conning tower

plural conning towers

1. nauticalThe armoured control tower of an early iron warship from which the ship was navigated in battle.
2. nauticalA connecting structure between the bridge and pressure hull of a submarine; in larger, modern submarines it contains the captain's cabin and is known as the sail.

   I waited until half an hour after Benson had gone on duty, and then I went on deck, passing through the conning-tower where Benson sat, and looking at the compass. It showed that our course was north by west--that is, one point west of north, which was, for our assumed position, about right.

   1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC

   Synonyms: fin, sail