Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Water line   Listen
noun
Water line  n.  
1.
(Shipbuilding) Any one of certain lines of a vessel, model, or plan, parallel with the surface of the water at various heights from the keel. Note: In a half-breadth plan, the water lines are outward curves showing the horizontal form of the ship at their several heights; in a sheer plan, they are projected as straight horizontal lines.
2.
(Naut.) Any one of several lines marked upon the outside of a vessel, corresponding with the surface of the water when she is afloat on an even keel. The lowest line indicates the vessel's proper submergence when not loaded, and is called the light water line; the highest, called the load water line, indicates her proper submergence when loaded.
Water-line model (Shipbuilding), a model of a vessel formed of boards which are shaped according to the water lines as shown in the plans and laid upon each other to form a solid model.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Water line" Quotes from Famous Books



... Experts who had tested a model built on a large scale had declared that this invention would render obsolete every battleship in existence. The principle was this: Running back from the bow for a distance of 60 feet only about 4 feet of the hull showed above the water line, and this part of the deck was concaved and of the smoothest, hardest steel. Then came several turreted sections upon which guns were mounted. Around these turrets ran rims of polished steel, two feet in width and six inches thick. These rims began four ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... in a glass tube, the tube sometimes breaks. Why is this? An iceberg floats with 1,000,000 tons of ice above the water line. About how many tons are below ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... were relieved to find that there was a little stretch of dry sand beyond the water line. They took Bart from the plank and bore him out on the sand. Here they rubbed his wrists and tried as far as they could in the darkness to ascertain the extent of his injuries. Frank did not dare to use his flashlight ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... Below the water line the Illinois is a hollow mockery, but the two decks, the turrets and the heavy battery are made so realistic that any one who had not seen the brick laid and the plating put on might suppose it was a real war vessel that had stranded well in toward ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... rather, 'bout six o'clock, blowin' like all possessed and colder 'n Greenland. We struck a rock that wa'n't even down on an Eldredge chart and punched a hole in the schooner's side, jest above what ought to have been the water line, only she was heeled over so that 'twas consider'ble below it most of the time. We had a mean crew aboard, Portugees mainly, and poor ones at that. The skipper was below, asleep, and when he come on deck things was in a bad way. We'd got the canvas off her, but she was takin' ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... perfect condition and the water shows two inches in the glass. You now try the lower cock, and find plenty of water; you will then try the next upper cock and get steam. Now as the lower cock is located below the water line, shown by the glass, and the second cock above this line, you not only see the water line by the glass, but you have a way of proving it. Should the water be within two inches of the top of glass you again have the line between two cocks and can ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard

... played in a swimming pool. A white ball made of rubber fabric is used. The ball must be between 7 and 8 inches in diameter. The goals are spaces 4 feet long and 12 inches wide at each end of the tank and placed 18 inches above the water line. Six men on a side constitute ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... generate 5,400 h.p., and that the vessel, when loaded, should have a speed of 19 knots, a point which has never been reached by any boat of its size. The hull is made of the best German steel of Krupp's manufacture, and measures 318 ft. in length at the water line, with a breadth of beam of 33 ft., the depth from keel to deck being 22 ft. It draws about 11 ft., and has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... went on I know not. For a cry suddenly came of "Hands below!" and down we went to patch up with all our might the holes the English shot had made on the water line. And here we worked all night, amongst a swearing, savage gang, who threatened aloud to blow up the ship rather than fight any more, and wished themselves safe back in the drinking-shops ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... by a rail formed of a simple reversed T-iron which is fixed to the floor by bolts. In measure as it advances, the strips of water open in the center to allow it to pass, and, as the vessel itself is covered up to the water line with painted canvas imitating the sea, it has the appearance of cleaving the waves. As soon as it has passed, the three strips of water in the rear rise slightly. When the vessel reaches the first of the strips, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... important only can be here made. Compressed air for transmitting power, forced draft for boilers by means of centrifugal blowers, steam boilers of new and improved types, the surface condenser for marine engines, the location of the engines of a ship for war purposes below the water line, the steam fire-engine, the design and construction of the "Novelty" (a locomotive for the Rainhill contest in 1829, when Stephenson's "Rocket" was awarded the prize, though Ericsson, heavily handicapped in time and by lack of a track on which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... And to be frank, though La Salle was backed by the King, he had no right to trade at Michilimackinac, for his monopoly explicitly states he shall not interfere with the trade of the north, but barter only with the tribes towards the Illinois. Never mind! he loads his ships to the water line with furs to pay his increasing debts, and sends the ship on down to Niagara with the cargo, while he and Tonty, with different parties, proceed to the south end of Lake Michigan to cross the Chicago portage leading to the Mississippi. Did the jealous traders bribe the pilot to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... steam machinery has made impossible. War ships are built for security, merchant steamers for economical work, and the different objects have necessitated different arrangements. In a word, the machinery of war ships is carefully disposed below the water line, that of marine vessels is usually above the water line. The latter would therefore be much more subject to injury from shot than the other. This state of things excludes from service as privateers all but the swiftest ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... number of places, carted across towns, and reloaded into other trains. The magnificent railroad highway that extends up the banks of the Hudson, through the Mohawk Valley, and alongside the borders of Lake Erie—a water line route nearly the entire distance—was all but useless. It is true that not all the consolidation of these lines was Vanderbilt's work. In 1853 certain millionaires and politicians had linked together the several separate lines extending from Albany to Buffalo, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... wandered about inspecting the huge transports lying in the docks, and H.M.S. "Cornwall," just returned for repairs from the fight at Falkland Islands. She had received three shell holes in her hull, one under the water line, and a large number of perforations in one of ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... who could not by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how could I credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered; had ever sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky and water line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and Marseilles. It was too wonderful ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... the piece taken back again, when such an animated and well directed fire was kept up, that at 3 o'clock the brig slipped her cable and hauled off, with her pumps going, having received several shots below her water line, and considerable damage in her spars, &c. During this action between the eighteen pounder and the brig, Mr. Frederick Denison was slightly wounded in the knee,[6] by a fragment of a rock, and Mr. John Miner, ...
— The Defence of Stonington (Connecticut) Against a British Squadron, August 9th to 12th, 1814 • J. Hammond Trumbull

... that he was correct. One or more of our planks had been broken just below the water line and our boat was ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... not laugh. Apparently they were impressed with the sapience of his remark. They searched the trunks until they had gathered the five that Honey demanded. They placed them in a row just above the high-water line. The mirrors caught the sunlight, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... small. But even a few good regulars helped to discourage Hull; and the new British commander, Colonel Procter of the 41st, was not yet to be faced by a task beyond his strength. Worse yet for the Americans, Brock might soon be expected from the east; the Provincial Marine still held the water line of communication from the south; and dire news had just come in ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... fifty feet—and at right angles to the water line—from the extreme tip of Greenberry Point, below Annapolis, where the Severn runs into the Chesapeake, are four large Beech trees, standing as of the corners of a Square, though not equidistant. Bisect this Square, by two lines drawn from the Corners. At a Point ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott

... reached the vicinity of New Bedford, he discovered some dangerous leaks which necessitated a week's delay to repair damages. Audubon avers that the captain had caused holes to be bored in the vessel's sides below the water line, to gain an excuse to spend a few more days ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... seemed to himself, Dr. Carey was a man who formed his judgments so quickly and acted upon them so promptly that he seemed most stable to other men. He rode forward now to a land wave that dropped on one side to a creek, a quarter of a mile away, where black shrubbery marked the water line. A long swell of wind swung down the valley, whirling the snow in eddies before it. As the doctor's eye followed them, he suddenly noted a red scarf lift above the tallest clumps of bushes and flutter out to its full length, then drop again as the ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... the river, paths and steps were seen leading to the water and within a distance of a quarter of a mile we counted thirty-one men and women carrying mud in baskets on bamboo poles swung across their shoulders, the mud being taken from just above the water line. The disposition of this material we could not see as it was carried beyond a rise in ground. We have little doubt that the mulberry fields were being covered with it. It was here that a rain set in and almost like magic the fields blossomed out with great numbers of giant rain hats and ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... part of the bridge were blown to pieces. Three dull, splintering crashes ensued in rapid succession, proving beyond question that the bombs were set to automatically explode at a given time. One of them wrecked the engine-room; another blew a great hole in the stern of the ship, above the water line; the third destroyed the wireless house and carried away a portion of the deck ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... board with the gold name and the flag pole and the steel ropes and the flags; and fixed in somewhere on the different levels is the lunch counter where they sell the sandwiches, and the engine room, and down below the deck level, beneath the water line, is the place where the crew sleep. What with steps and stairs and passages and piles of cordwood for the engine,—oh no, I guess Harland and Wolff didn't build her. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... he derided. "New York is loaded to the water line with ability in garrets living on crusts. To win out there a man must have a pull, or he must have the instinct for making money breed, for taking what ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... motor boat a long one, painted white with a green water line, and with the engines forward under a hood?" ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... canals, and some others, join the main line, and, including these branch lines, it measures 543 miles in length, and cost upward of $11,500,000. This canal was originally 40 feet in breadth at the water line, 28 feet at the bottom, and 4 feet in depth. Its dimensions proved too small for the extensive trade which it had to support, and the depth of water was increased to 7 feet, and the extreme breadth of the canal to 60 feet. There are 84 locks on the main line. These locks, originally 90 feet ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... kicked up a sea; hence the steamer was rolling freely at her anchorage, and as the launch bobbed by to windward of her she rolled far over to leeward—and Matt saw something that challenged his immediate attention and provoked his profound disgust. The sides of the vessel below the water line were incrusted with barnacles and eelgrass ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... of all grew grave. A leak at sea is a serious menace. The point at which the water was entering the Southern Cross was soon found to be through a sprained plank a little below the water line. Captain Hazzard ordered canvas weighted and dropped overboard around the leak so that the pressure of water would hold it there. The carpenter's gang then set to work ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... dissension arose through the women objecting to remain in the stuffy atmosphere of the ship's hold below the water line from sunset to sunrise, and, as each woman claimed equality with Lane, the notice was torn down. Lane, however, produced a bundle of proxies from members of the movement in Australia, so that his single vote constituted a majority! ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... funeral convoy, is not surprising, for to Ericsson it owed not only the bomb-proof floating fortresses of the ocean, but the screw propeller, first applied in the construction of the United States man-of-war "Princeton," with propelling machinery under the water line out of the reach of shot. The first steam fire-engine ever constructed in the United States was also the work of Ericsson in 1841, and many and varied were the other inventions of his creative brain. But the greatest service ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro

... of both the bedrock and the deposits on it, the thickness of the latter varied from 1 to 3 feet—not including the muck, which last, however, disappeared at the level where the rock rose above the water line. But, whatever the depth, more than half the overlying material was pure ashes; either resting undisturbed on the fire beds, or piled in irregular masses, where they had been thrown to get them out of the way. The largest ash bed was near the wall; it measured from 4 to ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... He had not realized until then that without aid of the lamps he could not see his own hand held out in front of him; his eyes had grown used to the gloom, like those of the surgeons in the sick-bays below the water line in ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... among the stones above the water line for driftwood; and succeeded in picking up a stick here and a branch there. Four of the stouter pieces he tied in a square with the rope that bound his pack; and upon this frame he piled a crib of sticks, of sufficient buoyancy to float his clothes, his pack and his gun. He stripped to ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... water line, you are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is, by the route that you can, and he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... "of the Sturgis Water Line. I have a large power-boat built for capacity, not looks. Your baggage will be safe in a store-room at the other end,"—Captain Sturgis here produced a new and imposing key,—"and will be taken to your hotel or cottage ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... greens or pot herbs during the canning process is usually due to insufficient blanching. The proper way to blanch all greens or pot herbs is in a steamer or in a vessel improvised to do the blanching in live steam above the water line. If this is not done much of the mineral salts and volatile oil contents will be extracted ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... is only about one-half to one inch down on the plates of three or four cells, this spillage may be replaced by drawing a little electrolyte out of each cell of the other full cells in the set. Oftentimes several cells will have electrolyte extending above the water line, which will aid greatly in making up any loss in other cells. After all cells have been drawn on to fill up the ones that are spilled, the entire set may then have its electrolyte brought up to the water line by ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... mought learn somethin' from a beaver now an' then an' locate the door to his house under the water line an' climb up here ter find a ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... this Harvard College undergraduate's experience, one should bear in mind, to appreciate the dangers of his rounding the Cape, that the brig Pilgrim was only one hundred and eighty tons burden and eighty-six feet and six inches long, shorter on the water line than many of our ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... "Chuck full ter de water line; we've done been shovin' things inter dat hold fer a week past, but she's sure a good sailor. Whut wus it Massa Roger say yer ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... 'hands' there was eight years back. And get a look at the 'bottoms' loading at the wharves. No. Say, when I came aboard the Myra and they scrapped the Lizzie, I never guessed to get a full cargo. Well, I can load right down to the water line for this place alone all the time. No. Sachigo's a mighty big fixture in the trade of this coast. It's a swell proposition for us sea folk. It keeps our propellers moving all the time. They're ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... strips of wood, and covered with canvas; the exterior should be painted in showy colors; the scroll can be covered with gold paper; a wreath of flowers should be painted around the edge of the gunwale; cloth, painted to represent water, should be fastened about the boat near the water line. The barge contains four sailors, Prince Albert, and Queen Victoria. The remainder of the company is imagined to be in the stern of the boat, which is invisible. The boat should be placed sideways to the audience, very near to the side wing, with the bow inclined slightly ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... doing away with windsails on board steamers entirely and substituting electric fans. In warships the fan ought to be placed where room can be found for it low down in the ship, far below the water line. An electrically driven horizontal fan, with its motor, can be got into the thickness of a deck with its beams, if needs be. This would clearly be better than depending on a flimsy construction, which would certainly be greatly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... a tranquillising effect. The captain, Captain Green, and Solomon, walked aft; and, to their great dismay, saw distinctly the water line of the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... ahead or on the beam when proceeding at full speed. 3. That her crew and weapons of defense are protected by the most perfect of all armor possible, namely, 10 ft. of water. 4. That she only presents a mark of 4 ft. above the water line. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... brewing, so I hauled my saucy little "Yellow Boy" high above high-water line, and made everything snug before I went indoors just after darkness had fallen all around. I felt uncomfortable somehow, but could not tell why; but when the time for bed came, and the wind was howling round the house as if it meant to cast it bodily into the sea, I did not for ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling



Words linked to "Water line" :   plimsoll, Plimsoll mark, watermark, line, load line, waterline, low-water mark, water level



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com