When Jim first went to sea, he found that seamen speak a language of their own. A floor is always a deck. A partition between rooms is a bulkhead. A ceiling is the overhead. Stairs are always a ladder. The opening onto a deck at the head of the steps is a companionway. Almost all ropes are called lines.

One day another seaman said to Jim: “The bosun wants you to break out the handy billy in the forepeak and take it aft to Chips. He’s abaft the mizzenmast.” This is what all those words mean:

The bosun is a man who acts as foreman, giving orders to deckhands. “Break out” means “take from its regular storage place.” The handy billy is a combination of small wheels called blocks with a line running around them. It is handy for moving heavy weights. The forepeak is a storeroom under the main deck at the bow where the bosun keeps tools and equipment. Chips is the ship’s carpenter. Aft means toward the stern of the ship, and abaft means “behind, in the direction of the stern.” The mizzenmast is the third mast, counting from bow to stern.

Jim also had to learn that anything toward the bow of the ship is forward. Anything toward the middle is amidships, and anything crosswise is athwart or thwartships. Anything on the windy side of a ship is to windward. (A good sailor never spits to windward.) Anything on the side away from the wind is to leeward—pronounced “loo-urd.” When Jim goes up on deck he goes topside; when he climbs a mast, he goes aloft.

Jim had to learn the commands that the mate gives him when he is at the wheel steering the ship. Helm is another word for the wheel, and helmsman is the man who steers. (On some ships, Jim would not steer at all. Steering is often the special job of AB’s called quartermasters who don’t do much of anything else.)

Suppose the mate says to Jim, “Mind your rudder.” That means Jim must steer carefully or get ready for a new order. “Steady as you go” means keep on going just as you are.

The wheelhouse is sometimes called the pilot house. The pilot is a man who specializes in guiding ships in and out of harbors. A small boat brings him out from shore. Usually he climbs aboard on an accommodation ladder, a whole flight of stairs which is lowered from a deck. But sometimes he has to climb a Jacob’s ladder, which is simply wooden steps fastened to ropes that hang down the ship’s side.

The pictures explain some more words Jim had to learn. A pier or a wharf is a platform sticking out into the water. Ships tie up alongside it. Seamen sometimes call a pier a dock, but a dock is really the water between piers.

A hatch or hatchway is an opening in the deck of a vessel. People can go down a hatch, and so can cargo. Big strong poles called booms raise and lower cargo through hatches. Booms are attached to single masts on some ships; on others, to pairs of posts called king posts or Samson posts or goal posts. When seamen fasten heavy layers of canvas over the hatches, they say they “batten down the hatches.”

Backstay, stay and shroud are all wire ropes that brace the masts. The poop deck is a deck at the stern. Taffrail is the rail around the stern. The taffrail log is a kind of speedometer that tells how far the ship has travelled. It is made up of a line attached to a little propeller which measures miles as it is dragged through the water.

The beam is the widest part of a ship. The keel is the lowest part. The bilge is the low, rounded bottom of the ship. Any water that seeps into a ship collects there and has to be pumped out. Ballast is a weight of some sort, low in a ship to balance her or keep her down in the water so her propellers can work when she has no cargo. Draft is the depth of water needed to float a vessel. When Jim says his ship “draws twelve feet,” he means the keel is twelve feet under water when she is loaded.