crab

The Sailor's Word-Book

A wooden pillar, the lower end of which being let down through a ship's decks, rests upon a socket like the capstan, and having in its upper end three or four holes at different heights, long oars are thrust through them, each acting like two levers. It is employed to wind in the cable, or any other weighty matter. Also, a portable wooden or cast-iron machine, fitted with wheels and pinions similar to those of a winch, of use in loading and discharging timber-vessels, &c.


♦ The crab with three claws, is used to launch ships, and to heave them into the dock, or off the key.

♦ To catch a crab. To pull an oar too light or too deep in the water; to miss time in rowing. This derisive phrase for a false stroke may have been derived from the Italian chiappar un gragno, to express the same action.

The Sailor's Word-Book

← c.p.   ×   crabbing to it →

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