Say Again? A Look at Nautical Jargon
by Dick Elam
“There’s good and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else ‘twould be overboard.”—Long Jack to
Harvey Cheney in Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. The same could be said for shipboard commands.
When retired journalism professor Dick Elam set out to write his first novel, Anne Bonny’s Wake, which would take his readers to sea aboard a 20th-century sloop, he encountered the same challenge that writers of nautical fiction and seafaring narratives have faced since the genre began: How to balance the desire—and need—to use the highly specific language of the mariner without losing the more lubberly reader. Fiction writers can employ the oft-used tactic of placing a green hand in the company of the master mariner so that a few explanations of the way of a ship are naturally woven in: think Patrick O’Brian’s Stephen Maturin, the surgeon, sailing with Master and Commander Jack Aubrey. Making the protagonist new to the seagoing world could be just as effective. Readers learned along with Harvey Cheney in Captains Courageous after he was plucked from the sea by a dory fisherman of the We’re Here, or when Horatio Hornblower stumbled (and vomited) through his first days as a midshipman aboard HMS Justinian. Those returning from lengthy sea voyages and publishing narratives of their experiences—Richard Henry Dana Jr. and Eric Newby, for example—find their adopted tongue coming through on every page, although they do attempt to describe their discomfort with their introduction to nautical terms in their opening chapters. One thing is certain; salty dialogue heard on the deck of a ship has long had its fans. Patrick O’Brian’s readers took pride in being in an exclusive club of sorts, where learning vocabulary he put forth in his books was accepted as a worthy challenge. As Stephen Maturin’s seagoing knowledge progressed through O’Brian’s 20-book1 bestselling series, so did the readers’. In writing The Last Grain Race (1956), Eric Newby was less confident he could keep the attention of the uninitiated and issued this recommendation in his chapter about the sails of the square-rigged Moshulu: “Readers who are discouraged by technical details about sails and sailmaking should skip the rest of this chapter.” He then shared the sailmaker’s warning that simple terms to landsmen don’t necessarily translate aboard ship. “I’ll tell you something about square sails. First, they’re not square at all…” In Captains Courageous, veteran fisherman/schoonerman Long Jack and his shipmate Tom Platt tried to get young Harvey Cheney—and with him, the reader—up to speed on learning the way of the ship. Long Jack: “Now after all I’ve said, ‘how’d you reef the foresail, Harve? Take your time answerin’.” “Haul that in,” said Harvey, pointing to leeward. “Fwat? The North Atlantuc?” “No, the boom. Then run that rope you showed me back there—“ “That’s no way,” Tom Platt burst in. “Quiet! He’s larnin’, an’ has not the names good yet. Go on Harve.” “Oh, it’s the pennant. I’d hook the tackle on to the reefpennant, and then let down—“Lower the sail, child!
Lower!” said Tom Platt, in a professional agony. “Lower the throat and peak halyards,” Harvey went on. Those names stuck in his head. “Lay your hand on thim,” said Long Jack. “Harvey obeyed. “Lower til that rope-loop—on the afterleach—kris—no, it’s a cringle—till the cringle was down on the boom. Then I’d tie her up the way you said, and then I’d hoist up the peak and throat halyards again.” “You’ve forgot to pass the tack-earing, but wid time and help ye’ll larn.”
And so it was that when Dick Elam anxiously awaited the first reviews of his book that he encountered this dilemma, and here offers his own challenge to readers of Sea History. —Deirdre O’Regan, Editor, Sea History
I
identified a problem in writing Anne Bonny’s Wake, when a cousin read my manuscript. While she applauded it as “a pageturning mystery adventure,” she then asked: “Dickie. What’s aft?” Undeterred, I went ahead with publication. As the first reviews came in, I read these comments from a review printed in the nautical magazine Good Old Boat: This is Dick Elam’s first in what may become a series…. He is clearly a sailor who knows about good old boats. He doesn’t spend a lot of time explaining to the nonyachtsman among his readers what this is or what that means. I was pleased with this summation, but then I read: A few lubberly expressions such as “Over and Out” as a sign-off on the VHF radio, and “bumpers” for fenders, 36
made me think he had a bit too much help from nonsailor early readers or editors, because all the rest rings true and there is the occasional mention of “lines and fenders.” If you can overlook these trifles, you just might enjoy sailing along in the Anne Bonny’s wake… With that, the reviewer pegged my trifles. As a former airplane pilot (like my novel’s hero), “over and out” is part of my normal speech. And in practice, when landlubber friends cruised with us on our family boat, we acknowledged that they could better understand our request to hang “bumpers” over the rail vs. having them search around for a car fender. Mea Culpa. Dana employed a great deal of nautical jargon in Two Years Before the Mast, but, he noted, understanding every term was hardly a requirement to appreciating the tale: SEA HISTORY 162, SPRING 2018