Sailor Mouth Saturday: Iron

And, I'm back. Miss me? Just time enough today for a look at the word iron at sea and on the dock. And we're not just talking about the famous ironclads CSS Virginia (ex-Merrimack) and USS Monitor here.

So let us start, then, with ironclad vessels. Also spoken of as ironcased, coated or plated, these were the ships, emerging in the 19th century, entirely encased in iron plates. The trick of making such vessels seaworthy was one that led to the practice of putting plate on only specific parts that were more open to missiles until the dawn of the 20th century iron age ship.

By the 19th century, most ships had some iron parts. Iron work was the general name for these and any pieces of iron used in the construction of ships or equipment for ships. Iron bound blocks were those fitted with iron strops. The "iron horse" was the latter-day iron railing of the head attached most usually to the fore- or boom-sheet. A ship was said to be iron-sick when her iron work was coming loose from the timbers and her sheathing nails are rusted. A sorry condition that no right-thinking sailor would allow.

A coast may be spoken of as iron-bound when it is made up of rocks that are predominately perpendicular to the sea as they rise up from it. These are dangerous shores indeed, and should be avoided at all costs.

A ship may be said to be in irons when, as Admiral Smyth explains in The Sailor's Word Book:

... by mismanagement, she is permitted to come up in the wind and lose her way; so that, having no steerage, she must either be boxed off on the former track, or fall off on the other; for she will not cast one way or the other, without bracing in the yards.

Irons are the tools used by caulkers, of which my grandfather was proudly one, to hammer oakum into the wooden seams of a vessel. These are sometimes known as boom irons, probably for their loud racket while in use. Grandpa went deaf caulking. Irons were also, of course, the bilboes that would be fitted around a miscreant sailor's ankles to keep him both in place and in discomfort. Sailors, with their sarcastic wit, might euphemistically refer to same as "iron garters."

And a ship might be lovingly spoken of as having "iron-sides" when she seemed immune to the blasts of enemy cannon. Here in the U.S., we still know one of our first frigates, USS Constitution, as "Old Ironsides."

Thus ends another addition of SMS. Fair winds and following sees, Brethren, until next we meet...

Header: Hudson River Under the Moonlight by M. F. Hendrik de Haas via American Gallery

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Break

While the word break generally makes lubbers think - when they think of the sea at all - of those rocks upon which the ocean waves so noisily crash, it has and had many more meanings to men and women who belong to the sea.

Breakers are indeed those reefs, rocks and so on that stop the mighty ocean waves, particularly at shallower points along the shore. Admiral Smyth describes this situation most poetically in The Sailor's Word Book:

... those billows which break violently over reefs, rocks, or shallows, lying immediately at, or under, the surface of the sea. They are distinguished both by their appearance and sound, as they cover that part of the sea with a perpetual foam, and produce loud roaring, very different from what the waves usually have over a deeper bottom. Also, a name given to those rocks which occasion the waves to break over them.

One imagines that, in a heavy sea, the rocks pictured above might become breakers. "Breakers ahead!" This call warns the helm of broken water in a ship's direct course.

A break water may be a natural bar or a man-made jetty or mole that protects a harbor or bay from the more violent roiling of the open ocean, thus keeping the ships there safe from being beaten up by waves and wind.

Breakers is also a term for the small barrels used to store water or other liquids, rum for instance. A crew might break such things out; breaking out meaning to pull up stores or cargo from stowage. Thus breakage was the empty spaces where nothing was stowed in a ship's hold. In ocean marine insurance, however, it is the part of the cargo that arrives damaged. Break bulk means to open and unload the hold of said cargo and can allude to the "disposal" of ill-gotten, perhaps piratical gains.

A sudden end to a deck's planking was called the break-beams. A break was the rise of a deck; the break of the poop was where that half-deck aft ended at its fore-point.

At sea, breaking ground means the beginning of the weighing process; breaking the anchor from the ground beneath the water. A ship may break sheer when she is forced toward her anchor rode, or sheer, by the wind.

A gale is said to break when it slows down and gives way to better weather. But the breaking of a gale can mean the mournful howling of the wind through shrouds and rigging. Those sailors familiar with the East Indies would speak of the "break-up of the monsoon", when winds would rage so violently as to literally break a ship caught off guard apart. A ship may break off her course when the wind is such that the direction intended cannot be maintained. Break off is also an order for a sailor or sailors to move swiftly from one chore to another.

A man is said to break liberty when he does not return to his mess after shore leave. To break a man is to "deprive him of his commission, warrant, or rating by court-martial." To break up a ship is to dismantle her when her parts are worth more to the service than she is. All of these instances may be a very sad time indeed.

And that is all for today, Brethren. Fair winds, following seas and full tankards to y'all!

Header: A Maine Windjammer from Isa Bella's Pics via Naval Architecture

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Lee

The word lee is commonly heard in discussing the sea and sea terms. "Have I brought you by the lee," is one of those euphemisms that just about everyone but the dog uses around chez Pauline. But what does it really mean? Let us look closer, shall we?

According to Admiral W.H. Smyth writing in The Sailor's Word Book, the English word lee comes from the Scandinavian loe or laa which roughly translates as the sea. With that in mind, we know that the word always had two feet firmly planted in the water and probably came from our intrepid Viking ancestors. To English speakers, lee has long meant the side of a vessel opposite the side upon which the wind is blowing. Thus leeward versus windward and leewardly meaning a ship unable to keep up with the wind versus weatherly, a ship that is capable in almost any weather.

Larger ships may have a lee anchor; any anchor catted to the leeward side. All ships riding at anchor may refer to their lee anchor if indeed the kedge is to the vessel's lee.

The lee beams are those on her lee side, positioned at right angles to the keel. The lee boards are wooden frames that are attached to the sides of small, flat-bottomed vessels like wings to keep them from drifting to leeward. The lee side of a ship is considered to be the portion of her that lies, as the Admiral describes it, "between the mast and the side farthest from the wind, the other half being the weather-side."

The lee side of the quarterdeck, which is often relatively shielded from the wind, is said to be the prerogative of the captain. It is here aboard the dear Surprise that Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey took his exercise daily on the advise of his physician and particular friend, Stephen Maturin. On men-of-war, the lee side of the quarterdeck was sometimes known colloquially as "the midshipman's parade" since they were often being instructed there by the ship's captain or lieutenants.

A lee tide runs in the same direction of the wind and must be taken into account in navigation as it can push a ship to leeward. Thus the lee gauge refers to being farther from the wind than another vessel, either friend or foe. A ship may take a lee lurch and roll to leeward when struck by a unusual wave on her weather side. The dangerous lee shore is directly on a ship's leeward side with the wind battering her into it.

When a ship is on a lee hitch the helmsman has allowed her to drift to the lee. Being under the lee-gunnel is slang for a ship being troublesomely over taxed by wind, weather, or enemy fire. "Take care of the lee hatch!" This is an order to the helmsman not to get off on a lee hitch.

And then there's that bit about being brought by the lee. A ship is said to be under the lee when she is in water near a weather shore where the wind is coming off the land and the sailing is easier than it might be further out. In the uncomfortable situation known as to lay by the lee or to be brought by or come up on the lee, a ship is run out, brought by the lee quarter and looses the wind in her sails. Thus, when one is brought by the lee, they are speechless, dumbfounded; something a loquacious person like your humble hostess finds very vexing indeed.

Happy Saturday, Brethren. I do apologize for the long absence and hope to have that corrected within the next month. Until than - and in between as well - may your ship be weatherly, and never troubled by being brought by the lee.

Header: The lovely Mouzho on a sunset sail via the wonderful Naval Architecture on tumblr

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Lap

Today's word swings widely at sea. From superstitions about weather to naval uniforms to the building of iron vessels, lap plays a little part in them all.

In shipbuilding, lap over revers to the carlings of masts which Admiral Smyth explains clearly in The Sailors Word Book:

Pieces of timber about five inches square, lying fore and aft, along from one beam to another. On and athwart these the ledges rest, whereon the planks of the deck and other portions of carpentry are made fast.

Thus, the mast carlings are said to lap over or upon the deck because they are necessarily deep. Laps proper are the ends of a carling that support an unusual heft. Admiral Smyth gives the example of the capstan step.

Lap jointing refers to the overlapping plates of iron on a vessel. This form of shipbuilding is similar to the old wooden fashion known as clincher or clinker building.

We've all read of the wave "lapping" at the shore or some other solid surface but at sea, lapping often refers to thin ice. Indicating the way the ice slowly builds as the temperature descends, these layers of overlapping ice can be an extreme danger to ships and men, trapping or even crushing vessels in their stealthy grasp.

The word lapel (lapelle) was once as important to naval uniforms as the more modern epaulette. The golden fringed epaulette came into use in European navies during the late 18th and early 19th century. Prior to that, a white lapelle was used in uniform making to indicate the rank of lieutenant. Admiral Smyth quotes what he calls "the brackish poet, in the craven midshipman's lament":

If I had in my country staid,
I then had learnt some useful trade,
And scorned the white lapelle.

In northern seas women who claimed a certain talent for weather-witchery were sometimes dubbed Lapland Witches. Apparently the women of this Finish tribe were more than capable of bringing fair weather - but at a price. One was considered an ignorant gob among his mates if he bought weather for coin.

Famously, the dish known as lap's course is said to be one of the oldest savory dishes served to any working ship's foc's'l men. It developed into the more familiar lobscouse, a stew of salted meat, potatoes, onions, spices and ship's biscuit for thickening that warmed the heart and stuck to the ribs of many a hungry seamen throughout history.

And so, an end to lap. I chose this word today because it is my youngest daughter's fourteenth birthday today. Like any mother who loves her children, I now see a beautiful young lady but remember a very little redhead who used to like to sit on my lap and listen to me sing...

Happy Saturday, Brethren; fair winds, following sails and full tankards to you all!

Header: Beach Scene by Gustav Courbet c 1874 via Old Paint

History: Instructions for Privateers

On May 2nd of 1780 the Continental Congress of the fledgling U.S.A. did something that hadn't been done by what they would have termed a "civilized nation" for close to 400 years: they issued instructions to the captains and commanders of private armed vessels carrying Continental letters of marque. This essential act of congress would be referred to in evaluating the conduct of U.S. privateers until the Civil War with only one small amendment in 1781.

The document, which you can view in high resolution at the Library of Congress website, is thoughtful and specific. There is very little "wiggle room", so to say, as there would be in a straight letter of mark - for instance this one issued during the War of 1812. The instructions include guidelines for the taking of enemy ships (only Britain is mentioned here), the treatment of persons aboard those ships, the libeling of ship and cargo and other issues of conduct.

Of particular interest here is the treatment of passengers aboard captured ships. From Article VI:

If you, or any of your officers or crew, shall, in cold blood, kill or maim, or by torture or otherwise, cruelly, inhumanly, and contrary to common usage and the practice of civilized nations in war, treat any person or persons surprized in the ship or vessel you shall take, the offender shall be severely punished.

That's a key factor that should, in theory, separate a privateer from a pirate. Aside from the proper legal libel of any captured vessel and it's cargo, the mistreatment of so called prisoners marked the rogue vs. the gentleman sailor.

The amendment of 1781 changed the following piece of Article I which excepted the capture of:

...ships or vessels, along with their cargoes, belonging to any inhabitant or inhabitants of Bermuda...

At the time the U.S. held, albeit very shakily, the capital of Bermuda, New Providence, and probably had aspirations of including the islands as a future state. Also excepted:

... such other ships or vessels bringing persons with intent to settle and reside withing the United States...

New people were a welcome commodity for the new nation. Despite this, the commanders are instructed to search these vessels and, should the man in command prove hesitant or false in his description of his ship's intent, seizure is implied to be permissible.

All in all the document, which is handsomely preserved, is a commendable attempt at keeping U.S. privateers from slipping into the habits of piracy. Over all, it seems to have had the intended effect.

Header: USS Revenge via Wikipedia ~ she is flying the famous "Don't Tread on Me" flag favored by U.S. privateers during the Revolution

Booty: From Far off Shores

Over at the wonderful blog of the USS Constitution Museum, last Wednesday's post told of the wartime letters of a sailors wife at home namely Abigail Chew. Abigail was married to Constitution's purser, Thomas J. Chew, who saw action in the Atlantic and Mediterranean during the War of 1812. What the post offers of their letters shows two people who are very much endeared to one another and who have that wonderful style of writing that is both personal and fluent, and that is almost completely lost in our current milieu: "C U L8R" etc. *sigh*

What caught my eye, aside from that, was the lovely set of jewelry shown above and currently on display at the museum. Known once upon a time - in Abigail's day for instance - as a parure, such sets usually included a necklace, earrings, a pair of bracelets and either a brooch or a diadem. It may be that the set above had all those things at one time or that it came to Abigail just as it is shown. The cameo jewelry is made of coral, a very popular choice in the first two decades of the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic. Also of note are the screw-backed earrings. By this time, particularly in conservative areas of the U.S. such as New England, piercing of the ears was on the decline. Screw-backed earrings would continue in favor through the Victorian era and even make a short comeback in the 1940s and '50s. I remember my mother having more than one pair.

This lovely set was acquired by Thomas somewhere in the Mediterranean, and may very well have ended up in his hands as proper booty. Foreign sailors were a popular target for the selling of stolen goods by local thieves and pirates in many ports around the world. It's almost certain that Thomas purchased this beautiful gift for his wife, but how the seller came to have it is open to quite a bit of speculation.

Click over to Log Lines and enjoy their fascinating posts that make the history and the people of USS Constitution live on. I'll wager you'll enjoy the site as much as I do. Happy Friday!

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Card/Careen

The card was intimately familiar to our sailing ancestors, just as it was only a few short decades ago to anyone trying to find their way in unknown territory. The face of the magnetic compass is and was known as a card and poets have sung its praises for centuries. As Admiral Smyth quotes from Plato in The Sailor's Word Book: "Reason the card, but passion is the gale." Unfortunately, our appreciation for the compass and so the card has at least depreciated in recent years.

Relating to the card are the cardinal points - north, south, east and west - and the cardinal winds which originate from those points. The cardinal signs are those more familiarly known as the zodiac, through which the sun passes. The cardinal points of the ecliptic are those zodiac signs into which the sun enters at the equinoxes - Aries and Libra - and the solstices - Cancer and Capricorn.

Careening, as Admiral Smyth tells us, is:

the operation of heaving the ship down on one side, by arranging the ballast, or the application of a strong purchase to her masts, which require to be expressly supported by the occasion to prevent their springing; by these means one side of the bottom, elevated above the surface of the water, may be cleansed or repaired.

This operation was quite an undertaking and all ships without the benefit of copper sheathing by necessity needed to be cleaned off at intervals. Seamen, and pirates in particular, would covet secluded careening beaches that would allow for not only a thorough overhaul of their ship but also time ashore to bathe, collect fresh water and provisions and all the other simple things that time aboard ship might not allow. There were many such spots in particular around the Gulf of Mexico not the least of which included Matagorda, Isla Mujeres, Galveston, Barataria and various spots on the Florida coast.

The term careening actually comes from careen which is a corruption of the word carina: keel. A ship is said to careen at she when she inclines to one side to such a degree that her keel is seen above the waves.

And that's enough for now, I'd say. May you sit upon a warm careening beach this evening, Brethren, with all the best of everything to your hand.

Header: Harbor Scene by Andrew Andrews via American Gallery

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Make

According to Admiral Smyth in The Sailor's Word Book, you can't get much more seaworthy in the word department than make. The simple definition of "to make", as given by the Admiral, says it all:

Is variously applied in sea-language.

And even that is an understatement. Ships, for instance, can make headway - advance through the water - make lee-way - drift to leeward according to their course - make stern way - retreat - make sail - increase the number of sails for increased speed - and so on.

A ship in dirty weather, as she rocks and pitches and particularly if she leaks, is said to be making bad weather (as if she were responsible for what she faces). A leaky ship is also said to make water, as apposed to take on water which is done when replenishing casks of the fresh variety. A slender thread separates the two terms, but an author using one for the other can be the death knell of otherwise impressive nautical fiction.

Make comes in the form of orders. Make ready! Prepare for what is about to occur. Make a lane, there! A bosun's order indicating that, as the Admiral defines it:

... [the crew at muster] should separate, to facilitate the approach of any one whose name is called.

And the now familiar "Make it so" of "Star Trek" fame which, unfortunately, was too often used incorrectly by Captain Picard. The order was given specifically to confirm the time given to a commanding officer by the officer of the watch, be it sunset, sunrise or the all important noon when the ship's day officially began.

Make fast meant to fasten something and was generally used for securing rope or cable.

Makes was used when referring to something coming in: the tide makes, the ship makes, the officer makes, etc.

A making iron is a caulking tool for finishing a seam of caulk. Making off was a whaling term for cutting up the blubber of the animal so that it would fit down into the ship's hold.

To make the land is to finally catch sight of it; that "Land, ho!" moment so popular in movies. A ship can make free with the land as well, which indicates coming very close to the shore - at times a little too close. Needless to say, this terminology carried over to activities in port, where a sailor - like the men-of-war's men in the above illustration - could make free with the ladies.

Happy Saturday, Brethren; may Saint Olga, in her goodness, intercede for you when your ship makes weather.

Header: "Men of War bound for the Port of Pleasure" late 18th century illustration via Wikimedia

Tools of the Trade: Tips from the Galley

While a ship's galley in this day and age will have all the modern conveniences, even if they are a bit smaller than the average person is used to, challenges still arise for the cook at sea. Imagine, then, just how taxing trying to wrangle up large meals for hundreds of men in sailing ships must have been at one time. Staying organized and keeping clean were absolute priorities for Slushy in the Great Age of Sail. Knowing a few tricks of the trade couldn't hurt at all. Here are just a few of those little tricks, none of which have lost their effectiveness with time.

When boiling water, always cover the pot to avoid spillage. Ideally, a large tea kettle was used.

Keeping foods like yeast and salt dry was always a challenge in the damp of a wooden ship. Many cooks doubled up glass jars to accomplish this. The food stuff was placed in a smallish jar with a locking lid which was then placed in a larger jar or crock with a secure lid. The creep of moisture was still inevitable, but not quite as immediate.

Vermin were a constant issue aboard ship. Even the most spick and span vessel would have a certain level of infestation. Most bulk items like rice, flour and sugar were stored in barrels but old Slushy had a time tested method for keeping them relatively weevil and cockroach free: add bay leaves. The bugs don't like the odor, evidently, and the leaves won't harm the edibility of the foods even if they do make them taste slightly like pasta sauce.

Speaking of spick and span, more than one navy commander has been known to judge the orderliness of his ship's galley by the shine of her copper pots and pans. These were polished to a blinding sheen with either lemon juice or, more often on long voyages, vinegar. Those shiny pans were degreased with the help of another common item: coffee grounds.

Slushy made sure to tar or otherwise waterproof his apron to avoid being burned by sloshes and spills. Burns were unavoidable in the galley, however, and more than one sailor in the 18th and 19th centuries noted their scars as the sign of a good cook.

With space at a premium, storing large items could be tricky. Some were gotten out of the way by wrapping them in old cloth and suspending them from the bulkheads. This was particularly handy with large cuts of cured meat such as ham or bacon.

To keep pots and pans from slipping about on whatever surface might suffice as a counter, wet cloths were set down first. Most modern galleys are equipped with non-skid mats for this purpose.

And what about any glass jars and crockery that had to be packed cheek-by-jowl in available cupboard space? Wasn't breakage a constant concern? Not for the clever cook. Simply wrapping the jars in paper or, even more efficiently, slipping them into old socks or mittens before storing them actually did the trick pretty well. One has to imagine the ship's cook as a great collector of cast-off stockings - or a pilferer of those not quite ready to be given up. What a remarkable, and amusing, sub-plot that would make in a story of nautical bent...

Header: Saturday Night at Sea by George Cruikshank c 1840 via Wikimedia

History: The Naval Uniform

It may seem curious to some but it appears that the U.S. Navy, not her titanic mother the Royal Navy, was the first to standardize the dress of its able seamen. As early as the War of 1812, which occurred only a scant 36 years after independence was declared, U.S. Navy purchasing agents were ordering "cotton frocks" in standard blue and white nankeen, a type of cotton and wool blend. This at a times when the average sailor in European navies wore the clothes he climbed aboard ship wearing.

Over at the USSCM blog, Jack Tar offers an excellent example of the kind of naval uniform that became common after the Civil War. The little suit, which made it through a boiler explosion - as did young John T. Jefferson who was wearing it at the time - is curious not only for its survival but for its details. Sailors, who have always been handy with needle and thread, often embroidered their uniforms. Popular designs included natural items such as flower and vines (as on the front flap of Jefferson's trousers) as well as the almost obligatory stars. These were often placed on the shirt flap, which evolved into the familiar collar we know today.

Jack quotes Samuel Leech as an example. Leech was one of those much spoken of British deserters who served aboard USS Siren during the War of 1812:

I... adopted that peculiarity of dress practiced by American men-of-war's men, which consisted in wearing my shirt open at the neck, with the corners thrown back. On these corners a device was wrought, consisting of the stars of the American flag...

It is interesting to note that Leech considered this uniformity of gear a "peculiarity."

Out of these fledgling uniforms, certain myths have continued right down to our own time. The flap-front pant, which even the World War I recruit pictured above would have worn, had a different number of buttons depending on the era. Yet, a curious belief stems from the thirteen button pant. Per Peter H. Spectre:

According to the U.S. Navy, there is nothing to the rumor that the number of buttons (13) on enlisted men's flap-front trousers is in honor of the original 13 colonies. Rather, in the early 19th century there were 15 buttons, and 7 in the late 19th century; only when the flap front was enlarged - why? nobody seems to know - did the number of buttons become 13.

Another patently ludicrous myth is noted by Jack. People - and unfortunately some writers of both nautical fact and fiction - persist in the notion that the three rows of white piping on the modern navy dress is to memorialize the "three great victories" of Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson. The same people will tell you that the black neckerchief is also a remembrance of his death at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Why anyone would imagine that remembering Nelson - a man who would have happily battled America on wave had he survived to do so - would be such a priority for the U.S. Navy is beyond reasonable thought. The piping is simply an extension of that itch to decorate that sailors seem to come by naturally. And what is less likely to show dirt than a black neckerchief?

Header: World War I U.S. Navy recruiting poster by Josef Pierre Nuyttens via Wikimedia

Horror on the High Seas: Of Lice and Sailors

Horror is not always about things done to us against our will - hauntings, tragedies, torture - sometimes our own bodies are invaded with horrors. Or produce them. That is the stomach-churning subject of today's post.

In 1480, Friar Felix Faber, a Dominican monk from the Swabian city of Ulm, set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This was a popular undertaking at the time what with spiritual favors and dispensations available from the Catholic Church if one made the trip. The popularity of such travel created its own problems, however. People unaccustomed to shipboard life crammed together like olives in a jar was a recipe for personal and public disaster. And Friar Felix wrote it all down for posterity.

On parasites, and lice in particular:

On a boat, too many people travel without a change of clothing; they live in sweat and foul odors, in which vermin thrive, not only in clothing but also in beards and hair. Therefore the pilgrim must not be lax; he must cleanse himself daily. A person who has not a single louse right now can have thousands an hour from now if he has the slightest contact with an infested pilgrim or sailor. Take care of the beard and the hair every day, for if the lice proliferate you will be obliged to shave your beard and thus lose your dignity, for it is scandalous not to wear a beard at sea. On the other hand, it is pointless to keep a long head of hair, as do some nobles unwilling to make the sacrifice. I have seen them so covered with lice that they gave them to all their friends and troubled all their neighbors. A pilgrim should not be ashamed to ask others to scour his beard for lice.

Friar Faber's "zest for the pen," as his translator Arthur Goldhammer puts it in The History of Private Life: Revalations of the Medieval World, actually makes one's skin itch as they read that paragraph. The interesting point, at least to me, is that the good Friar admonishes the pilgrim to "cleanse himself daily," something many historians have previously discounted as even possible aboard ship. But Friar Felix does not spare his reader much if anything in the way of instruction...

On elimination at sea:

Each pilgrim has near his bed a urinal - a vessel of terra-cotta, a small bottle - into which he urinates and vomits. But since the quarters are cramped for the number of people, and dark besides, and since there is much coming and going, it is seldom that these vessels are not overturned before dawn. Quite regularly in facts, driven by a pressing urge the obliges him to get up, some clumsy fellow will knock over five or six urinals in passing, giving rise to an intolerable stench.

In the morning, when the pilgrims get up and their stomachs ask for grace, they climb the bridge and head for the prow, where on either side of the spit privies have been provided. Sometimes as many as thirteen people or more will line up for a turn at the seat, and when someone takes too long it is not embarrassment but irritation that is expressed...

At night, it is a difficult business to approach the privies owing to the huge number of people lying or sleeping on the decks from one end of the galley to the other. Anyone who wants to go must climb over more than forty people, stepping on them as he goes; with every step he risks kicking a fellow passenger or falling on top of a sleeping body. If he bumps into someone along the way, insulst fly. Those without fear or vertigo can climb up to the prow along the ship's gunwales, pushing themselves along from rope to rope, which I often did despite the risk, and the danger. By climbing out the hatches to the oars, one can slide along in a sitting position from oar to oar, but this is not for the faint of heart, for straddling the oars is dangerous, and even the sailors do not like it.

But the difficulties become really serious in bad weather., when the privies are constantly inundated by waves and the oars are shipped and laid across the benches. To go to the seat in the middle of a storm is thus to risk being completely soaked, so that many passengers remove their clothing and go stark naked. But in this, modesty suffers greatly, which only stirs the shameful parts even more. Those who do not wish to be seen this way go squat in other places, which they soil, causing tempers to flare and fights to break out, discrediting even honorable people. Some even fill their vessels near their beds, which is disgusting and poisons the neighbors and can be tolerated only in invalids, who cannot be blamed: a few words are not enough to recount what I was forced to endure on account of a sick bedmate.

Despite all these myriad hardships, Friar Felix is very clear that one should not avoid the privy at sea. In fact, he recommends visiting it three or four times a day "even when there is no natural urge" to avoid constipation. He warns that pills or suppositories to help nature along are not "safe" aboard ship because "to purge oneself too much can cause worse trouble than constipation." It is easy to imagine what type of trouble the Friar implies.

Even with all the hardships, Friar Faber went to the Holy Land twice. One wonders, however, how many of his fellow Dominicans and others who had the privileged to be able to read were discouraged by his conversational and graphic descriptions of the nitty-gritty of sea travel at the time.

Header: Ship of Fools by Pieter van der Heyden c 1559 via Wikimedia

Horror on the High Seas: Dead

The word dead has a lot to do with Hallowe'en, which if we're honest is a celebration of the dead. So what better word for our Sailor Mouth Saturday during Horror on the High Seas week? I mean, we did devil last year.

We've discussed dead reckoning before, that amazing ability of our ancestors to make an educated guess about the positioning of their ship in blue water without reference to the stars or the planets. A keen trick if you could pull it off, but potentially deadly if your guess was wrong.

Many times the word dead has to do with components of a ship or her rigging. Dead doors are those attached to the inner bulwark of a ship's quarter gallery, this being the private latrine of the commanding officer. Since the quarter gallery is shifted slightly outward from the hull - for obvious reasons - dead doors are set in place to keep water out should the quarter gallery proper be, as Admiral Smyth puts it, "carried away." Wooden blocks, often made of elm, are used as stationary harnesses for rope to pass through; these blocks are known as dead eyes which comes from the older term, dead man's eyes. It is thought that the "dead" in this instance refers to the blocks' lack of movement.

The timber just at the midship bend, about a third of the length from her head, is known as a dead-flat. The dead-rising, by contrast, is the area of a ship near the stern post and is usually a reference to her bottom rather than her deck. Dead ropes are those which do not run through a block. Dead wood is used to correct certain inherent aberrations in a ship's keel; the blocks used were known individually as dead wood knees.  Dead works refers to the entire part of the ship which is above the water line when that ship is fully laden.

Dead lights are the shutters which can be attached to the outside of the stern windows which light the commanding officer's cabin in larger ships. These are fastened shut in anticipation of dirty weather. Dead lights is also a term for swamp gas or the elusive jack-o-lantern.

Dead can also be applied to weather conditions and navigation. A dead calm indicates no wind whatever, a sailor's nightmare. This is similar to a dead-lown, which Admiral Smyth tells us in The Sailor's Word Book is a "completely still atmosphere." Dead on end refers to a full backing wind blowing in the exact opposite direction from the ship's course. Dead upon a wind is to slightly better advantage with the ship braced up and close hauled while hard tacking.

The dead months signified winter, and a dead lift was the act of moving a "very inert body" - perhaps your fallen mate. Dead weight is the amount a merchant vessel must pay for goods she did not ship. Dead pay was that given for a man on a ship's books who did not appear when compensation was handed out; as the Admiral puts it "as was formerly practiced with widow's men."

Dead men's effects were those sold via auction at the main mast when a mate died. The purchaser would often have his pay docked in the ship's books to compensate for whatever he had won at auction. This was not always done for each man, but was often reserved for those who had no family to return any belongings to.

A dead ticket is a document, signed by surgeon and commanding officer, that certifies the man is in fact dead at sea. This was the first step to clearing the seaman off the ship's books.

Finally there is the curious ritual of the dead horse, which was performed on merchant vessels. When work for which the seaman were paid via advance, such as preparing to put out to sea, was completed, the men - at least in theory - would once again begin earning new funds. At this point the effigy of a dead horse was dragged around the decks to represent the end of "fruitless labor." The doll horse was sometimes run up the yardarm thereafter and cast overboard, according to Admiral Smyth "amidst loud cheers." Now there's something most of us have never heard of but that was probably witnessed by more than one traveler in the 19th century.

And so an end to our discussion of dead. Horror on the High Seas week continues on the morrow and marches right on to Hallowe'en. Don't miss a minute, Brethren.

Header: Moonlit Night by Stefan Popowski c 1910 via Old Paint

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Parallel

Navigation is key not only to the course and ultimate destination of a ship, but to its safety and the safety of its people as well. Whether by dead reckoning or GPS, good navigation gets the job done. Bad navigation can lead to the worst kind of tragedy. For the most part, today's word is all about finding safe harbor at the end of a cruise.

The word in modern form comes from Ancient Greek where parallassein meant to vary according to Webster's. Para meant beyond and allassein meant to change. You have to admit it is a curious mix but, at this stage in the etymology game, all we can do is go with it.

Essentially, whether at sea or on land, parallel is a word for lines that go out and continue at an equal distance from one another. For the purpose of navigation, parallels are imaginary lines that circle the globe in equidistant patterns marching north and south from the equator. There are ninety such lines in each hemisphere. In this sense, parallel was sometimes used in place of or interchangeably with latitude. "We shall proceed on a course parallel of the Azores."

Similarly, but not quite the same, the term parallel of latitude was used to indicate a circle parallel to the equator passing through a specific, known place such as a city or island. Admiral Smyth tells us in The Sailor's Word Book that the Arabic word for this is almucantar, which has a nice ring to it, I think.

A parallelogram is, of course, a kind of quadrilateral figure whose opposites sides are equal and parallel to one another. A parallelopiped - say that three times fast - is a prism made up of six parallelograms. Made of sometimes clear, sometimes colored glass, these were often set in the top decks of large ships to allow refracted light to shine down to lower decks. A lovely replica of this kind of clever prism is available at National Geographic online.

Parallel sailing is navigation which takes a ship as nearly along a parallel as possible. Parallels of declination are secondary circles parallel to the celestial, not the global, equator. These are used in astronomy as well as navigation.

This last definition of the word naturally leads us to a discussion of another navigational term: parallax. I'll leave it to Admiral Smyth to explain:

An apparent change in the position of an object, arising from a change of the observer's station, and which diminishes with the altitude of an object in the vertical circle. Its effect is greatest in the horizon, where it is termed the horizontal parallax, and vanished entirely in the zenith.

It is easy to imagine that aboard a ship in movement, parallax would come into play often. This in particular when navigating by heavenly bodies such as planets, the sun or the moon. As the good Admiral notes in his entry on this word, the stars are at such a distance from the earth that there is no appreciable parallax either with the naked eye or the instruments available before the 20th century. Annual and diurnal parallaxes relating to the observation of a star from various points on our globe are now more easily discerned with modern technology. To a large degree, however, these are once again issues for astronomers, not navigators.

And so enough of parallels and parallaxes for one day. Were you midshipmen or ship's boys, I'd send you below to write a letter to your mothers. But the Brethren are seasoned sailors, and so I'll raise a mug of grog with ye, mates, and bid you a fair Saturday one and all.

Header: A well crafted, piratical weather vane from the Great Lakes region via the Under the Black Flag team (see sidebar)

History: The Battle of Camperdown

The Battle of Camperdown, fought between the Royal Navy and a fleet of Batavian (Dutch) ships on October 11, 1797, was part of France's pre-Napoleonic bid to expand their borders. The following was written by Captain William Mitchell of HMS Isis and gives a stunning snap-shot of the aftermath of a sea action:

At 15 minutes past 1, the two fleets were engaging. At half past 1, perceived a Dutch line-of-battle ship with her poop on fire, and she kept engaging some time in that condition, and fired a number of shot at us. She then fell off before the wind. At 2, a Dutch line-of-battle ship struck to us, after engaging us nearly one hour. I sent a boat on board (with Lieutenant William Lamb and a few men) to take possession of her. We kept engaging the enemy's ships as coming up with them. At half past 2, saw the Dutch Admiral's ship dismasted, still keeping firing in that situation for some time, and perceived several of the Dutch ships striking their colours and endeavouring to get away... 

During the action we had 2 men killed, the 2nd lieutenant of marines, two midshipmen and 18 men wounded, our mizen topmast shot away, fore and main bracess, mizen stay and several shrouds and back stays. Boats and sails much damaged, small bower anchor broke by a shot, coppers rendered useless, a number of shot in our hull, and lost our jolly-boat by the squally weather.

Header: The Battle of Camperdown by Thomas Whitcombe c 1798 via Wikipedia

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Dip

Dip, at sea, has little to do with ladles or half-wits. There is usually a dipper found hanging off the scuttlebutt for men to drink from and a dipping ladle is used to scoop boiling pitch from its cauldron. Beyond that it's all about seafaring context.

A dip was a very small taper, dolled out sparingly by the purser, and often used to light a slow match for the great guns. The needle of the compass is said to dip as it inclines toward the earth. To dip is to lower something; one might dip cargo or a bosun's chair, for instance. An object, such as a ship, is dipping when it is visible just above the horizon through refraction. Dipping is also the action of a sailor when he quits the deck and goes below suddenly.

The dip of the horizon is the difference between the apparent and actual horizon. This takes into account the fact that the observer is aboard ship and therefore above the level of the sea. The sun or moon is said to have dipped the minute its limb passes below the horizon.

Dips is another term for the lead line. A dipsy is a fishing float, generally attached to a line. Dip-netting is fishing via a hand-held net and is a popular form of fishing in cultures around the world. It is engaged in to a large degree at this time of year here in Alaska, generally during the salmon runs.

A dip-sector is a delicate reflecting instrument used for measuring the "true dip" of the horizon. Invented by Dr. Wollaston, the dip-sector is used in areas where refraction is common, such as the poles of the earth. Another delicate and ingenious instrument is the dipping needle, which I will allow Admiral Smyth to explain:

An instrument to ascertaining the amount of the magnet's inclination towards earth; it is so delicately suspended that, instead of vibrating horizontally, one end dips or yields to the vertical force. ... Even at sea in the heaviest gales of wind the dip could instantly, by magnetic deflectors, be ascertained to minutes.

An impressive feat indeed. This form of vastly improved dipping needle was the brainchild of R. W. Fox who introduced it in Britain in 1834.

And so we end our discussion of dips and dipping but, in honor of International Bacon Day, one last seafaring turn of phrase. To save one's bacon was to escape, usually by the skin of one's teeth. It's worth adding to your vocabulary, mates, even if just for the day. Or perhaps you'd like to hold on to it; International Talk Like A Pirate Day is just around the corner, after all.

Happy Saturday, Brethren; clear sailing - and safe bacon - to one and all.

Header: Moon Over Millbanks by J.M.W. Turner c 1797 via Old Paint

History: Leaving Your Mark

Above is a wall in a water basin behind English Harbor.  The site is on the Caribbean island of Antigua where the Royal Navy had a base throughout most of the 18th century.  Posted by Navy Records in the UK on their Twitter feed last Friday, this amazing picture shows graffiti left behind by sailors in port.  The approximate dating of this wall's scrawls and scribbles is between 1740 and 1780.

Leaving a little bit of themselves behind, a few anonymous seamen have also left us a remarkable and invaluable treasure.  And that is our good fortune indeed.

Header: Sailors' graffiti c 1740-1780 via Navy Records UK

Tools of the Trade: Keeping Clean

In this modern age of fiberglass, garden hoses and soogee, it is sometimes hard for today’s sailor to imagine just how much work keeping a wooden ship, well, ship-shape really was. The daily, backbreaking process of scrubbing the decks, gunnels and brass have been nicely – if only briefly – illustrated in movies like Mutiny on the Bounty and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. But what were those guys actually doing on their hands and knees, and what were they doing it with? Glad you asked.


The cleaning of ships has had its own language since before the 1700s. Bibles, prayer books, holy stones, all of these things were better known aboard ship for the religious practice of cleaning than as a source of spiritual guidance. The need for such attention is made abundantly clear in this quote from Captain George Anson aboard HMS Centurion off the coast of Africa in 1732:

We scraped our decks and gave our ship a thorough cleaning; then smoked it between decks, and after all washed every part well with vinegar. These operations were extremely necessary for correcting the noisesome stench on board, destroying the vermin; for from the number of our men, and the heat of the climate, both these nuisances had increased upon us to a very loathsome degree.

One can almost smell the humid, congested reek of Captain Anson’s man-of-war.

By the time the right honorable captain was writing about cleaning his ship, it was beginning to dawn on people that keeping clean, both in body and environment, would prevent disease. Since nothing is more troubling when one has a limited workforce as having able bodies made unable to contribute by illness, the sailors’ mania for cleanliness makes perfect sense. By the turn of the 19th century it was also a matter of pure pride to present a smooth, clean deck, gleaming brass and white sails even to the humblest of visitors.

Captain Anson’s men would have scraped Centurion’s decks with sand brought onto the ship in barrels and replenished in port or, in smaller coastal vessels, literally brought up from the ocean floor. The sand was watered to create a loose mud and then scrubbed over the deck with stones. The stones were of varying sizes; bibles were the largest, about the size of a fireplace brick, and were used for the open spaces away from masts, fittings and rails. Next in size were prayer books, which fit comfortably in one hand and were approximately the size of a modern kitchen sponge. These were used closer to the fittings mentioned. Finally, the holy stones were the size of river rocks and functioned for detail work usually done on Friday or Saturday aboard Royal Navy and U.S. Navy ships. Why the stones’ names referenced religion is still something of a mystery, although folklore has it that they were originally taken from old headstones in English churchyards.

At the end of the process, the deck was rinsed and then swabbed with rope-yarn mops that were initially hand held but eventually had poles attached for convenience. The entire process was to be completed before the ship’s day started when noon was called from the quarterdeck, so an early start in the morning watch around four or five AM was not unusual.

Needless to say, all this scrubbing was hard on both ship and men. Though the process made the deck white as clouds, it also degraded the wood to a point of structural failure. Replacement of decks was an ongoing task when at home. Men gained bone spurs and arthritis for their trouble, particularly in their knees. Reference to the pain of “praying” aka scrubbing the deck was a common gripe. The seaman and writer Felix Riesenberg, who served aboard U.S. ships in the late 19th century, mentioned a clever solution for this problem used aboard the A.J. Fuller:

To overcome the hardness of the deck, we rigged up pieces of board to which three cleats were nailed and a strip of old canvas stretched over them.

These clever contraptions, which were something like little hammocks for a sailor’s knees, could easily be moved along as the men went from bow to stern each morning. Hands and arms were also left raw and chapped by the process; most men begged a bit of slush – cooking grease – from the cook to ease this problem.

So take note, modern sailor; there’s always hard work aboard us but our ancestors – as is so often the case – had a far more difficult time of cleaning their wooden worlds.

Also, just in case you were wondering what soogee is, here is Peter H. Spectre’s easy to make and easy to apply recipe with instructions:

Add a cup of detergent and a cup of bleach to a pail of fresh, hot water. Dip a stiff brush in the soogee and wash down. Clean up with a cotton mop, then flush with cold water.

And when you’re done, Brethren, have a piece of fruit or perhaps a mug o’ grog; it is Scurvy Awareness Day after all…

Header: Admiral Farragut on board USS Hartford via Navy History (impressive decks fit for America’s first Admiral)

Tools of the Trade: Saving the Drowned

It goes without saying that drowning was always a possibility at sea and, whether we like to admit it or not in an era of harbor tours and pleasure cruises, still is. From reed fishing boats along the ancient Nile to so called unsinkable luxury liners such as the Titanic, people have lost their lives to the dark depths in their thousands throughout history.


Though the thought might surprise the modern mind, many if not most of the career sailors in the Great Age could not swim. As Patrick O’Brian notes in his Aubrey/Maturin masterpieces, there was a sort of common belief that simple drowning was better than struggling against the vast sea, only to drown anyway. This makes sense given situations like battle or storm, where no rescue would be forthcoming for the man overboard. But what of more common situations, where a man fell in while painting or doing repairs of some kind and rescue was possible?

The primary sources, such as surgeons’ diaries, are oddly silent on what was to be done with a man who had nearly drowned. That does not mean, however, that our ancestors did not know what to do in such cases.

We’ve talked about the inimitable authority Lydia Maria Child before, whose 1837 publication The Family Nurse imparts a wealth of information about the treatment of just about any ailment or injury one can think of. She spares a chapter in her book on what to do in the case of “loss of life through drowning”, and it has to be said that, with some modifications, the same procedures were applied when the unthinkable occurred aboard ship.

Mrs. Child’s foremost concern in a case of drowning is getting the victim warm. “… restore natural warmth, by hot and stimulating applications,” she says in no uncertain terms, even using italics to make her point clear. She warns that the “body” should be carried “in as natural a posture as possible” with the head lifted up. Wet clothes should be removed immediately, the victim placed in a warm bed, and warmed items such as bricks wrapped in flannel should be applied to “the bowels and feet.” The skin should be rubbed vigorously with “course cloth”; Mrs. Child highly recommends flannel mittens.

These are the initial treatments; Mrs. Child does not get around to addressing water in the throat or lungs or even breathing until after she has her patient on the road to warming up. Then she says:

Snuff or ginger [may be] blown up the nose… A strong person may hold his nostrils and blow his breath into the patient’s mouth with all his force; if the chest rises, desist from blowing, and press the breast and belly, so as to expel the air again; this operation may be repeated, in imitation of natural breathing.

The obvious comparison to modern mouth-to-mouth resuscitation goes without saying. Mrs. Child even stresses the importance of continuing the procedure despite the lack of immediate response. “Blowing into the lungs, &c., should be tried, and long persevered in.”

Once the victim is sensible enough to swallow, vomiting may be induced. This is a typical reaction of the era, where purging of some kind was used as a virtual panacea, but Mrs. Child is careful to instruct that emetics should not be used. “It is safer to induce vomiting by tickling the throat with an oiled feather.” In fact, the violent act of throwing up would probably have helped, at least somewhat, to expel water trapped in the lungs.

Mrs. Child notes that there is a good possibility of upper respiratory congestion and fever. Here, she recommends bleeding and, perhaps more soundly, rest and the administration of flax-seed tea with “a few grains of ipecac in it, may be given to loosen the cough.”

With few exceptions, the advice given by Mrs. Child is sound. A person suffering “lose of life” by drowning could indeed be saved but, as with so many other things, practical knowledge would be necessary to affect a positive outcome.

Header: The Battle of the Chesapeake 1781 by Patrick O’Brien via Marine Artists

Tools of the Trade: Titanic Provisions

I've avoided addressing the 100th year anniversary of the sinking of the White Star luxury liner RMS Titanic, which came and went on Sunday, here at Triple P. If I’m honest, I don’t believe in romanticizing sloppy seamanship that, when push came to shove, degenerated into murder.


All that said, I did find this interesting tidbit in Peter H. Spectre’s 2010 The Mariner’s Book of Days which gave me pause. If no other thing makes you realize just how many souls suffered on that fateful night in 1912, the list of provisions from Titanic’s maiden and final voyage certainly does:

Fresh meat: 75,000 lbs
Fresh fish: 11.000 lbs
Salt and dried fish: 4,000 lbs
Bacon and ham: 7,500 lbs
Poultry and game: 25,000 lbs
Fresh eggs: 40,000 lbs
Sausages: 2,500 lbs
Sweetbreads: 1,000 lbs
Ice cream: 1,750 qts
Coffee: 2,200 lbs
Tea: 800 lbs
Rice, dried beans, etc.: 10,000 lbs
Sugar: 10,000 lbs
Flour: 200 barrels
Cereals: 10,000 lbs
Oranges: 36,000
Lemons: 16,000
Hothouse grapes: 1,000 lbs
Fresh milk: 1,500 gallons
Fresh cream: 1,200 qts
Condensed milk: 600 gallons
Fresh butter: 6,000 lbs
Grapefruit: 50 boxes
Lettuce: 7,000 heads
Tomatoes: 2.75 tons
Fresh asparagus: 800 bundles
Fresh green peas: 2,250 lbs
Onions: 3,500 lbs
Potatoes: 40 tons
Jam and marmalade: 1,120 lbs
Beer and stout: 20,000 bottles
Wine: 1,500 bottles
Mineral water: 15,000 bottles
Spirits: 850 bottles

From this list, it is easy to speculate as far as the wide differences in diet from first class to steerage.  While some of those lemons and oranges may have been doled out to Third Class, it's certain they never saw a hot house grape just as First Class saw very little - aside from the occasional kipper - of those dried fish or beans.

Header: White Star Line poster c 1911

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Hatch

In a previous Tools of the Trade post we talked about closed quarters; a crew lying under hatches when their ship is boarded by an enemy to protect men, cargo and, to some degree, ship. But what of those hatches and hatchways; and just what is hatchelling anyway? How glad I am that you asked.


Hatchways, to begin at the beginning, are the openings in a ship’s deck that allow passage of men and goods (sometimes animals as well) up and down between decks. In a ship of frigate size or larger, three hatchways – fore, main and after – can be found on the main deck with others below depending on the design of the ship. Generally speaking the hatchway coverings are made of wood and are called hatches. There are also such things as hatchway nettings. These are sturdy rope nets placed over hatchways to allow for light and ventilation while still obstructing falls of men or objects to decks below. Hatchway nettings were more common in smaller ships – brigs, sloops and so on – in the Great Age of Sail but should not be discounted aboard any ship given the right circumstances.

Hatchway screens are pieces of heavy wool or fear-nought, sometimes purposefully soaked with water, that were put around the hatchways when preparing a ship for a firefight. These would screen the various decks from the black powder magazine, making an unthinkable fire or explosion potential more controllable. In an instance where “battening down the hatches” – such as the aforementioned closed quarters – was necessary, hatch bars would be used sealed most often with chain and padlocks. Hatchway rings were used to lift the hatches off the hatchway. The hatches were not, as is the case in many modern replicas, on hinges but free on all sides. This made them easily removed, despite their weight, by a few men employing the hatchway rings.

Gun brigs and bomb ketches were sometimes fitted with hatches instead of lower decks, forming what was known as a hatch deck. A hatch boat, a small craft that can also rightly be called a pilot boat, might have only one deck besides it hold composed entirely of hatches.

The term to lie under hatches, by the way, generally meant to stow something in the hold. However, it could also mean stowing away or, in the most extreme being gravely ill, in horrible circumstances, or even dead.

Then too, a once forgotten and recently remembered canine can be named Hatch.

Hatchet fashion is a combat term. A cutlass or saber might be used hatchet fashion to hack at an enemy as one might with an ax, rather than thrusting as with a foil or epee.

Finally, hatchelling is the process of preparing hemp for rope making. This is a word not often heard in seafaring today, but it would bring an air of authenticity to historical fiction touching on the nautical, I must say.

Happy Saturday once again, Brethren. May the sea be good to you, and may you may you never lie under hatches, except after a long and fulfilling life.

Header: The Pirates’ Cove by Montague Dawson