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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 Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
People have often asked me how I became interested in the origin of nautical terms. When I was growing up on a farm in California, my great aunt lived next door. Two large seascapes of brigantines under shortened sail in heavy weather adorned her living room wall. The paintings fascinated me. I would stare at them for hours. I remember one time asking her about these exciting ships. She said that her father, who was my great grandfather, had built some of them and had sailed them around Cape Horn. In my boyhood imagination, I could see myself following in his footsteps doubling the Horn.
As a youth, I read voraciously. Anything nautical riveted me. As I read these stories, I found myself wondering about the interesting terminology. Why is a halyard used to haul the sail up the mast instead of a rope? Why do sailors use heads instead of bathrooms? The more I read, the more I wondered.
Over the years I managed to pick up many, but not all of the answers to these questions. Some answers were simple or quite straightforward. Some were very interesting. Some were just plain boring. Here are some of the interesting answers I've found.
Why is a halyard used to raise sails instead of a rope? Before square sails were invented, ships generally carried lateen sails. The lateen sail was triangular. Its foot (bottom edge) was attached directly to the boom and its luff (top edge which was also the leading edge) was attached directly to a yard. To raise the lateen sail, the sailors literally hauled the yard up the mast. The rope for this purpose was the "haul yard" line, or halyard in the language of the times.
I stumbled across the origin of the term "little nipper" in Ashley's Book of Knots. His discussion of one shipboard knot was quite interesting. Main anchor cables were often too large to wrap directly around the capstan. Instead, the cable was temporarily attached to a smaller continuous messenger line that went between the capstan and a heavy-duty turning block. A number of short lashings were used to attach the cable to the messenger.
As the crew pushed the capstan around, it would turn the messenger line. As the messenger line turned, it would haul on the anchor cable. As the leading lashing approached the turning block, it would be untied to allow that part of the messenger to go through the block and release a few inches of anchor cable for stowing. The untied lashing would then be brought back and cast on again just behind the last lashing on the messenger. This would catch a few more inches of anchor cable for hauling.
The knot used for this task was known as the nip, and the lashing line was known as the nipper. The nip was very fast and easy to tie and untie. Whenever available, deck boys were used for this task as they were much more agile and dexterous than the sailors. It also freed the sailors to do the heavy work of turning the capstan.
No matter how agile, it was impossible for these boys to avoid being underfoot as the crew walked around the capstan. Thus any boy under foot became known as a little nipper.
Why do we have a head instead of a toilet on board? In ancient times, there were no sanitary facilities aboard for the passengers or crew. Even the larger boats were small and low enough for people to sit on the top edge of the leeward hull for direct discharge overboard.
As time passed, shipbuilders began adding beakheads forward of the bows. A beakhead was a sharp ram fitted at the bow of a fighting galley. It was used to disable enemy galleys by impaling the rowing tiers and killing the rowers.
By the 10th century the beakhead attained another use. It supported two platforms, one to larboard and one to starboard. The original purpose of the platforms was to provide a place where archers would shoot in battle. They were known as the weather and leeward beakheads, or more simply the weather and leeward heads. Due to their location forward of the bow, the heads were built as a grid. Instead of having the seas beat them to pieces, the grid construction allowed water to flow directly through the platforms. It also kept weight to a minimum.
The heads provided an immediate, although unintended improvement to the crew's sanitary facilities. They were located immediately forward of the crew's quarters. They were suspended conveniently over the water. They were washed by each wave that came up to bows.
Officers and passengers were granted some privacy through the use of porcelain chamber pots or oak buckets, known as private heads. Crew were expected to use the leeward head. Leeward used to be spelled lewward, which explains the correct pronunciation as "LOO'ard". With this pronunciation it's easy to see that "going to the leeward head" survives in modern Britain as "going to the loo".
When I first heard of a lazarette, I thought to myself, "Why was a cockpit locker given a French name?" Surprisingly, this turned out to be of Hebrew by way of Italian origin.
Like most European cities in past centuries, Italian cities had their share of plagues and other epidemics. The Italian maritime states, most notably Venice and Genoa, would send the sick to quarantine ships in an attempt to protect the townspeople from the disease. A quarantine ship was called a lazaretto.
From a 1953 dictionary, I learned that lazaretto was an Italian word meaning leprosy. This has its origins with Lazarus whom the Bible says was raised from the dead by Jesus. Lazarus is the Romanized form of the Old Hebrew name, El Azar, which means He Who Is Helped By God.
Eventually people recognized that quarantine ships needed to be contained in a separate quarantine anchorage. These quarantine anchorages became known as lazarettos, after the quarantine ships. If a ship with disease aboard were to visit a relatively healthy port, she would be sent to a lazaretto. If a healthy ship visited a port having an active epidemic, she would go to a reverse quarantine anchorage. In this lazaretto, the crew would be protected from the disease ashore. While there, they would discharge their cargo onto smaller boats manned by locals without physical contact with them.
The master of a vessel would often have a box in his cabin for important papers, money, pistols or other items that he wanted to keep away from the crew. The box would be kept locked. Given the dubious nature of most crew, the box was always kept aft, usually in the master's quarters. With the crew normally forbidden to go aft to the officer's quarters without permission and supervision, the master could keep a good eye on the box. The box was, in a sense, "quarantined" from the crew. However, it was too small to be called a lazaretto. Instead, it was given the diminutive form: lazarette. Eventually any lockable storage box in the aft portion of the boat became known as a lazarette. Since cockpits are usually aft, cockpit lockers are now known as lazarettes.
Have you ever gone to a new workplace and had to "learn the ropes"? This phrase is definitely nautical in origin. When a landlubber joined a ship for the very first time, it would take a week or so before he could identify all the ropes. Of course, if encouraged by the mate's rope end, he would learn much faster.
But even old hands would need a few watches before they would be able to locate all the ropes on a dark, moonless night. No two sailing ships had identical rigging. Even if sisterships were rigged by the same master rigger, there would be minor differences in the placement of blocks or fairleads for the running rigging. With breakdowns and repairs, over time the differences would be greater.
Have you ever wondered why a ship has gender, why gossip is scuttlebutt, why navies are lead by admirals instead of generals, why a drinking establishment ashore is a saloon, why a storm sail is called a trysail, why one end of a rope is called the bitter end? Perhaps I'll answer some of these next time.
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