BIGHT. The loop of a rope when it is folded, in contradistinction to the end; as, her anchor hooked the bight of our cable, _i.e._ caught any part of it between the ends. The bight of his cable has swept our anchor, _i.e._ the bight of the cable of another ship as she ranged about has entangled itself about the flukes of our anchor. Any part of the chord or curvature of a rope between the ends may be called a bight.
BIG-WIGS. A cant term for the higher officers.
BILANCELLA. A destructive mode of fishing in the Mediterranean, by means of two vessels towing a large net stretched between them.
BILANCIIS DEFERENDIS. A writ directed to a corporation, for the carrying of weights to such a haven, there to weigh the wool that persons, by our ancient laws, were licensed to transport.
BILANDER. A small merchant vessel with two masts, particularly distinguished from other vessels with two masts by the form of her main-sail, which is bent to the whole length of her yard, hanging fore and aft, and inclined to the horizon at an angle of about 45°. Few vessels are now rigged in this manner, and the name is rather indiscriminately used.
BILBO. An old term for a flexible kind of cutlass, from Bilbao, where the best Spanish sword-blades were made. Shakspeare humorously describes Falstaff in the buck-basket, like a good bilbo, coiled hilt to point.
BILBOES. Long bars or bolts, on which iron shackles slid, with a padlock at the end; used to confine the legs of prisoners in a manner similar to the punishment of the stocks. The offender was condemned to irons, more or less ponderous according to the nature of the offence of which he was guilty. Several of them are yet to be seen in the Tower of London, taken in the Spanish Armada. Shakspeare mentions Hamlet thinking of a kind of fighting,
"That would not let me sleep: methought, I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes."
BILCOCK. The northern name for the water-rail.
BILGE, OR BULGE. That part of the floor in a ship--on either side of the keel--which approaches nearer to a horizontal than to a perpendicular direction, and begins to round upwards. It is where the floors and second futtocks unite, and upon which the ship would rest if laid on the ground; hence, when a ship receives a fracture in this part, she is said to be bilged or bulged.--_Bilge_ is also the largest circumference of a cask, or that which extends round by the bung-hole.