paying the
dues, is permitted to clear out or sail.

CLEAR FOR GOING ABOUT. Every man to his station, and every rope an-end.

CLEARING LIGHTERS. All vessels pertaining to public departments should
be cleared with the utmost despatch.

CLEAR THE PENDANT. _See_ UP AND CLEAR THE PENDANT.

CLEAR WATER. A term in Polar seas implying no ice to obstruct
navigation, well off the land, having sea-room.

CLEAT A GUN, TO. To nail large cleats under the trucks of the
lower-deckers in bad weather, to insure their not fetching way.

CLEATS, OR CLEETS. Pieces of wood of different shapes used to fasten
ropes upon: some have one and some two arms. They are called belaying
cleat, deck-cleat, and a thumb-cleat. Also, small wedges of wood
fastened on the yards, to keep ropes or the earing of the sail from
slipping off the yard. Mostly made of elm or oak.

CLEAVAGE. The splitting of any body having a structure or line of
cleavage: as fir cleaves longitudinally, slates horizontally, stones
roughly, smoothly, conchoidal, or stratified, &c.

CLEFTS. Wood sawn lengthways into pieces less in thickness than in
breadth. (_See_ PLANK.)

CLENCH, TO. To secure the end of a bolt by burring the point with a
hammer. Also, a mode of securing the end of one rope to another. (_See_
CLINCH.)

CLENCHED BOLTS. Those fastened by means of a ring, or an iron plate,
with a rivetting hammer at the end where they protrude through the wood,
to prevent their drawing.

CLENCH-NAILS. They are much used in boat-building, being such as can be
driven without splitting the boards, and drawn without breaking. (_See_
ROVE and CLENCH.)

CLEP. A north-country name for a small grapnel.

CLERK. Any naval officer doing the duty of a clerk.

CLETT. A northern or Erse word to express a rock broken from a cliff, as
the holm in Orkney and Shetland.

CLEUGH. A precipice, a cliff. Also, a ravine or cleft.

CLEW. Of a hammock or cot. (_See_ CLUE.)

CLICKS. Small pieces of iron falling into a notched wheel attached to
the winches in cutters, &c., and thereby serving the office of pauls.
(_See_ RATCHET, or RATCHET-PAUL, in machinery.) It more peculiarly
belongs to inferior clock-work, hence click.

CLIFF [from the Anglo-Saxon _cleof_]. A precipitous termination of the
land, whatever be the soil. (_See_ CRAG.)

CLIMATE. Formerly meant a zone of the earth parallel to the equator, in
which the days are of a certain length at the summer solstice. The term
has now pass