and that short deck is called the topgallant forecastle. Its use is, not, to be a platform for guns, but to shelter the crew from the rain and the break of the sea. Corresponding with this, there is often, on board the larger flush ships, a short deck at the stern, named after, and every way resembling, the poop. Its principal use is to be a roof to the captain's cabin. When confined to this office, the French call it "la petite teuge ;" when extended forward to, or a little ahead of the mizenmast, they call it "le demi-gaillard." Their term "la dunette" seems applicable only, when this short deck is erected over "le gaillard d'arrière," or the proper quarterdeck. Both these short decks, the topgallant forecastle and poop, are usually without bulwarks, and therefore very slightly interrupt the continuous line, which, in our humble judgment, gives, or should give, the name to the flush ship. Although it is common for two, and three deckers, except the lowest class of the former, to be constructed with poops, yet some ships are built without any, and others have them, for various reasons, cut away. If we take no account of these, it is because the slight operation they undergo causes no, or a very slight, reduction in their armament; and it is as it acts her armament only, that a ships construction can claim any part of our attention.

As these pages are not intended for the exclusive perusal of professional men, we shall be pardoned for qualifying some terms, and altering others, so as to render our expressions intelligible without the aid of a paraphrase. Accordingly, in this work, the several decks of a fighting ship have been, and will be called, first, second, and third, instead of lower, middle, and upper. For example, we say, not lower deck, middle deck, upper deck, but, as foreigners invariably do, first deck, second deck, third deck. Where a ship mounts the principal part of her guns on a single deck, we shall avoid saying, with the French and others, "the deck," by adjoining the word "main." Hence, a frigate's single battery-deck is her main deck; and so, indeed, is generally called, for the reason that sailors are accustomed, to call by that name the upper deck of every ship. Shipwrights, on the other hand, denominate the lower the main deck; and to that, as a battery-deck, the term is every way the most applicable. We shall merely connect main with first, thus, first or main deck, in order to its ready application, where wanted, to single-decked ships. To meet the term "faux-pont," as applied by the French to the deck that is below the main deck of the latter class of vessels; and to avoid the paradoxical expression of lower deck, as applied to a reputed single-decked ship, we would say, with the Americans, the birth-deck, as being that on which the crew are lodged. However, the expression will be seldom required, and therefore less liable to offend those who may think it unwarrantably used.

As 99 out of every 100 two, and three decked ships are con-

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