The Sailor’s Word-Book by W. H. Smyth

Description

Admiral William Henry Smyth was a navigator, hydrographer and astronomer who filled his retirement by preserving what every sailor once knew and hardly anyone wrote down: the working dialect of the sea. The Sailor’s Word-Book is the fruit of that labor, an alphabetical treasury of terms old salts used on deck and in the forecastle, from the parts of a ship and the knots of its rigging to the unnumbered customs, superstitions and commands of naval life.

What makes the book more than a glossary is its texture. Its definitions carry the tang of anecdote and hard-won professional knowledge, and its range is enormous: seamanship, shipbuilding, gunnery, navigation, trade winds and tides, barely a corner of maritime life escapes the net. For anyone who reads sea fiction, studies naval history or builds ship models, it answers questions that modern dictionaries have quietly forgotten to ask.

What this edition is good for

• Reference value that no later maritime dictionary fully replaced.
• Definitions given by a practiced sailor, not a desk-bound editor.
• An ideal companion to the age of sail and the classic novels of the sea.

About This DodaBooks Edition

Presented as one continuous, searchable reference volume in clean type.