Then and now, Part 1

By Sandy Lindsey

  You may think that when you Cut and Run you’re hurrying down the dock after briskly excusing yourself from the marina blowhard. 100 years ago if you cut and ran, you’d be cutting hemp cable with an ax which was the quickest way to get off anchor (and involved abandoning the anchor) when the ship needed to get away, often from pirates, post haste. Or you might have been referring to cutting sails that had been stoppered to the yardarms with "ropeyarns." These ropeyarns were designed to be quickly cut so the sails would fall and speed could be achieved in a hurry. Again, pirates were often the motivating force here.

  Perhaps the most extreme change in meaning is in the term Field Day. Now you’d be having a great time. Then you’d be doing the exact opposite - participating in a day set aside for cleaning the ship from bow to stern, every crack and crevice. But before you complain about any maintenance chores, you may want to Pipe Down. Of course, back then the crew would continue talking, singing, or whatever noise-making was in progress, because pipe down originally was a boatswain call which signaled the end of an all-hands evolution. Meaning the crew could finally go below.

  If you could only boat As The Crow Flies your trip to the good fishing hole would be so much shorter, you lament? You’re not that far off from the original meaning, but you don’t have the necessary actual crows. British vessels used to carry crows on board as the birds do not like water and will head directly to the nearest land when released or "as the crow flies." This was especially useful when visibility was poor, the ship simply followed the crow. And the lookout perched up high to watch the crow’s path naturally found himself sitting in the "crow’s nest."

  Passing with Flying Colors is a modern-day accolade for doing well on a test. Back then ships hung their colors out to be identified by the ships they passed at a distance. Which leads us to Showing Your True Colors, something pirate ships often did not do.

  A Johnny-Come-Lately is the new guy now, and he was the new guy back then. British sailors, who were considered the more experienced men on the water, used to refer to American Navy men as Johnny-come-lately, based on the term for a young British navy man – Johnny Raw.

  Being Under the Weather back then could lead you to feeling the modern meaning of the word: ill or out of sorts. In the olden days of sailing, under the weather referred to the crewmember who had to man the weather bow, the area most vulnerable to the wet sea spray and the unpleasant aspects of the boat’s movement and pitch.

  Being Above Board was and still is a good thing. Pirates hid their crews below deck until ready to strike. An above board vessel had nothing to hide. Just as an above board used car salesman….hey, wait is there such a thing. Another old nautical term that’s meaning evolved in a rather straight line is Bigwig. Once used to refer to senior British naval officers attired in large wigs, it still tends to be used about the brass, whether naval, corporate, or otherwise.

  Before Hazing became headline news at some of the more prestigious universities across the globe, it held an equally unpleasant meaning. On board a ship, hazing was a practice of having the crew work long hours, at any time of the day or night, whether the tasks were needed or not. The idea was to exhaust them and make them miserable to show that the captain was indeed "boss," just as fraternities use it to show new members that the older elite are in complete charge.

  If you are caught going to far with hazing today, there will be the Devil to Pay, i.e. an unpleasant cost for your ill-conceived actions. Long ago and many seas away, this meant unpleasantness as well, in the form of one of the most awful aspects of wooden ship maintenance. The "devil" in the phrase referred to the main, or longest, seam in the hull. The "pay" was a type of tar that was used to seal this seam before the invention of caulk tubes and caulk guns (not to mention power caulk guns which really would have made the task easier). To add insult to injury, this overlong seam had to be caulked from inside via the tight and noxious bilges.

  As for someone working in those bilges, you could say they were in Close Quarters. What now means a narrow or otherwise tight space, originally referred, when the phrase was coined to a small wooden barricade on deck that turned the area into a small, yet defendable, fortress from which to ward off pirates. As a bit of additional trivia, the compact gun openings were called Loopholes. Originally derived from the French word louvre or window, a loophole is most often found in written contracts these days.

  When sailors of yore would Flake Out, they weren’t giving in to the stress associated with a pirate ship sighting, but refreshing the anchor change. The process involved laying out the entire chain out the entire chain on deck and "flaking" it in order to find any weak links, which would immediately be replaces. The command to flake out is still ordered at sea today, and it requires quite a bit of skill to lay out such long and large chain in such a manner that it does not tangle itself upon being returned to the water with the anchor. The term flake can also be used to refer to a seaman who is considered a weak link. When said weak link manages to knot up the anchor line, the Captain has every right to become more than a bit Cranky. On Dutch ships of yore, however, cranky, from the Dutch word krengd, referred to a sailing ship that was deemed unstable. This could occur for a number of reasons the most common of which were: bad design, improperly loaded cargo, improperly placed or a lack of proper ballast. No matter what the cause the result was that the crank would heel to far to the wind.

  You wouldn’t be incorrect in referring to such as maldesigned vessel as Junk. In 2004 that is. Two hundred years ago junk would have referred to old rope. In an age where everything on a ship had some value, rope that no longer had the tensile strength to bear its assigned load was cut down to make mops heads and floor mats. Your wife, we’ll bet at this point, has yet another definition for this word – and it probably has to do with your collection of marine flea market purchases in the garage.
  If she had her way, you’d Mind your P's and Qs. Oddly enough, the term came from as far away as she’d probably imagine – pubs. Pub owners would allow regular customers to run a tab until they were next hired to sail. The ledger sheet would show a P for pints ordered, and a Q for quarts. To pad their receipts, many bar owners and their waitresses weren’t above adding more tick marks under the P and Q tallies when the customer was very drunk, leading to the warning "mind your Ps and Qs."

  Now that you’ve read all of the above, you’ve earned your Starbuck’s Cup of Joe. Though Josephus Daniels would be looking at you strangely as you used the term. Daniels was the Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, and is known for his radical reforms. Those reforms included the abolishment of the officers’ wine mess, the policy of making 100 average sailors eligible for entrance into the U.S. Naval Academy, and the, shocking for it’s time, allowing of women into the Navy. It is from him wine restrictions that the term evolved, as a cup of Joe as the strongest drink left on board – coffee.

Everything on this Bertram appears
to be Above Board

                                 
You might say these kids are
 having a Field Day; 100 years
ago that would have meant they
were cleaning the boat.