crosstree

plural crosstrees · alternative cross-tree

1. in pluralnauticalA timber or metal beam fixed athwartships part way up a mast to spread the rigging.

   She was wearing the Red Ensign at her cross-trees and the Stars and Stripes aft and she was making about three knots through the twenty-foot opening of the reef.

   1954, Ian Fleming, “Beau Desert”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 197

   1 more example

   Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t’ gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t’ gallant crosstrees.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 35”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC