1670, Caribbean Sea. She's the daughter of a legendary pirate. He's a Spanish captain. Their countries are at war. Their fathers killed each other. And they were destined to follow on their steps.
But sometimes destiny isn't written in stone: it's w...
Putting up a good, clear, complete word list with nautical jargon is totally above me. So I won't even try. In the story, I tried to keep from overusing nautical terms not to obscure the narration, but you need some in this kind of story. If you wanna speak like a true sailor and swearing like crazy doesn't do the trick, check seatalk.info or search for the Wikipedia article titled Glossary of Nautical Terms. And then you'll scare Davy Jones himself with your accuracy.
However, now that I got you onboard, I'm not letting you set sail without at least some basics. So here we go.
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**Ye Olde Davy Jones**
On this list you'll find nouns, names of things. For some verbs related to sailing, look below, at the end of the appendix.
Battery: group of guns operated in one place. E.g.: the starboard battery is all the cannons placed on that side of the ship.
Beam: A line from side to side that crosses the waist --the middle-- of the ship.
Bosun: boatswain. The leading seaman in charge of supervising the crewmembers when performing work on deck. I use it as the "third in command" on pirate ships. Like, first comes the captain, then the lieutenant and then the bosun.
Chasers: cannons set at the bows and the stern of the ships, in pairs, usually of a larger gauge than those along the sides, on and below deck.
Companionway: just like there are no ropes on ships, but lines, there are no stairs onboard. Any series of steps to go up and down anywhere on a ship is called companionway.
Crosstree: a way smaller platform than the tops, located above them --between the topsails and the topgallants.
Gangplank: A moveable ladder or ramp used for boarding a vessel from the dock. Also called brow.
Gangway: passageway on a ship. E.g.: at the maindeck, the space between the batteries, for the sailors to come and go.
Gunwale: the top of the side of a ship. Like, if you lean over the side to look over it, you're leaning over the gunwale.
Knot: A unit of speed = 1 nautical mile (1.8520 km; 1.1508 mi) per hour. Originally speed was measured by paying out a line from the stern of a moving boat; the line had a knot every 47 feet and 3 inches (14.40 m), and the number of knots passed out in 30 seconds gave the speed through the water in nautical miles per hour.
Lines: Just like there are no stairs, but companionways, there are no ropes on a ship: they're called lines. Most of them have their own names, but never mind.
