mainmast head
English
Noun
mainmast head (plural mainmast heads)
- (nautical) The top of a sailing ship’s mainmast.
- 1782, William Cowper, “Retirement” in Poems, London: J. Johnson, p. 280,[1]
- What early philosophic hours he keeps,
- How regular his meals, how sound he sleeps!
- Not sounder he that on the mainmast head,
- While morning kindles with a windy red,
- Begins a long look-out for distant land,
- Nor quits till evening-watch his giddy stand,
- Then swift descending with a seaman’s haste,
- Slips to his hammock, and forgets the blast.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 51”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day.
- 1912, George H. Read, The Last Cruise of the Saginaw, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 2, p. 12,[2]
- With the homeward-bound pennant flying from the mainmast head and with the contractor’s working party on board, we sailed from the Midway Islands on Friday, October 29, at 4 P.M. for San Francisco.
- 1782, William Cowper, “Retirement” in Poems, London: J. Johnson, p. 280,[1]