Wiktionary
clewline
n. (context nautical English) Outermost of the ropes with which a square sail is rolled up to the yard
Usage examples of "clewline".
All hands obeyed, and at once the eight or ten seamen who composed the crew, sprang to their respective stations at the spanker brails and outhaul, topsail sheets and halyards, the jib downhaul, and the topsail clewlines and buntlines.
The number of men on the victim's deck was sparse, but after a short while they manned the bunts and clewlines and reduced the working canvas.
Many a watch had been spent in sending up preventer backstays, braces, shrouds and stays and in attending to new earings, robands, reef-points, reef-tackles for the courses and spilling-lines for the topsails, to say nothing of new sheets and clewlines fore and aft.