A good mixture is made of coal-tar, vegetable-tar, and salt-water, boiled together, and laid on hot.
BLACKING DOWN. The tarring and blacking of rigging; or the operation of blacking the ship's sides with tar or mineral blacking.
BLACK-JACK. The ensign of a pirate. Also, a capacious tin can for beer, which was formerly made of waxed leather. In 1630 Taylor wrote--
"Nor or of blacke-jacks at gentle buttry-bars, Whose liquor oftentimes breeds household wars."
BLACK-LIST. A record of misdemeanours impolitically kept by some officers for their private use--the very essence of private tyranny, now forbidden.
BLACK-LOCK. A trout thought to be peculiar to Lough Melvin, on the west of Ireland.
BLACK SHIPS. The name by which the English builders designate those constructed of teak in India.
BLACK SOUTH-EASTER. The well-known violent wind at the Cape of Good Hope, in which the vapoury clouds called the Devil's Table-cloth appear on Table Mountain.
BLACK SQUALL. This squall, although generally ascribed to the West Indies, as well as the white squall, may be principally ascribed to a peculiar heated state of the atmosphere near land. As blackey, when interrogated about weather, generally observes, "Massa, look to leeward," it may be easily understood that it is the condensed air repelled by a colder medium to leeward, and driven back with condensed electricity and danger. So it is sudden to Johnny Newcomes, who lose sails, spars, and ships, by capsizing.
BLACK'S THE WHITE OF MY EYE. When Jack avers that no one can say this or that of him. It is an indignant expression of innocence of a charge.
BLACK-STRAKE. The range of plank immediately above the wales in a ship's side; they are always covered with a mixture of tar and lamp-black, which not only preserves them from the heat of the sun and the weather, but forms an agreeable variety with the painted or varnished parts above them. Vessels with no ports have frequently two such strakes--one above, the other below the wales, the latter being also called the diminishing strake.