Definition
To place the yards of a ship at an angle with the deck. In maritime and admiralty contexts, cockbilling the yards was a recognized signal of mourning — a visual declaration performed aboard a vessel, typically upon the death of a dignitary or officer. The term also extends to a specific anchor maneuver: to cockbill the anchor is to suspend it from the cathead in readiness for immediate release.
The term appears in American statutory law in this nautical-signaling sense. Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary cite Pub. St. Mass. 1882, p. 1288, indicating the term carried enough legal currency in Massachusetts to warrant statutory definition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To tilt up one end of something so as to make it almost vertical; also, to suspend an anchor from the cathead in preparation for letting it go.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To tilt up one end of so as to make almost vertical; as, to cockbill the yards as a sign of mourning. To cockbill the anchor, to suspend it from the cathead preparatory to letting it go.
The common and legal meanings here are unusually close, but the legal significance lies in a layer the general dictionaries do not surface: cockbilling the yards was not merely a nautical maneuver but a formal, publicly recognized signal with established meaning — a maritime convention sufficiently standardized that Massachusetts saw fit to define it by statute. The common definitions describe the physical act; the legal context treats that act as a communicative or regulatory event.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a narrow maritime specialist term with a single statutory foothold in the American legal record. Researchers should note several points:
First, the term's legal relevance is almost entirely historical. It appears in nineteenth-century admiralty and maritime regulatory contexts, and its practical significance faded as signal conventions evolved and maritime codes modernized. A researcher encountering COCKBILL in any document after the early twentieth century should treat it as an archaism.
Second, the Massachusetts statutory citation in both editions of Black's is the same source, suggesting that neither edition independently verified broader usage — the term's legal footprint may have been thinner than its inclusion in a general law dictionary implies. Researchers relying on Black's for this term are essentially being pointed to a single state statute.
Third, the mourning-signal function connects this term to a broader body of maritime ceremonial law and custom. If researching questions of admiralty jurisdiction, maritime custom as a source of law, or the legal status of shipboard signals and declarations, cockbilling the yards is one data point in a larger evidentiary picture. It is unlikely to be outcome-determinative on its own.
Fourth, the anchor-cockbilling sense has operational rather than ceremonial significance — it describes a state of readiness that could bear on questions of negligence, seamanship standards, or compliance with port regulations in historical admiralty cases.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions define the term identically and cite the same Massachusetts statutory source, suggesting the second edition made no independent inquiry into the term's legal usage. This is a case where the dictionary is transmitting a single statutory definition rather than synthesizing a body of doctrine.
Webster's 1913 and Wiktionary both capture the physical act more fully than Black's, describing both the yards-at-angle sense and the anchor-cathead sense with useful specificity. Black's, by contrast, defines only the yards sense — an omission worth noting if a historical document uses the term in the anchor context and a researcher turns to Black's for guidance.
No edition of Black's Law Dictionary provides any case law or secondary authority beyond the Massachusetts statute, which limits the term's utility as a research anchor in its own right.
Jurisdictional Note
The term's only confirmed American statutory basis is Massachusetts (Pub. St. Mass. 1882). Other jurisdictions may have incorporated similar maritime customs by reference to admiralty common law or British practice, but no comparable American statutory definition has been identified in the source materials.