What is "forestays"

Usage examples of "forestays".

Others took up the mats covering the platform, shook them to leeward, lashed them down again in a seamanlike manner, and heaved on the forestays, now slackening with the heat of the sun, while a third party brought up small pigs, edible dogs and fowls, in baskets, mostly from the larboard hull, and arranged them on the forward part of the deck where they sat good and quiet, as ship-borne animals so often do.

The frigate had no headsails set, the wind being aft, and the taut lines of the forestays plunged slanting down in a clean, satisfying geometry.

Ridjel stood on the jibboom like a sea sprite, arms wrapped around the forestays, and I laughed at his grace and presumption.

When Sabellia tried to raise the shaft and turn, the pike head fouled one of the forestays of the mast.

It was not the swaying that made Jack pensive - wild irregular motion was after all reasonably familiar to him - but rather the thought of what sixteen stone might do at the top end of such a lever, its motion unconstrained by shrouds, forestays or backstays, and the immense force that it would exert upon the lower part of the trunk and upon roots sunk in little more than coral sand and a trifle of vegetable debris.

In less than an hour afterward I saw Huntly let himself down by the forestays and clamber along to the fore-castle, where he joined the group of sailors, and I lost sight of him.

The headsails sagged even though the wind was little more than a stiff breeze, showing that the forestays were slack and no one had bothered to take up the slack in the halyards as the ropes stretched.