BESSY-LORCH. A northern name of the _Gobio fluviatilis_ or gudgeon. BEST BOWER. _See_ BOWER-ANCHORS. BETELGUESE. The lucida of Orion, α Orionis, and a standard Greenwich star of the first magnitude. BETHEL. _See_ FLOATING BETHEL. BETTY MARTIN. _See_ MARTIN. BETWEEN DECKS. The space contained between any two whole decks of a ship. BETWIXT WIND AND WATER. About the line of load immersion of the ship's hull; or that part of the vessel which is at the surface of the water. BEVEL. An instrument by which bevelling angles are taken. Also a sloped surface. BEVELLING. Any alteration from a square in hewing timber, as taken by the bevel, bevelling rule, or bevelling boards.--_A standing bevelling_ is that made without, or outside a square; an _under-bevelling_ within; and the angle is optionally acute or obtuse. In ship-building, it is the art of hewing a timber with a proper and regular curve, according to a mould which is laid on one side of its surface. BEVELLING-BOARD. A piece of board on which the bevellings or angles of the timbers are described. BEVERAGE. A West India drink, made of sugar-cane juice and water. BEWPAR. The old name for buntin, still used in navy office documents. BEWTER. A northern name for the black-wak, or bittern. BEZANT. An early gold coin, so called from having been first coined at Byzantium. BIBBS. Pieces of timber bolted to the hounds of a mast, to support the trestle-trees. BIBLE. A hand-axe. Also, a squared piece of freestone to grind the deck with sand in cleaning it; a small holy-stone, so called from seamen using them kneeling. BIBLE-PRESS. A hand rolling-board for cartridges, rocket, and port-fire cases. BICKER, OR BEAKER. A flat bowl or basin for containing liquors, formerly made of wood, but in later times of other substances. Thus Butler: "And into pikes, and musqueteers, Stamp beakers, cups, and porringers." BID-HOOK. A small kind of boat-hook. BIEL-BRIEF. The bottomry contract in Denmark, Sweden, and the north of Germany. BIERLING. An old name for a small galley. BIFURCATE. A river is said to bifurcate, or to form a fork, when it divides into two distinct branches, as at the heads of deltas and in fluvial basins. BIGHT. A substantive made from the preterperfect tense of _bend_. The space lying between two promontories or headlands, being wider and smaller than a gulf, but larger than a bay. It is also used generally for any coast-bend or indentation, and is mostly held as a synonym of shallow bay. 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.