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English
Noun
mainmast head (plural mainmast heads)
- (nautical) The top of a sailing ship’s mainmast.
1782, William Cowper, “Retirement”, in Poems, London: J. Johnson, page 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 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 51”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC: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.