It wasn't until the 18th century that chaplains were permitted to dine in the wardroom. Previously, they messed in their own cabins although they were frequently invited to dine with the captain.
Charley Noble is the enlisted man's name for the galley smoke stack or funnel. The funnel is said to have been named after a stern old merchant captain who discovered that the galley's smoke stack was made of copper and therefore should receive a daily polishing. In today's Navy it is the custom to send green recruits to find Charley Noble, a hunt which causes endless amusement for the ship's veterans.
One tradition carried on in the Navy is the use of the "chit. British sailors shortened the word to chit and applied it to their mess vouchers. Its most outstanding use in the Navy today is for drawing pay and a form used for requesting leave and liberty. But the term is currently applied to almost any piece of paper from a pass to an official letter requesting some privilege. The crow the bird, not the rating badge was an essential part of the early sailors' navigation equipment. These land-lubbing fowl were carried on board to help the navigator determine where the closest land lay when the weather prevented sighting the shore visually.
In cases of poor visibility, a crow was released and the navigator plotted a course that corresponded with the bird's because it invariably headed toward land. The crow's nest was situated high in the main mast where the look-out stood his watch. Often, he shared this lofty perch with a crow or two since the crows' cages were kept there: hence the "crow's nest. British seaman, apt to be ashore and unemployed for considerable periods between voyages, generally preferred to live in boarding houses near the piers while waiting for sailing ships to take on crews.
During these periods of unrestricted liberty, many ran out of money so the innkeepers carried them on credit until hired for another voyage. When a seaman was booked on a ship, he was customarily advanced a month's wages, if needed, to pay off his boarding house debt. Then, while paying back the ship's master, he worked for nothing but "salt horse" the first several weeks aboard. Salt horse was the staple diet of early sailors and it wasn't exactly tasty cuisine.
Consisting of a low quality beef that had been heavily salted, the salt horse was tough to chew and even harder to digest. When the debt had been repaid, the salt horse was said to be dead and it was a time for great celebration among the crew.
Usually, an effigy of a horse was constructed from odds and ends, set afire and then cast afloat to the cheers and hilarity of the ex-debtors. Today, just as in the days of sail, "dead horse" refers to a debt to the government for advance pay.
Sailors today don't burn effigies when the debt is paid but they are no less jubilant than their counterparts of old. Today the expression "devil to pay" is used primarily as a means of conveying an unpleasant and impending happening. Originally, this expression denoted a specific task aboard the ship as caulking the ship's longest seam. The "devil" was the longest seam on the wooden ship and caulking was done with "pay" or pitch.
This grueling task of paying the devil was despised by every seaman and the expression came to denote any unpleasant task. Ditty bag or box was originally called "ditto bag" because it contained at least two of everything: two needles, two spools of thread, two buttons, etc.
With the passing of years, the "ditto" was dropped in favor of "ditty" and remains so today. Before World War I, the Navy issued ditty boxes made of wood and styled after foot lockers. These carried the personal gear and some clothes of the sailor. Today the ditty bag is still issued to recruits and contains a sewing kit, toiletry articles and personal items such as writing paper and pens. Dog watch is the name given to the and the watches aboard ship.
The four-hour watch was originally split to prevent men from always having to stand the same watches daily. As a result, sailors dodge the same daily routine, hence they are dodging the watch or standing the dodge watch.
In its corrupted form, dodge became dog and the procedure is referred to as "dogging the watch" or standing the "dog watch. Webster defines dungaree as "a coarse kind of fabric worn by the poorer class of people and also used for tents and sail. The cloth used then wasn't as well woven nor was it dyed blue, but it served the purpose. Dungarees worn by sailors of the Continental Navy were cut directly from old sails and remained tan in color just has they had been when filled with wind.
After battles, it was the practice in both the American and British Navies for captains to report more sail lost in battle than actually was the case so the crew would have cloth to mend their hammocks and make new clothes. Since the cloth was called dungaree, clothes made from the fabric borrowed the name. The name given the Navy's junior most officer dates to medieval times. Lords honored their squires by allowing them to carry the ensign banner into battle.
Later these squires became known by the name of the banner itself. In the US Army the lowest ranking officer was originally called "ensign" because he, like the squire of old, would one day lead troops into battle and was training to that end.
It is still the lowest commissioned rank in the British army today. When the US Navy was established, the Americans carried on the tradition and adapted the rank of ensign as the title for its junior commissioned officers.
Fathom was originally a land measuring term derived from the Anglo Saxon word "faetm" meaning literally the embracing arms or to embrace. In those days, most measurements were based on average sizes of parts of the body such as the hand or foot, or were derived from the average lengths between two points on the body. A fathom is the average distance from fingertip to fingertip of the outstretched arms of a man, about six feet. Even today in our nuclear Navy, sailors can be seen "guesstimating" the length of line by using the Anglo Saxon fingertip method; crude but still reliable.
And every housewife measuring cloth today knows that from the tip of her nose to the tips of her fingers of one outstretched arm equals one yard. To most sailors the word geedunk means ice cream, candy, potato chips and other assorted snacks, or even the place where they can be purchased. No one, however, knows for certain where the term originated; there are several plausible theories: In the s a comic strip character named Harold Teen and his friends spent a great amount of time at Pop's candy store.
The store's name was the Sugar Bowl but Harold and company always called it the geedunk for reasons never explained. The Chinese word meaning a place of idleness sounds something like "gee dung. It may be derived from the German word "tunk" meaning to dip or sop either in gravy or coffee.
Dunking was a common practice in days when bread, not always obtained fresh, needed a bit of "tunking" to soften it. The "ge" is a German unaccented prefix denoting repetition. In time it may have changed from getunk to geedunk. Whatever theory we use to explain geedunk's origin, it doesn't alter the fact that Navy people are glad it all got started! In the modern Navy falsifying reports, records and the like is often referred to as "gundecking. The deck below the upper deck on British sailing ships-of-war was called the gundeck although it carried no guns.
This false deck may have been constructed to deceive enemies as to the amount of armament carried, thus the gundeck was a falsification. A more plausible explanation may stem from shortcuts taken by early midshipmen when doing their navigation lessons. Each mid was supposed to take sun lines at noon and star sights at night and then go below to the gundeck, work out their calculations and show them to the navigator.
Certain of these young men, however, had a special formula for getting the correct answers. They would note the noon or last position on the quarterdeck traverse board and determine the approximate current position by dead reckoning plotting. Armed with this information, they proceeded to the gundeck to "gundeck" their navigation homework by simply working backwards from the dead reckoning position. When we say someone knows the ropes we infer that he knows his way around at sea and is quite capable of handling most nautical problems.
Through the years the phrase's meaning has changed somewhat. Originally, the statement was printed on a seaman's discharge to indicate that he knew the names and primary uses of the main ropes on board ship. In other words, "This man is a novice seaman and knows only the basics of seamanship.
The words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean" well describe a sailing ship's situation when it entered the horse latitudes. Located near the West Indies between 30 and 40 degrees north latitude, these waters were noted for unfavorable winds that becalmed cattle ships heading from Europe to America.
Often ships carrying horses would have to cast several overboard to conserve drinking water for the rest as the ship rode out the unfavorable winds. Because so many horses and other cattle were tossed to the sea, the area came to be known as the "horse latitudes. Sometimes we hear an old chief petty officer claim he came into the Navy through the hawsepipe and it makes one wonder if he is referring to some early enlistment program.
Actually, it was an enlistment program of sorts; it means a person is salty and savvies the ways of the sea because he began his nautical career on the lowest ladder of the deck force. A hawsepipe or hawsehole, incidentally, is a hole in the bow of the ship through which the anchor chain runs. A jacob's ladder is a portable ladder made of rope or metal and used primarily as an aid in boarding ship.
Originally, the jacob's ladder was a network of line leading to the skysail on wooden ships. The name alludes to the biblical Jacob reputed to have dreamed that he climbed a ladder to the sky. Anyone who has ever tried climbing a jacob's ladder while carrying a seabag can appreciate the allusion. It does seem that the climb is long enough to take one into the next world. To be keelhauled today is merely to be given a severe reprimand for some infraction of the rules.
As late as the 19th century, however, it meant the extreme. It was a dire and often fatal torture employed to punish offenders of certain naval laws. An offender was securely bound both hand and foot and had heavy weights attached to his body.
He was then lowered over the ship's side and slowly dragged along under the ship's hull. If he didn't drown -- which was rare -- barnacles usually ripped him, causing him to bleed to death. All navies stopped this cruel and unusual punishment many years ago and today any such punishment is forbidden. The term knot or nautical mile, is used world-wide to denote one's speed through water. Today, we measure knots with electronic devices, but years ago such devices were unknown.
Ingenious mariners devised a speed measuring device both easy to use and reliable: the "log line. At one end was fastened a log chip; it was shaped like the sector of a circle and weighted at the rounded end with lead. When thrown over the stern, it would float pointing upward and would remain relatively stationary.
The log line was allowed to run free over the side for 28 seconds and then hauled on board. Knots which had passed over the side were counted. In this way the ship's speed was measured. Today any bound record kept on a daily basis aboard ship is called a "log.
When paper became more readily available, "log books" were manufactured from paper and bound. Shingles were relegated to naval museums -- but the slang term stuck. The master-at-arms rating is by no means a modern innovation. Naval records show that these "sheriffs of the sea" were keeping order as early as the reign of Charles I of England. At that time they were charged with keeping the swords, pistols, carbines and muskets in good working order as well as ensuring that the bandoliers were filled with fresh powder before combat.
Besides being chiefs of police at sea, the sea corporals, as they were called in the British Navy, had to be qualified in close order fighting under arms and able to train seamen in hand-to-hand combat.
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See also salt away , salt out , salts. Derived forms of salt saltish , adjective saltless , adjective saltlike , adjective saltness , noun. Strategic Arms Limitation Talks or Treaty. A colorless or white crystalline solid, chiefly sodium chloride, used extensively as a food seasoning and preservative. A chemical compound replacing all or part of the hydrogen ions of an acid with metal ions or electropositive radicals. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Any of a large class of chemical compounds formed when a positively charged ion a cation bonds with a negatively charged ion an anion , as when a halogen bonds with a metal. Salts are water soluble; when dissolved, the ions are freed from each other, and the electrical conductivity of the water is increased. See more at complex salt double salt simple salt. A colorless or white crystalline salt in which a sodium atom the cation is bonded to a chlorine atom the anion.
This salt is found naturally in all animal fluids, in seawater, and in underground deposits when it is often called halite. It is used widely as a food seasoning and preservative.
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