The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hammock \Ham"mock\ (h[a^]m"m[o^]k), n. [A word of Indian origin: cf. Sp. hamaca. Columbus, in the Narrative of his first voyage, says: ``A great many Indians in canoes came to the ship to-day for the purpose of bartering their cotton, and hamacas, or nets, in which they sleep.'']
A swinging couch or bed, usually made of netting or canvas about six feet long and three feet wide, suspended by clews or cords at the ends.
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A piece of land thickly wooded, and usually covered with bushes and vines. Used also adjectively; as, hammock land. [Southern U. S.]
--Bartlett.Hammock nettings (Naut.), formerly, nets for stowing hammocks; now, more often, wooden boxes or a trough on the rail, used for that purpose.
Usage examples of "hammock nettings".
Further aft, only a few yards away from him, Wagstaffe was standing up in the hammock nettings surrounded by Junos and a moment later he vanished from sight and the nettings cleared of men.
He gripped his sword more tightly and gritted his teeth as once more the enemy topsails showed above the hammock nettings.
Adam Bolitho climbed on to the tightly packed hammock nettings and waited for Midshipman Vincent to hand the big signals telescope up to him.
Musket-balls slapped into the hammock nettings at his side, and he saw a seaman staring aghast at his hand where a ricocheting ball had clipped away a finger with the neatness of an axe.
Wright found that he was clenching his fingers so tightly that He watched the captain at the he had cramp in both hands one hand resting on the packed forward end of the gangway, re in the world, anyone hammock nettings.
Crouching gun crews on either side, and further aft, standing against the hammock nettings, D'Esterre's depleted ranks of marines.
In fact Avery was on deck, clinging to the empty hammock nettings, and listening to the ship shuddering and groaning above and around him.
The marines were coiling down the lines of the grapnels that they had hung on the hammock nettings.
A French frigate within three cables (he could distinguish men on board her now, so she was less than 700 yards away) and getting ready to heave - to to send over a boat - and the only sign of life on the British ship's decks was the men lounging on the hammock nettings, two or three watching from the fo'c'sle, and a few men on the quarterdeck.
Then he was in bright sunlight with Renwick standing on the hammock nettings, waving to the red cutter.
He had expected to lose half of these men who were now waiting in the shrouds and on the hammock nettings like excited starlings perched in a grove of trees.
Next came a sudden succession of noises, all loud, all different, distinguishable even though not two seconds elapsed between the first and the last - the shriek of a shell, a crash of timber aloft, a deep note as the main-topmast backstay parted, a thud against the hammock nettings beside Hornblower, and then a thump three yards from his feet, and there on the deck death, sizzling death, was rolling towards him and as the ship heaved death changed its course with the canting of the deck in a blundering curve as the belt round the shell deflected its roll.
Next came a sudden succession of noises, all loud, all different, distinguishable even though not two seconds elapsed between the first and the last the shriek of a shell, a crash of timber aloft, a deep note as the maintopmast backstay parted, a thud against the hammock nettings beside Hornblower, and then a thump three yards from his feet, and there on the deck death, sizzling death, was rolling towards him and as the ship heaved death changed its course with the canting of the deck in a blundering curve as the belt round the shell deflected its roll.
The idlers thronged the bulwark, gazing over the hammock nettings.