FE-RAILS.)

POOP-ROYAL. A short deck or platform placed over the aftmost part of the
poop in the largest of the French and Spanish men-of-war, and serving as
a cabin for their masters and pilots. This is the topgallant-poop of our
shipwrights, and the former round-house cabin of our merchant vessels.

POOR JOHN. Hake-fish salted and dried, as well as dried stock-fish, and
bad _bacalao_, or cod, equally cheap and coarse. Shakspeare mentions it
in _Romeo and Juliet_.

POPLAR. The tree which furnishes charcoal for the manufacture of
gunpowder.

POPLER. An old name for a sea-gull.

POPPETS. Upright pieces of stout square timber, mostly fir, between the
bottom and bilge-ways, at the run and entrance of a ship about to be
launched, for giving her further support. Also, poppets on the gunwale
of a boat support the wash-strake, and form the rowlocks.

POPPLING SEA. Waves in irregular agitation.

PORBEAGLE. A kind of shark.

PORPESSE, PORPOISE, OR PORPUSS. The _Phoc[oe]na communis_. One of the
smallest of the cetacean or whale order, common in the British seas.

PORT. An old Anglo-Saxon word still in full use. It strictly means a
place of resort for vessels, adjacent to an emporium of commerce, where
cargoes are bought and sold, or laid up in warehouses, and where there
are docks for shipping. It is not quite a synonym of _harbour_, since
the latter does not imply traffic. Vessels hail from the port they have
quitted, but they are compelled to have the name of the vessel and of
the port to which they belong painted on the bow or stern.--_Port_ is
also in a legal sense a refuge more or less protected by points and
headlands, marked out by limits, and may be resorted to as a place of
safety, though there are many ports but rarely entered. The left side of
the ship is called _port_, by admiralty order, in preference to
_larboard_, as less mistakeable in sound for starboard.--_To port the
helm._ So to move the tiller as to carry the rudder to the starboard
side of the stern-post.--_Bar-port._ One which can only be entered when
the tide rises sufficiently to afford depth over a bar; this in many
cases only occurs at spring-tides.--_Close-port._ One within the body of
a city, as that of Rhodes, Venice, Amsterdam, &c.--_Free-port._ One open
and free of all duties for merchants of all nations to load and unload
their vessels, as the ports of Genoa and Leghorn. Also, a term used for
a total exemption of duties which any set of