This little volume is the fruits of an occasional spell of leisure. It is offered to the public because many might be glad to possess a cheap book of convenient size that would enable them to satisfy themselves without trouble about the meaning of nautical words often met with, but not always intelligible. I do not pretend that it is exhaustive — scores of words of which I may never have heard, are no doubt wanting; nor will I affirm that every term is accurately defined, though I have done my best to be exact. To make sure of this, however, and in order to enlarge the book beyond its present modest limits, I should be very thankful for suggestions and help in any shape. Sea-terms and definitions addressed to me, to the care of the publishers, will be gratefully received, and embodied in another edition, if called for. I am not acquainted with many nautical dictionaries. The marine glossaries are very meagre: even Dana’s, the best of them, belongs rather to the days when he was at sea — nearly half a century ago — than to this age of steamers and queer rigs. Richard Henry Dana, author of Two Years Before the Mast (1840), also published The Seaman’s Friend (1841), a manual of seamanship with a dictionary of sea terms. Dana went to sea in 1834. Admiral Smyth’s voluminous book is an immense collection of terms, but three-fourths of them have no more to do with sailor’s language than have the words in Johnson’s dictionary; and the remainder is lacking in dozens of appellations now in vogue. Admiral William Henry Smyth’s The Sailor’s Word-Book (1867), a large dictionary of nautical and naval terms.
It was an article I contributed to a daily journal that put the idea of this volume into my head. That article will, I think, bear reprinting in this place, for I do not know that I could write anything better and more to the point as a Preface.
There is a well-known passage in Peter Simple, in which Mr. Chucks, the boatswain, receives certain orders from the first lieutenant respecting mousings, turk’s-heads, and goose-necks. Captain Frederick Marryat’s novel Peter Simple (1834) follows a young midshipman in the Royal Navy. Mr. Chucks the boatswain is one of its best-loved characters. “In short,” says Peter, “what with dead-eyes and shrouds, cat and cat-blocks, dolphins and dolphin-strikers, whips and puddings, I was so puzzled with what I heard that I was about to leave the deck in absolute despair.” He lingered long enough, however, to hear the lieutenant order Mr. Chucks to bleed all the buoys during the afternoon, a remark that drove the midshipman in terror into the cockpit. Others besides Peter Simple have been puzzled by sailors’ language. Of all the various features of the procedure in marine courts of inquiry nothing is so curious as the bewilderment excited in the legal breast by the statements of the nautical witnesses. “We was going along all fluking when the wind drawed ahead. We trimmed sail, and in fore and mizzen-tor’garns’l, when a bit of a sea makin’ her yaw, ‘Mind yar luff, you soger,’ sings out th’ ole man, an’ as he says this one of the jib-guys parted and sprung the boom, for ours wor spritsail gaffs, and the jib-guy and after-guy wor fitted in one, with a half-crown round the gaff end — are yar a followin’ of me, sir?” If one could imagine a statement of this kind delivered to a lawyer, it might not be hard to figure the expression of face with which it would be received. What is a legal gentleman, whose knowledge of the sea is limited to a run from Dover to Calais when the Long Vacation gives him a spell of liberty, The Long Vacation was the long summer break of the English law courts, from about August to late October, when lawyers were free to travel. to make of such expressions as boot-topping, pazaree, timenoguy, Scotchman, rombowline, puddening, leefange, and a hundred other words more bewildering still? And yet it is certain that if a sailor has to talk about his calling, he must use the language of the sea. There are no synonyms for sister-blocks, kevels, sennit, girt-line, French-fake, and the rest of the vocabulary. If a lawyer cannot understand how the bight of a rope can be whipped into a snatch-block without passing the end through the sheave, there is nothing in language outside the terms of the marine statement of the process to enable him to master the sailor’s meaning.
Indeed, sailors’ talk is a dialect as distinct from ordinary English as Hindustanee is, or Chinese. English words are used, but their signification is utterly remote from the meaning they have in shore parlance. A yard ashore means a bit of ground at the back of a house; at sea it is a spar. Every cabman knows what a whip is; but at sea it is a tackle formed by a single rope rove through a block. A traveller ashore is a well-known individual; but at sea he becomes an iron ring fitted so as to slip up and down a rope. A lizard is not a reptile, but a bit of rope with an iron thimble spliced into it, just as a bull is a small keg, and bees pieces of plank at the outer end of the bowsprit. Beating is not striking, but sailing by tacks; a bonnet is not for ladies’ wear, but a piece of canvas laced to the foot of a jib; whilst a cat’s-paw has as little to do with the feline animal as fiddles and harpings have with music.
Sailors’ language, however, is by no means wholly compounded of the terms referring to the various parts of ships. Hardships and perils, cruel treatment, bad food, and the like, have imported a mass of rough sayings into the forecastle, many of which are sanctified by touches of rude poetry. Jack’s ditties, too, are frequently vehicles of his emotions. When he does not know how to growl fairly, he will put his feelings into a topsail-halliard song, and often has the anchor come up to a fierce chorus compounded of improvised abuse of the ship and the skipper, to which expression could not be given in a quieter method. A ship’s carpenter once told me that he was clapped in irons and lay manacled for six weeks in a voyage to China for writing the words of a song which the sailors sang on every possible occasion when the captain was on deck. The carpenter was Alexander Hay, a Newcastle cabinet-maker and poet born in 1826. Allan’s Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs and Readings (1891) says that Russell “falls into an error about the carpenter being put in irons; he was brutally used, but the irons were only threatened.” Hay later recited the song at a public meeting in Limehouse chaired by Samuel Plimsoll, the “sailors’ friend” who campaigned for safer merchant ships. He gave me a copy of the words, which I found to be a rude enumeration of Jack’s troubles, every stanza winding up with a shout of “Board of Trade, ahoy!” See Board of Trade, Ahoy. The Board of Trade was the British government department that regulated the merchant service, and a sailor could complain to it about bad food or ill treatment. Shouting its name was a threat the captain could not miss. Some of the verses are quite to the point. The first runs:
I’m only a sailor man — tradesman would I were,For I’ve ever rued the day I became a tar;Rued the rambling notion, ever the decoyUnto such an awful life. Board of Trade, ahoy!
One can imagine the skipper pricking up his ear at this shout, and looking very hard at the men who were chorusing it. The song goes on:
I snubb’d skipper for bad grub, rotten flour to eat,Hard tack full of weevils; how demon chandlers cheat!Salt junk like mahogany, scurvying man and boy.Says he, ‘Where’s your remedy?’ Board of Trade, ahoy!
But worse follows:
Can ye wonder mutiny, lubber-like, will work,In our mercantile marine, cramm’d with measly pork?Is it wonderful that men lose their native joy,With provisions maggoty? Board of Trade, ahoy!
By this time, we may take it, the skipper was feeling about for a loose belaying-pin. But the exasperating touch was yet to come:
Oh had we a crew to stand by when we’re ashore,Show this horrid stuff that pigs even would abhor!Sue the swindling dealer who’d our health destroy.What say ye, oh sailor friends? Board of Trade, ahoy!
Dutchmen here before the mast, and behind it too!Dutchmen mate and carpenter, Dutchmen most the crew!Foreigners to man our ships, horrible employ!What’s old England coming to? Board of Trade, ahoy!
I quote these verses at length, as a fair sample of the sort of growling Jack puts into his songs. Unfortunately he is somewhat limited in melodies. Some of them are very plaintive, such as The Plains of Mexico and Across the Western Ocean, “The Plains of Mexico” is Santy Anna, and see also Across the Western Ocean. and others have a merry, light-hearted go, such as Run, let the bulljine run!, Whisky, Johnny!, Time for us to go, I served my time in the Blackwall Line. See Run with the Bullgine, Whiskey, Johnny, and, for “Time for us to go,” A Hundred Years Ago.
But the lack of variety is no obstruction to the sailor’s poetical inspiration when he wants the old man to know his private opinions without expressing them to his face, and so the same chantey, as the windlass or halliard chorus is called, furnishes the music to as many various indignant remonstrances as Jack can find injuries to sing about. The provisions have for years been a sore subject with the sailor. His beef and pork have earned more abuse from him than any other thing he goes to sea with. “What’s for dinner to-day, Bill?” I remember hearing a sailor ask another. “Measles,” was the answer, that being the man’s name for the pork aboard his vessel. Old horse is the sailor’s term for his salt beef; and some old rhymes perhaps explain the reason: See Salt Horse Chantey.
Between the main-mast and the pumpsThere stands a cask of Irish junks;And if you won’t believe it true,Look, and you’ll see the hoof and shoe.Salt horse, salt horse, what brought you here,After carrying turf for so many a year,From Bantry Bay to Ballyack,Where you fell down and broke your back?With kicks, and thumps, and sore abuse,You’re salted down for sailor’s use.They eat your flesh and pick your bones,Then throw you over to Davy Jones.
Out of his sea fare, however, such as it is, Jack nevertheless manages to manufacture several dishes, of which the names are worthy of the contents and flavour. Lobscouse, dandy-funk, dogsbody, seapie, choke-dog, twice-laid, hishee-hashee are among some of the delectable entrées which the sailor contrives to get out of his kids. Whatever is at hand is popped into these messes; nothing comes amiss, “from a potato-paring to the heel of an old boot.” Soup-and-bouilli is another standing sea-dish, and, taking it all round, is the most disgusting of the provisions served out to the merchant sailor. I have known many a strong stomach, made food-proof by years of pork eaten with molasses, and biscuit alive with worms, to be utterly capsized by the mere smell of soup-and-bouilli. Jack calls it “soap and bullion, one onion to a gallon of water,” and this fairly expresses the character of the nauseous compound. Sea-puddings, as there is scarcely any variety that I know of among them, have not many names. Duff means a large lump of flour and grease boiled in a bag; doughboys — pronounced doboys, the o broad — are the same flour and grease in small lumps. Dough jehovahs are a Yankee pudding, and worthy of the people who first taught the British sailor to eat pork with treacle. Bread in sailors’ language means biscuits; the bread that landsmen eat is called by Jack tommy and soft tack. Tea is water bewitched, and no better title could be found for the pale yellow liquor thick with stalk-ends, which fills the sailor’s hookpot when he goes to breakfast or supper.
It may be that the resentment kindled in the sailor’s soul by the nature of the ship’s stores induced him to extend his poetical imagination to all who had anything to do with the provisions, for assuredly the cook has not escaped. He is variously designated; sometimes he is Drainings, sometimes Slushy, and sometimes Doctor, while the steward is called Flunkey, and the steward’s mate Jack in the Dust. The carpenter is more politely termed Chips, and Sails does duty for the sailmaker. Many an old prejudice survives in sea-language; as, for instance, the word soger (soldier), which is as strong a term of contempt as one sailor can fling at another, whilst sogering means to loaf, to skulk; as if in Jack’s opinion loafing and skulking were characteristics of the soldier. Lobster is another of his terms for the military man, suggested, of course, by the red coat. The marine used to be Peter Pipeclay in the Navy; I am ignorant whether the name is preserved; but another old term is to this day current among merchantmen, who will speak of a Navy sailor as Johnny Haultaut, in reference to the well-braced yards, the taut running rigging and the snug bunts of the man-of-war. The merchant seaman, however, has not escaped his own fertile invention, and does not apparently blush to figure as Jack Muck and Shellback.
It is peculiar to the sailor to call all foreigners Dutchmen. No matter whether a man be a Dane, a German, a Norwegian, a Swede, in Jack’s estimation he is a Dutchman. I once asked a sailor what he meant by a Dutchman. “Why,” said he, “any man who says yaw for yes.” This love of generic titles, no doubt, induces sailors to make the word growl stand for complaining, abusing, &c. If a man murmurs at the pea soup, he is growling. If he mutters at being roused out in his watch below, he is growling. Whether he grumbles under his breath or shouts at the skipper in a white fury, he is growling. It is one of the most elastic words in the seaman’s language. Many curious terms and expressions have found their way into the sea dialect. Dowse the glim is to put out the light; and “Dowse that, now,” is a sailor’s way of saying “Hold your tongue.” To tumble up is to come out of the forecastle or any other part of the ship, and lay down is to descend from aloft. “All hands, tumble up! men, tumble up!” bawls the boatswain, thumping on the scuttle; and “Fore-topsail yard, there! lay down, d’ye hear?” are orders which do not seem to correspond with a landsman’s notions of the things required to be done. Seamen are fond also of odd ejaculations, such as “Bully for you!” and “There she goes, boys! put another bit of beef in soak!” when the wind freshens up and the ship swings through it with a sharper plunge.
Another ejaculation on a like occasion is, “There she blows! whilst she creaks she holds!” “More beef!” is a cry often raised when men hauling on a rope find they want help. It means, “Tail on here more hands.” Equally suggestive is the expression “A hurrah’s nest, everything at top and nothing at bottom, like a midshipman’s chest,” intended to express the utmost state of disorder, when nothing wanted can be found. “Working Tom Cox’s traverse — three times round the long boat and a pull at the scuttlebutt,” signifies the behaviour of a man who is as slow in his work as he can be, out of spite for having been ill-treated, or from any other motive of resentment. Unpopular captains have suffered much from Tom Cox’s traverse; when men sent aloft are always dropping their jobs, and coming down on pretence of having forgotten something; when the anchor is sluggishly raised and without a chorus; and when nothing is done with a will.
Other favourite expressions are “Handsomely over the bricks,” that is, walk carefully, mind where you are going; “There are no half-laughs or purser’s grins about me, mate — I’m right up and down like a yard of pump-water,” used when a man wants to let the others know he is in downright earnest; “I’d weather him out, if he was the Devil himself,” one meaning of which is, “I’ll stick to the ship, let the skipper do his worst;” “It’s a good dog nowadays that’ll come when he’s called, let alone coming before it,” a sailor’s excuse for not showing himself forward in stopping a mischief, for not choosing to act until he was ordered; “I didn’t come through the cabin windows,” that is, “I’m a sailor: I worked my way aft from forwards; I know my duty and am not going to be taught it;” “The girls have hold of the tow rope, and can’t haul the slack in fast enough,” when the ship is homeward-bound and sailing fast — an image full of rude poetry it always seemed to me; “He hasn’t got the hayseed out of his hair,” applied to a greenhorn from the country; though such is Jack’s love of the country that to sell a farm and go to sea is a favourite expression of his to denote the very height of imbecility. As independent as a wood sawyer’s clerk is a phrase, apparently of American origin; one may often hear it used among sailors. “I’ve been through the mill, ground, and bolted,” is to assert immense experience, and the uselessness of anybody attempting to try it on. To know the ropes is the same assertion qualified. “Every hair like a rope yarn,” “Every finger a fishhook,” “He hasn’t a lazy bone in him,” are all high compliments. Then there are scores of such phrases as working their old iron up, long togs, for shore-going clothes; ride a man down like the maintack, to go on punishing him with plenty of hard work; up keeleg, paying a debt with the fore-topsail, namely, sailing away without paying; cracking on, piling on canvas or keeping a ship under a heavy press in a strong wind; an Irishman’s hurricane — right up and down, a calm; Davy putting on the coppers for the parson, the noise a tempest makes in approaching; keep your weather-eye lifting, &c.
Of many sea-phrases the meaning is really so subtle as utterly to defy translation, whilst many fit the vocational conditions so accurately that any divergence from the exact expression will puzzle a seaman as much as if he was being ordered about in French. There are shades of signification in the terms which a man must go to sea as a sailor to understand. No books will give them. They are not to be mastered by listening to seamen talking. There would seem to a landsman no particular appropriateness in such a phrase for instance as sleep in, though it somehow happens that at sea no other term would do. And the same thing may be said of such expressions as to turn in all standing, meaning without removing your clothes. Any way, it is quite certain that to stop a sailor from telling his story in his own fashion is, to use his phrase, to bring him up with a round turn; and to expect him to find other words than those which occur naturally to him in relating incidents of a profession crowded with expressions to be heard nowhere except on board ship, is to put him upon a labour of definitions which even a Samuel Johnson would, I suspect, very promptly decline.