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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 Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
In the last several articles we've been covering Sailor Talk that don't seem to fit any particular category. In this article we'll cover even more of those random terms.
Let's start with "at loggerheads." Originally loggerheads were large iron balls with long handles. When rigging needed to be tarred down or decks needed caulking, the tar (a distillate of pine pitch), usually a solid substance at normal temperatures, needed to be heated enough to melt into a sticky, gooey liquid. If the heating were done over an open flame, there was danger that the pitch might catch fire. The Iron balls at the end of the loggerheads would be heated red-hot. They were then carried by their much cooler handles from the fire, usually located in the blacksmith's forge, to the deck where the buckets of solid tar would be waiting for them. The balls would be plunged into the buckets, heating the tar and causing it to melt with no danger of flame.
Sailors lived in the forecastle in crowded conditions that would be considered most intolerable by today's standards. In those conditions tempers often flared. Fortunately, weapons such as pistols and cutlasses were kept under lock and key by the master. While every sailor had a knife as a very necessary part of his kit, a wise shipmaster examined each knife at the start of a voyage to make sure that the points were broken off. Consequently weapons capable of inflicting serious injury or death in a fight were not generally available in the heat of the moment. But loggerheads were within easy reach by all. By facing off with these heavy and unwieldy weapons, the anger would be quickly worked out with little more than some bruises and broken skin.
Some of these fights would start with "I don't like th' cut o' yur jib." Nationality could often be determined by the ship's rigging and, more specifically, her jibs. A Spanish ship would typically have a small jib if she carried any at all. A large French ship would most likely have two jibs. English ships would fly only a single jib. The jib is the first part of a ship to arrive at any given place. A man's nose, like a jib, is the first part to similarly arrive. Thus the phrase implies the first impression one has of another.
At other times, the fight between crew might begin with "now you're showing your true colors." Early warships carried flags from many nations in order to deceive or elude another ship. Civilized warfare required each ship to hoist their true national ensign before firing their first shot. A sailor who finally "shows his true colors" is behaving like a warship or, more likely, a pirate ship, which carried the flag of the other ship in order to get in close, then hoists their own the moment they are in firing range.
By the way, a ship tricked in this manner was said to have been "bamboozled." The origin of bamboozle has been lost, but may have come from the name of one of the first ships to do the trick.
A shipboard fight would often be precursed with a lot of yelling and encouragement from their messmates. The mate might attempt to quell the fight before it happened with a yell of "Pipe down!" The bosun's whistle, called a pipe from its shape, was used from ancient times to coordinate actions of the crew on disparate parts of the ship. For example, on the old Roman rowing galleys, the pipe was often used to call the stroke. Because of its shrill tune, the pipe could generally be heard above the general hubbub of deck activity. Specific calls would be made for specific actions, such as "Hoist Away" or "Avast Heaving". "Pipe Down" was a call denoting the completion of an all-hands task, such as wearing ship, and that the off-watch could then go below. The meaning of the call was clear: "Keep quiet!"
If the men were on watch at the time a fight seemed immanent, the mate might yell "Carry On!" to quell things. The ship's master and the mate would be constantly looking for the slightest change in wind. Sails needed to be reefed or added as necessary to insure the fastest and safest headway. A good breeze would result in an order to "carry on", to hoist every bit of canvas the yards could carry. This order would result in a grueling period of work for all hands. As the sailing vessels got larger and their rigs more complex, more specific orders were needed and the "carry on" lost its original meaning. Instead it became an order to get back to work.
At times the problem festered until the men reached a port. There they would have access to weapons and would fight with "no quarter asked, nor quarter given". This would be a fight to the death. It was the opposite of the tradition of "giving quarter." In older times an officer would call "quarter" upon surrendering. If quarter were given, his life would be saved but he would have to pay a ransom of one quarter of his pay.
Not all shipboard arguments resulted in a conflict. Some would end of their own accord. Perhaps one of the sailors had "the wind taken out of his sails." These days the phrase describes getting the best of an opponent in an argument. But in the days of warring ships of sail, it was an often-used battle maneuver. By passing close to her adversary on the weather side, a ship would blanket the wind from the opponent. This would cause the opponent to loose headway and maneuverability, reducing her ability to fight.
Given the close physical quarters of the times, some shipboard fights would erupt with no outward reason. The captain might then comment that he "couldn't fathom" the reason for the fight. Fathom originally was a land-based measuring term. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word faetm, embracing arms or to embrace. Common measurements in the Middle Ages and earlier were based on the average size of parts of the body, such as the foot, the hand (still used for measuring horses) or the rod (the left foot, heel to toe, of forty pious men as they left church on a Sunday morning). A fathom was established by an act of Parliament, as "the length of a man's arms around the object of his affections." Fathom became a term used to describe the act of taking the measure of something. Thus, trying to fathom something is trying to figure it out.
"Mind your P's and Q's" is a phrase generally meaning to "be on your best behavior." Sailors could always get credit at the waterfront taverns until they got their advance pay for their next voyage. The tavern keepers would have a score board where they would place a mark for each pint ("P's") and quart ("Q's") that the sailor ordered. It was up to the tavern keeper to be careful that no pints or quarts had been left off the customer's list. And it was up to the sailor to insure that no extra marks were made by the tavern keeper.
If enough of the beverages were consumed, the tavern patron might become "three sheets to the wind." A square-rigged vessel might have three sheets to control her primary sails. The mainsheet would be used to control the fore-and-aft mainsail. The windward, or weather, sheet and the leeward sheet would be used to control the foresail. If all three sheets were cast to the wind (let go), it would cause the ship to stagger on a course not unlike a drunken sailor.
That's it for this time. Hmmm... I wonder what I'll come up with for the next one.
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