girt-line

Updated: May 4, 2025

We sprang aloft into the top; lowered a girt-line down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards, as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will. Some, indeed, looked as though they thought the "old man" was mad, but no one said a word.

Richard Henry Dana - Two Years Before the Mast

Tarring the stays is more difficult, and is done by an operation which the sailors call ``riding down. A long piece of rope top-gallant-studding-sail halyards, or something of the kind is taken up to the mast-head from which the stay leads, and rove through a block for a girt-line, or, as the sailors usually call it, a gant-line; with the end of this, a bowline is taken round the stay, into which the man gets with his bucket of tar and bunch of oakum; and the other end being fast on deck, with some one to tend it, he is lowered down gradually, and tars the stay carefully as he goes.

Richard Henry Dana - Two Years Before the Mast

Lay aloft, and I'll send the rigging up to you! We sprang aloft into the top; lowered a girt-line down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will.

Richard Henry Dana - Two Years Before the Mast

A long piece of rope top-gallant-studding-sail halyards, or something of the kind is taken up to the mast-head from which the stay leads, and rove through a block for a girt-line, or, as the sailors usually call it, a gant-line; with the end of this a bowline is taken round the stay, into which the man gets with his bucket of tar and a bunch of oakum, and the other end being fast on deck, with some one to tend it, he is lowered down gradually, and tars the stay carefully as he goes.

Richard Henry Dana - Two Years Before the Mast

When a Secretary of the Navy ventures to innovate upon its established customs, you hear some of the Navy officers say, "What does this landsman know about our affairs? Did he ever head a watch? He does not know starboard from larboard, girt-line from back-stay."

Herman Melville - White Jacket: or, the World on a Man-of-War

Although the lower rigging was down and safe in the launch, a girt-line, or as Captain Truck in the true Doric of his profession pronounced it, a "gunt-line," was rove at each mast, and a man was accordingly hauled up forward as soon as possible.

James Fenimore Cooper - Homeward Bound : or, the Chase

When we got into the trades, we stripped one mast after the other, to a girt-line, overhauling everything, and actually getting new gangs of rigging up over the lower-mast-heads. We were a long time about it, but lost little or nothing in distance, as the ship was going before the wind the whole time, with everything packed on the masts that were rigged.

James Fenimore Cooper - Ned Myers: or, a Life Before the Mast

The "Pilgrim" remained a half cable's length from the wreck, and the boat would soon reach her. A girt-line was let down from the main-yard, and each of the blacks drawn up separately reposed at last on the "Pilgrim's" deck. The dog had accompanied them. "The unhappy creatures!" cried Mrs. Weldon, on perceiving those poor men, who were only inert bodies. "They are alive, Mrs. Weldon.

Jules Verne - Dick Sand: A Captain at Fifteen