from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. Either of two pieces of oak fitted to the topsides of a square-rigged vessel on each side of the bow through which the bowlines were fed; often decoratively carved
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A piece of oak bolted perpendicularly on the side of a vessel, to aid in drawing down and securing the clew of the mainsail.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In ship-building, a beam of wood formerly bolted to the side of a ship abaft the fore-chains, to which the main-tack was hauled down.
Sorry, no etymologies found.
A few strokes of the axes were heard, and then the cable flew out of the hawse-hole in a blaze of fire, from the violence of the friction, and disappeared under a huge wave, which struck us on the chesstree, and deluged us with water fore and aft.
On came the watery mountain with its curling crest of snowy foam, and, striking the ship with terrific force and with a noise like thunder, broke over the starboard chesstree, deluging the decks forward and carrying away a fine cutter off the larboard skidds, with some of the rails and carlings of the head.
But the mountainous waves took her with irresistible force from her chesstree, retarding her velocity, and forcing her each moment nearer to the reef.
She was what sailors term rather _a wet one_, and as she plunged through the short waves the sea broke continually over her bows and chesstree, so that there was no occasion to draw water for purification.
a sea broke over her chesstree, which nearly drowned us where we were clinging.