Also 6, 8 sparr-, 7–8 spare-deck. [f. SPAR sb.1 Hence G. and F. spardeck.] A light upper deck in a vessel.
α. 1570. B. Googe, Pop. Kingd., III. 40 b. Hir fraught was only Friers and Monkes, and on the spardeckes hie Were all the chiefest members of the wicked papacie.
1599. Dallam, in Early Voy. Levant (Hakl. Soc.), 9. Than the booteson of our ship stod upon our spar decke,… commanding them to come under our Lee side.
a. 1618. Raleigh, Invent. Shipping, 29. Needing no other addition of building, then a slight spar Decke, fore and afte as the Seamen call it.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. xiv. (Roxb.), 35/1. The spar deck, which is the vpermost, betwixt the two masts and is made very slight.
1716. B. Church, Hist. Philip’s War (1867), II. 42. He must take some of the open Sloops, and make Spar-Decks to them.
1769. Falconer, Dict. Marine (1780), s.v. Decks, Frigates, sloops, &c. with one gun-deck and a half, with a spar deck below to lodge the crew.
1847. H. Melville, Omoo, xxix. On the spar-deck, also, are carronades of enormous calibre.
1887. J. Ball, Nat. S. Amer., 31. A spar-deck carried flush from stem to stern.
attrib. 1893. Naut. Mag., May, 396. The spar-deck ship is of character intermediate between the awning-deck ship and the three-deck ship.
β. a. 1642. Sir W. Monson, Naval Tracts, II. (1703), 253/2. To have all the spare Decks and other Things of weight taken down.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Spare-Deck or Sparr-deck, the uppermost Deck in some great Ships, which lies between the Main and Missen Masts.
Hence Spar-decked a., fitted with a spar-deck; Spar-decker, a spar-decked vessel.
1877. Sir C. W. Thomson, Voy. Challenger, I. i. 9. The ‘Challenger,’ a spar-decked corvette of 2,306 tons.
1885. Lady Brassey, The Trades, 19. The ‘Norham Castle’ is a spar-decked ship.
1893. Naut. Mag., May, 397. In the text of the load-line tables it is prescribed that no allowance should be made for deck erections in a spar-decker, and this follows from the fact that the spar-decker’s freeboard is dependent upon her strength.
