What is "maintop"

Usage examples of "maintop".

Johnson that he might find her labour less with the flying-jib hauled down, slung his glass, set his hands to the shrouds, and swung himself up: up and up, through the maintop, Up again to the crosstrees, slower than he would have climbed twenty years before, but still at a respectable pace.

He climbed and sometimes crawled into every part of the hull, from her bilges to her maintop.

Another seaman managed to reach him and drag him to safety, and together they crouched below the maintop, caught in the severed ratlines like two broken birds.

Set fore and maintop, hoist studding sails and skysails, crack on the main royal, yes, and flying jib too.

Then it had returned suddenly and seized the lookout from the maintops crosstrees.

Peggs's shrieks of woe faded away, even as the arrows from the maintops splashed short in the water.

Sometimes the cloud dips down, and the maintop ploughs through, swirling it like a spoon does cream in a cup of tea.

Then, halfway to the maintop's platform, his feet slipped off the ratlines and he hung there, suspended fifty feet above the deck, and he felt his fingers, hooked like claws, slipping on the wet ropes and he dared not swing his legs for fear of falling and so he stayed, paralyzed by fear, until a topman, swinging down through the web of rigging with the agility of a monkey, grabbed his waistband and hauled him into the maintop.

Then, halfway to the maintop’s platform, his feet slipped off the ratlines and he hung there, suspended fifty feet above the deck, and he felt his fingers, hooked like claws, slipping on the wet ropes and he dared not swing his legs for fear of falling and so he stayed, paralyzed by fear, until a topman, swinging down through the web of rigging with the agility of a monkey, grabbed his waistband and hauled him into the maintop.

They watched in silence as the sheers moved forward to the stump of the Franklin's mainmast, fitting to it a curious object made up of yet another spare topmast and a hand-mast, the two coupled athwartships by two lower caps and a double upper cap above the refashioned maintop.

Up and around the maintop, where two startled marines were cleaning a swivel gun, and gritting his teeth still harder to control the rising nausea as he felt the pull of his weight against his fingers while his body hung outwards on the futtock shrouds.

He collapsed the telescope and put it into a pocket, then, for the first time, climbed from the maintop up above the main topsail to the crosstrees, a much smaller platform than the maintop, where he perched beneath the main topgallant sail.