[f. BEAK sb.1 + HEAD.]
1. Naval Arch. a. The BEAK or prow of an ancient war-galley. b. A small platform at the fore part of the upper deck. c. The part of a ship in front of the forecastle, fastened to the stem, and supported by the main knee.
1580. North, Plutarch (1676), 423. Commanding his Master to turn the beak-head of his galley forward.
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World, viii. Each of them hung out a burning Cresset vpon two poles, at the Beake-head.
1627. Capt. Smith, Seaman’s Gram., ii. 10. The Beak-head is without the ship before the fore-Castle … and of great vse, as well for the grace and countenance of the ship, as a place for men to ease themselues in.
c. 1850. Rudim. Nav. (Weale), 95. Beak head, the short platform at the fore-part of the upper deck … placed at the height of the ports from the deck, for the convenience of the chase-guns.
1855. Kingsley, Heroes, III. (1868), 105. They … nailed it [the bough] to the beak-head of the ship.
2. Arch. An ornament shaped like a bird’s beak used in Norman moldings.
1849. Freeman, Archit., 248. The beak-head is commonly employed to grasp, as it were, one of the heavy roll-mouldings of the style.
3. attrib. beak-head-beam, -bulkhead (see quot.); beak-head ornament, moulding (cf. sense 2).
1848. Rickman, Archit., Introd. 17. Ornamented with a succession of zigzags and beak-head ornaments.
c. 1850. Rudim. Nav. (Weale), 95. Cat-Beam, or Beak-Head Beam … is the broadest beam in a ship, generally made in two breadths, tabled and bolted together. The foreside is placed far enough forward to receive the heads of the stanchions of the beak-head bulk-head.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Beak-head bulkhead, the old termination aft of the space called beak-head, which inclosed the fore part of the ship.
