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You are welcome to apply any part of this article to your own personal use. Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
Being an avid sailor, I've always been interested in sea history and the lore of the sea. I've especially enjoyed discovering some new piece of trivia that explained the origin of a nautical term. In this series of articles, I will be sharing some of these Sailor Talk with you.
With thanks to the late author and etymologist, John Ciardi, here are a couple of related Sailor Talk: "The whole nine yards" and "Dressed to the nines". What...? Nautical terms...? Related...? You've got to be kidding!
The terms originate with ships-of-the-line in the British Navy of centuries past. They aren't associated with American Football, nor with the British WWII Pilots with their twenty-seven feet long ammunition belts, nor with large dump trucks capable of transporting 9 cubic yards of material.
A ship-of-the-line of the late 16th to the middle 18th century always had three masts with three primary yards on each mast, the main yard, t'gallant yard and tops'l yards. In those days, and even into the early 19th century, it was rare for a ship-of-the-line to have any other yards. Even Admiral Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, carried only nine yards in the Battle of Trafalgar, the last significant sea battle fought under sail.
For a sailing ship to complete a tacking maneuver, the attitude of the yards on the masts would be changed in a particular sequence. In the early stages of the tacking maneuver, the captain could change his mind and abort without any real consequence. However, once the ninth yard was changed over, attempting to abort would usually put the ship in stays (dead in the water, head to wind). And, as you might guess, that wasn't a good thing to happen.
In battle some captains would make use of this when maneuvering for position with an inexperienced opponent. They would start a tack to fake the opponent into a corresponding move. At the last moment, they would abort the tack to catch the opponent in a very weak position. A winning captain would always be watching his opponent's primary yards, knowing that the other captain wasn't fully committed to the maneuver until the he went with "the whole nine yards".
To celebrate victories, a returning ship would approach her home waters "dressed" in bunting and flags. This made it easier for the folks on shore to have some idea as to the news she carried. The more the flags (the more she was dressed), the greater the news. Strings of flags would be draped from the tip of the bowsprit to the trucks of the masts to the sternpost. Bunting would be placed along the sides. Originally haphazard, navies got around to codifying the practice, dictating the order and number of flags, specifying when the practice was to occur and eliminating the bunting.
On very formal occasions, such as a coronation celebration, the ships would parade by their monarch. Naturally, the captains, wanting their ships to appear very festive for the occasion, would "dress" their ships. In addition to the bunting and flags, the entire ships company would be decked out in their very best clothes. As many as possible would line up on the nine primary yards as a salute to their monarch. Thus, when appearing for especially formal events, a ship would be "dressed to the nines".
But why "dressed"? Why not "decorated" or "displayed"? Why not even just simply "arranged"?
Shortly after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 Old French and Saxon merged to form Old English. As a direct result of this merge, we often find synonymous terms in English where one word originated with a French word and the other came from an Anglo-Saxon word, the two words having the same or similar meaning in their original languages. "Last will and testament" is a phrase that survives those times. "Will" originates in the Anglo-Saxon willi. "Testament" comes to us via Old French from the Late Latin testamentum.
"Apparel" and "clothing" are another example. At the time the practice of dressing ship first appeared, common terms for the ship's rigging were "apparel" and "clothing." Apparel came from Old French apareille, meaning equipment. "Clothing" comes from Anglo-Saxon clath, meaning cloth.
In the 7th century, anything movable on board, such as masts, rigging or even stores of food was called apparel. As clothing and apparel became synonymous terms ashore in the 9th and 10th centuries, clothing came into use on board as a synonym for apparel. Gradually clothing came to refer only to the rigging supporting the bowsprit and apparel came to be applied only to the rest of the standing and running rigging.
The term "dressing" comes from Old French dressier, to arrange. When sailors went about the task of stringing flags in the rigging, they were arranging apparel and clothing on their ship. Since arranging apparel or clothing on one's body was and still is called "getting dressed" or "dressing," it was only natural to call applying apparel and clothing to one's ship "dressing the ship."
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