[9] 1654, 'so as she is in danger of being sunk or taken, then they.'

[10] 1654, 'to keep on close in a line.'

[11] 1654, 'mizen topmast-head.'

[12] 1654, 'or grain upon pain of severe punishment.' Nothing is more
curious in naval phraseology than the loss of this excellent word
'grain,' or 'grayne,' to express the opposite of 'wake.' To come into a
ship's grain meant to take station ahead of her. There is nothing now
which exactly supplies its place, and yet it has long fallen into
oblivion, so long, indeed, that its existence was unknown to the learned
editors of the new _Oxford Dictionary_. This is to be the more regretted
as its etymology is very obscure. It may, however, be traced with little
doubt to the old Norse 'grein,' a branch or prong, surviving in the word
'grains,' a pronged harpoon or fish spear. From its meaning, 'branch,'
it might seem to be akin to 'stem' and to 'bow,' which is only another
spelling of'bough.' But this is not likely. The older meaning of 'bows'
was 'shoulders,' and this, it is agreed, is how it became applied to the
head of a ship. There is, however, a secondary and more widely used
sense of 'grain,' which means the space between forking boughs, and so
almost any angular space, like a meadow where two rivers converge. Thus
'grain,' in the naval sense, might easily mean the space enclosed by the
planks of a ship where they spring from the stem, or if it is not
actually the equivalent of 'bows,' it may mean the diverging waves
thrown up by a ship advancing through the water, and thus be the exact
analogue of 'wake.'

[13] 1654, 'to make sail and endeavour.'