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, 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.