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BAARD . A mediæval transport.
BAARE-Y-LANE . The Manx or Gaelic term for high-water.
BAAS . An old term for the skipper of a Dutch trader.
BAB . The Arabic for _mouth_ or _gate_; especially used by seamen for the entrance of the Red Sea, _Bab-el-mandeb_.
BABBING . An east-country method of catching crabs, by enticing them to the surface of the water with baited lines, and then taking them with a landing net.
BABBLING . The sound made by shallow rivers flowing over stony beds.
BAC . A large flat-bottomed French ferry-boat. In local names it denotes a ferry or place of boating.
BACALLAO [Sp.] . A name given to Newfoundland and its adjacent islands, whence the epithet is also applied to the cod-fish salted there.
BACCHI . Two ancient warlike machines; the one resembled a battering-ram, the other cast out fire.
BACK . _To back an anchor._ To carry a small anchor ahead of the one by which the ship rides, to partake of the strain, and check the latter from coming home.--_To back a ship at anchor._ For this purpose the mizen top-sail is generally used; a hawser should be kept ready to wind her, and if the wind falls she must be hove apeak.--_To back and fill._ To get to windward in very narrow channels, by a series of smart alternate boards and backing, with weather tides.--_To back a sail._ To brace its yard so that the wind may blow directly on the front of the sail, and thus retard the ship's course. A sailing vessel is backed by means of the sails, a steamer by reversing the paddles or screw-propeller.--_To back astern._ To impel the water with the oars contrary to the usual mode, or towards the head of the boat, so that she shall recede.--_To back the larboard_ or _starboard oars_. To back with the right or left oars only, so as to round suddenly.--_To back out._ (_See Back a Sail._) The term is also familiarly used for retreating out of a difficulty.--_To back a rope or chain_, is to put on a preventer when it is thought likely to break from age or extra strain.--_To back water._ To impel a boat astern, so as to recede in a direction opposite to the former course.--_Backing the worming._ The act of passing small yarn in the holidays, or crevices left between the worming and edges of the rope, to prevent the admission of wet, or to render all parts of equal diameter, so that the service may be smooth.--_Wind backing._ The wind is said to back when it changes contrary to its usual circuit. In the northern hemisphere on the polar side of the trades, the wind usually changes from east, by the south, to west, and so on to north. In the same latitudes in the southern hemisphere the reverse usually takes place. When it backs, it is generally supposed to be a sign of a freshening breeze.
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