By Andrew Bray. Illustration: Guy Venables
If you’re fortunate enough to sail a gaff-rigger, she should really come with a dictionary
of terminology to differentiate the bobstay from the snotter,
the bowsprit from the bumkin
The non-sailor might reasonably assume that surrounding all things nautical with language that is as obscure as it is archaic is a deliberate ploy to make the business of sailing and going to sea as incomprehensible as possible.
He or she might have a point. “By the deep, five”, calls the mate as he swings the lead from the starboard chains, “and there’s fine shell and sand.” Why, it might reasonably be argued, doesn’t the leadsman just turn on the depth sounder and say that it’s about ten metres? It’s a lot less messy for a start and there’s no need to carry tallow to arm the lead – there I go again.
Then there’s all that business of fo’c’s’le, for’ard, aft, going below – never downstairs – abeam, aft, abaft and, of course, port and starboard. There may have once been a logical reason for this terminology but isn’t it all obsolete? Do we sailors continue with these traditions just to make it all seem a bit more colourful?
Just imagine Roger and Janet getting ready for sea. “I’m going downstairs’” he says “to make up the beds and put the food into the kitchen cupboards.” He gives the toilet a few pumps to make sure the BlooClean flushes away. And when he goes upstairs he asks “do you want to drive? I’ll just undo the ropes”. They sally forth whilst Janet puts the fenders and ropes away. “I can never remember if we leave the red buoys to the left or right”, he says as they motor out of the river.
Once in open water they get ready to hoist, that’s to pull up, the mainsail. “Pull the white rope,” says Roger. “No the other white one. The one just to the left of the doorway – no the other side.” The mainsail flutters, climbs a few metres, drops to the deck, the halyard – sorry, white rope – fouls – sorry, tangles with – the other white rope and drops neatly over the side to foul – I mean wrap round – the propeller. They drift quietly onto the nearest mud bank to the accompaniment of even more decidedly un-nautical language.
There is, as all CS readers will know, no such thing as a rope on board a boat, especially a sailing boat. There are warps and springs, sheets and halyards (or halliards if you prefer), lanyards, parrells, twine, cord and ‘stuff’. The mast is held up with stays and you heave or surge a line under load, not pull or let go – although you can let go when you are letting go. There are blocks and sheaves, or shivs if you’re a traditionalist and you identify objects outside the boat as being for’ard or abaft the beam, not “over there”.
There is much, much more and confusing it may be but unless you insist on pronouncing everything with a pseudo West Country accent (unless you are genuine West Country when an East Coast burr should suffice) most of it is there for a purpose. A sailing boat is a complex machine and even the most basic day-sailer will have halyards, sheets, warps and a kicking strap.
And if you’re fortunate enough to sail a gaff-rigged boat she should really come with a dictionary of terminology and an instruction manual to differentiate the bobstay from the snotter, the peak from the throat, the gaff from the yard and the bowsprit from the bumkin. And there is an awful lot more if you stray into the realms of square rig. I wonder how many readers know the real meaning of ‘it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’?
If Roger and Janet had used the correct terminology and he’d popped down below, and she’d selected the right halyard then they would probably have sailed serenely on as he picked off the port and starboard hand marks to the channel. Perhaps.
As for the ‘monkey’, it was an indented iron plate that was placed between layers of cannon balls when they were stowed. A shortage of iron meant that at one time they had to be made from brass. As brass has a different rate of expansion, when it was cold they contracted more so that the iron cannon balls fell off.
From Classic Sailor: March 2016