DER. A custom-house warrant for making a provision in the
shipping of goods, before the whole inward cargo is discharged, to
prevent the vessel getting too light.

STILL WATER. Another name for _slack-tide_; it is also used for water
under the lee of headlands, or where there is neither tide nor current.

STING-RAY. A fish, _Trygon pastinaca_, which wounds with a serrate bone,
lying in a sheath on the upper side of its tail; the wound is painful,
as all fish-wounds are, but not truly poisonous, and the smart is
limited by superstition to the next tide.

STINK-BALLS. A pyrotechnical preparation of pitch, rosin, nitre,
gunpowder, colophony, assaf[oe]tida, and other offensive and suffocating
ingredients, formerly used for throwing on to an enemy's decks at close
quarters, and still in use with Eastern pirates, in earthen jars or
stink-pots.

STIPULATION. A process in the instance-court of the admiralty, which is
conventional when it regards a vessel or cargo, but praetorian and
judicial in proceedings against a person.

STIREMANNUS. The term in _Domesday Book_ for the pilot of a ship or
steersman.

STIRRUP. An iron or copper plate that turns upwards on each side of a
ship's keel and dead-wood at the fore-foot, or at her skegg, and bolts
through all: it is a strengthener, but not always necessary.

STIRRUPS. Ropes with eyes at their ends, through which the foot-ropes
are rove, and by which they are supported; the ends are nailed to the
yards, and steady the men when reefing or furling sails.

STIVER. A very small Dutch coin. "Not worth a stiver" is a colloquialism
to express a person's poverty.

STOACH-WAY. The streamlet or channel which runs through the silt or sand
at low-water in tidal ports; a term principally used on our southern
shores.

STOAKED. The limber-holes impeded or choked, so that the water cannot
come to the pump-well.

STOCADO. A neat thrust in fencing.

STOCCADE. A defensive work, constructed of stout timber or trunks of
trees securely planted together. Originally written _stockade_.

STOCKADE. Now spelled _stoccade_.

STOCK AND FLUKE. The whole of anything.

STOCK-FISH. Ling and haddock when sun-dried, without salt, were called
stock-fish, and used in the navy, but are now discontinued, from being
thought to promote the scurvy.

STOCK OF AN ANCHOR. A cross-beam of wood, or bar of iron, secured to the
upper end of the shank at right angles with the flukes; by its means
the anchor is ca