mainmast

Everything was on fire from the mainmast forward, he said.

The words had barely left Piper’s mouth when an arrow sank into the mainmast, six inches from her face.

"Removing the lower mainmast has been an incredibly complex project," he said.

Minutes later, the English ship — the Fancy, under the command of the notorious pirate captain Henry Every — had closed on the Mughal vessel and shattered its 40-foot mainmast with a single, fluke cannon shot.

As we neared the mouth of New Bedford Harbor, a schooner flying a long green streamer off its mainmast, its sails plump, its bow rising and dipping, came out through the channel toward us.