BALANDRA. A Spanish pleasure-boat. A lighter, a species of schooner.
BALANUS. The acorn-shell. A sessile cirriped.
BALCAR. _See_ BALKAR.
BALCONY. The projecting open galleries of old line-of-battle ships'
sterns, now disused. They were convenient and ornamental in hot
climates, but were afterwards inclosed within sash windows.
BALDRICK. A leathern girdle or sword-belt. Also the zodiac.
BALE. A pack. This word appears in the statute Richard II. c. 3, and is
still in common use.
BALE, TO. To lade water out of a ship or vessel with buckets (which
were of old called _bayles_), cans, or the like, when the pumps are
ineffective or choked.
BALEEN. The scientific term for the whalebone of commerce, derived from
_balaena_, a whale. It consists of a series of long horny plates growing
from each side of the palate in place of teeth.
BALE GOODS. Merchandise packed in large bundles, not in cases or casks.
BALENOT. A porpoise or small whale which frequents the river St.
Lawrence.
BALESTILHA. The cross-staff of the early Portuguese navigators.
BALINGER, OR BALANGHA. A kind of small sloop or barge; small vessels of
war formerly without forecastles. The name was also given by some of the
early voyagers to a large trading-boat of the Philippines and Moluccas.
BALISTES. A fish with mailed skin. File-fish.
BALIZAS. Land and sea marks on Portuguese coasts.
BALK. Straight young trees after they are felled and squared; a beam or
timber used for temporary purposes, and under 8 inches square. Balks, of
timber of any squared size, as mahogany, intended for planks, or, when
very large, for booms or rafts.
BALKAR. A man placed on an eminence, like the ancient Olpis, to watch
the movements of shoals of fish. In our early statutes he is called
_balcor_.
BALL. In a general sense, implies a spherical and round body, whether
naturally so or formed into that figure by art. In a military view it
comprehends all sorts of bullets for fire-arms, from the cannon to the
pistol: also those pyrotechnic projectiles for guns or mortars, whether
intended to destroy, or only to give light, smoke, or stench.
BALLAHOU. A sharp-floored fast-sailing schooner, with taunt fore-and-aft
sails, and no top-sails, common in Bermuda and the West Indies. The
fore-mast of the ballahou rakes forward, the main-mast aft.
BALL-AND-SOCKET. A clever adaptation to give astronomical or surveying
instruments full play and motion every way by a brass ball fitted into a
spherical cell, and usually carried by an endless screw.