mainmast head

mainmast head (plural mainmast heads)

1. (nautical) The top of a sailing ship’s mainmast.
   • 1782, William Cowper, “Retirement” in Poems, London: J. Johnson, p. 280,

     What early philosophic hours he keeps,

     How regular his meals, how sound he sleeps!

     Not sounder he that on the mainmast head,

     While morning kindles with a windy red,

     Begins a long look-out for distant land,

     Nor quits till evening-watch his giddy stand,

     Then swift descending with a seaman’s haste,

     Slips to his hammock, and forgets the blast.

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 51,

     Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day.

   • 1912, George H. Read, The Last Cruise of the Saginaw, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 2, p. 12,

     With the homeward-bound pennant flying from the mainmast head and with the contractor’s working party on board, we sailed from the Midway Islands on Friday, October 29, at 4 P.M. for San Francisco.