What is "close-hauled"

Usage examples of "close-hauled".

James looked around the deck, noticing that the yards were braced right round, lying almost fore and aft, as the Bucephalas beat up, close-hauled into the wind.

Close-hauled they tacked aweather, guided by the sound of combat, which grew in volume and definition as they approached it.

Close-hauled on the starboard tack, the launch heeled to the gusts, while water poured in over the lee gunwale and the people worked hard with the bails.

Throughout the unsleeping four and twenty hours the watches changed, the log was heaved, the winds, the course, and the distance run recorded: none of the distances was spectacular, since the breezes, though in general steady, hung so far to the east of south that the Leopard was perpetually as close-hauled as she could be, her bowlines twanging taut.

The flagship had obviously countermanded her second discharge, and for a while she kept to her course, close-hauled, as though the Sophie did not exist.

At dawn they caught the steady push of the trades and Mungo brought her round on to a more southerly heading, close-hauled to make good their eastings before running for the bulge of Agulhas with the wind on the beam.

And now the four gaping watchers in the stockade on the headland beheld the great ship creep forward under the rising cloud of smoke, her mainsail unfurled to increase her steering way, and go about close-hauled to bring her larboard guns to bear upon the unready fort.

For the next few days they had some very sweet sailing on a warm, moderate breeze whose only fault was that it varied from west-north-west to north-north-west, so that at times they were close-hauled and at times they were fetching, but always with a fine array of headsails: very sweet sailing had they not been in a hurry.

Surprise is a very fine ship - no better sailer on a bowline in the service - can give even Druid or Amethyst maintopgallantsails close-hauled - but she has to be trimmed just so to give of her best.

A pleasant little problem, to set a course wasting as little time as possible, with Hibernia close-hauled under easy sail and Hotspur running free under all plain sail.

She was a ship, close-hauled on the starboard tack: she was deep-laden, fat-bellied, certainly a merchantman of considerable size and value, and at this stage of the war certainly a British ship: and in her leisurely comfortable way, under courses and reefed topsails, she was steering a course that would lead her straight into the jaws of the privateers.

Another burst from her poop carronades and she was round, close-hauled, presenting her stern to a raking fire from the frigate's remaining guns - two more were dismounted and one had burst - a fire that smashed in her stern gallery.

We make less leeway under moderate sail like this, My Lord, as long as we're close-hauled with a strong breeze.

It was not until a little before the Surprise crossed the tropic of Capricorn that the trade wind had really started to blow, but since then, close-hauled or with the wind one point free, she had been showing what she could really do, with topgallants over reefed topsails and a glorious series of jibs and staysails, white and sometimes green water sweeping over her weather-bow, the little girls, soaked through and through and shrieking with delight, her lively deck at an angle that made it impossible to fix a bird in one's glass unless one were lashed to a solid support, when one .

Its southern extremity was the point he must reach in order to wear round and run into the shelter, the safety of Douarnenez Bay, once he had reached that southern end there would be no difficulty, but of course he could only reach it close-hauled on the larboard tack and as they ran it became more and more evident that the beginning of the turn must lie far along, right down by the Thatcher itself.