Talk:Glossary of nautical terms (A–L)/Archive 1

Brass Monkeys
Sorry - should have identified myself - --kwebb 05:26, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

SOED 'monkey' - a kind of gun or cannon 1663. Might it have been made of brassFenton Robb 02:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Sailing re-organization effort
Take a minute to read the comments at Talk:Sailing#Re-write effort -- non how-to et seq. Some of us are working on re-organizing the sailing-related articles. See if you agree with our approach and give us some help. Mrees1997 20:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

2007-02-1 Automated pywikipediabot message
--CopyToWiktionaryBot 05:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I do not like the threat of deletion of this article put up in the above template. This is done without any discussion arbitrarily by one editor.   What does anything that happens in Automobiles have to do with Nautical terms???????--- Safemariner 12:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Brass monkeys
The term "brass monkeys" has nothing to do with cannon balls, because:

1. No one has ever produced evidence of such a gadget. 2. A ship rolling in the seas is no place for a collection of cannon balls that can be dislodged according to this story. A wooden shot garland was in fact used for such a purpose, but provided a more effective mechanism. 3. The relative coefficients of expansion of iron and brass are such that it would require an extreme rise in temperature to achieve the effect referred to in this myth.

Though I share your skepticism, it wouldn't be the differences in coefficients of linear expansion that would be key here. It would, however, be the specific heats. The thin brass would assume the temperature of the ambient air much faster than the heavy cannon balls.--Z07 19:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Having said that, I'm not sure how to handle this entry. To delete it would just invite some other ill-informed person to add it later. And a statement that it is a myth is probably not appropriate in such a list.

Source: http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm http://www.piratesinfo.com/mysql/phorum/read.php?7,58017

From Marty.

In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried cannons. Those cannon fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck?

The best storage method devised was a square based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of thirty cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon.

There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey" with sixteen round indentations. But, if this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass Monkeys."

Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!"

Reference: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/brassmonkeys.htm

This is a hard one to believe. The ready shot on a ship was kept in garlands made of wood. Those few balls were kept clean and regularly coated with slush from the galley to prevent rust. It would be very foolish to carry an abundance of shot on the gun deck or the main deck. Aside from the obvious hazard to the crew that at rolling shot presents on deck, the weight is best carried low. Therefore, the majority of the shot carried in a warship was carryied below the waterline.

This picture of HMS Victory's hold describes how the balance of shot is carried. http://www.hms-victory.com/index.php?option=com_zoom&Itemid=59&page=view&catid=2&key=1&hit=1

This picture of HMS Victory's gun deck shows the ready shot in wooden garlands. http://www.hms-victory.com/index.php?option=com_zoom&Itemid=59&page=view&catid=2&key=8&hit=1

I suspect that if brass squares were ever used to hold shot in place it was done so in the field and for the very large siege guns not for field artillery. The siege train would un-limber in places where no permanent solution for storing the shot needed to breach a fortress existed.Z07 19:07, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Fish
Doesn't the word "fish" as a noun also mean a torpedo? and, when its warhead is armed, the "fish" is "hot", and when its guidance system is fixed on its target, the "fish" is "locked" - yes? Or have I just been watching the wrong submarine movies? --Davecampbell 19:54, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Devil seam?
The current definition needs some clarification. The hull planks closest to the waterline are hardly at right angles to each other, and no one seam necessarily stays at the waterline all along its run. "Little support in the direction of the compression" is more consistent with an earlier definiion of the seam, which stood for quite a while, and seems to call it the seam between the outermost deck plank and the hull, by the scuppers. Need knowledgeable opinions here... __Just plain Bill 12:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Poppet?
I have just removed the following text from poppet-

In nautical terms it also means any of the vertical timbers bracing the bow or stern of a vessel about to be launched. a. A small wooden strip on a gunwale that forms or supports an oarlock. b. One of the beams of a launching cradle supporting a ship's hull.

It was unsourced, do with it what you will. J Milburn (talk) 20:17, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Scuttle?
This is described here as a small opening in a ship's deck or hull, but in Royal Navy parlance (at least) it specifically means a window - the naval equivalent of a porthole. --Vvmodel (talk) 17:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Stand on vessel?
What does "stand on vessel" mean, as used in Starboard? Tabletop (talk) 04:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

A stand-on vessel is described in the International Rules for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea thusly; 'Where one of two vessels is directed to keep out of the way of the other, the other shall hold her course and speed'. This directive is described under Rule 17 of the IRCPS, entitled 'Stand-on vessels'. Gigacannon (talk) 15:13, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

An article about nautical terms
I logged on wikipedia tonight hoping for an article that would actually explain to me why nautical terms are so different from lubberly terms, and the general history and stuff like that. Am I overlooking this? --24.131.9.50 01:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * See Jargon and Technical terminology --- Skapur


 * Some speculation, original research and educated wild *ss*d guesses: Go back to the days when iron men sailed wooden ships. Take a look at HMS Victory or USS Constitution.  Every single sail, spar, and line has a unique name.  It has to.  In a roaring storm at night, you can't point at "that sail" you want the sailors to loose before the ship capsizes.  Sailors spent far more time at sea (years on end) than hanging out with lubbers, so some language drift seems inevitable (recall there was no radio, let alone satellite Internet and Wikipedia, on ships back then).  They saw far more unique sights than lubbers, and probably got to name things they saw.  They frequently went to sea at a very young age, so never aquired a lubberly vocabulary.  They travelled to foreign lands so may have added foreign words.  Take all that with an oceanful of salt.  --J Clear 01:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

You'll just have to look at maritime history. Terms used on board ships aren't 'different' to words used on land, they're specialised for a particular purpose. Fo'c'sles don't exist on land, there's no use for mooring, and so on. The evolution of nautical terminology is perfectly explicable, but it's a part of maritime history, not apart from it. As things were invented for ships, names were invented, too. Gigacannon (talk) 15:13, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * While we're speculating, consider that many sailors on ships came from foreign countries and had to learn entire vocabularies, as well as having words of their own for nautical things. Consider how many forms of jargon are obsolescent or dead today. Before the advent of the motorcoach, when horses were mandatory, vast vocabularies related to horses, coaches, stables, etc. were in common use, and vaster vocabularies among people who specialized in such things. It's the nature of language to reflect the demands of communication; one puts into words what must be done. Consider also the effects of being on a boat, where the orientation is constantly changing, where "left" may mean "east" one moment and "north" the next; "port" may mean "up" or "leeward". In nautical terms, adverbs are rarely the same as adjectives. Movement "towards the bow" is expressed differently from located "towards the bow", and the distinction in a situation where communications are usually one-sided, from one person giving orders to one or many having to carry them out, may be crucial to survival. Consider, too, that the work of sailors was decidedly physical; intellectual pursuits take on special value in such circumstances. Sailors surely wished to show off their acquaintance with specialized knowledge and had ample opportunity to discuss, invent, and argue over terminology, developing and analyzing it day and night. Consider, too, that it wasn't, and isn't, cast in stone. Arguments over the precise meanings and applications of words persist even today, though many of these terms have fallen out of use. Guy Murchie's book, /The Song of the Sky/, devotes much attention to the names of winds all over the world and much more meteorological data. In the interface of sea and wind, there are an infinity of matters to discuss which are of no concern to blacksmiths, miners, and cobblers. On the other hand, I'm sure blacksmiths, miners, and cobblers have vocabularies which would leave us similarly amazed at all the things there are to talk about. I'm a piano technician, and always having been interested in expanding my vocabulary, was delighted to discover that thousands of terms, known only to other piano technicians, are waiting to be learned and put into practice. The field of naval architecture is rife with terms not even sailors know, and military matters, legalities, freight-handling, docks, and commercial technicalities contribute thousands more, all potentially subject to inclusion in the field of "nautical terms", along with words borrowed from many foreign languages, appropriate to the distant places sailors encountered. I used to love browsing through dictionaries, the bigger the better, and jumped from one cross-reference to another. Whenever I got onto a strand of nautical terms, I got carried away, into the sort of fantasy world known today among lovers of games and fiction, but all quite real and concrete. Ask a sailor the difference between a scow and a bark or a caravelle and a brigantine, and you'll open up a world of scholarship, conjecture, and posturing. It's fun. Unfree (talk) 07:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)


 * By the way, I see that somebody wrote "fo'c'sles". The word may be pronounced "focsl", but it's spelt "forecastle". Similarly, "boatswain" is pronounced "bosun", "leewards" is pronounced "loowerds" (not to be confused with "leeward", which is used differently), and "tackle" is pronounced (sometimes) "taycle". Use the word "rope" incorrectly, and you're likely to pay a heavy price, depending on who hears it; you probably mean "line", which can also mean other things you probably never thought of. For one, the shape of a ship's hull is referred to as its "lines". A "waterline" on a vessel can refer to quite a few different things, and depends on where the vessel is: the North Atlantic, the Great Lakes, the Southern Ocean, etc. I just used an archaism, "spelt". Old salts are often fond of archaisms, and young sailors fond of old salts. Unfree (talk) 08:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Rowlock
"Rowlock" is synonymous with "oarlock", isn't it? Unfree (talk) 10:18, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Sight hood
This is not really a nautical term, more along the lines of gunnery. Should it be included? ViniTheHat (talk) 20:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree and suggest that it is deleted. Boatman (talk)
 * doneViniTheHat (talk) 15:12, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

From the Gunwale to the Keel
I see that the freeboard is the height of a ship's hull (excluding superstructure) above the waterline. But what do you call the length from the gunwale to the keel? And what do you call the length, or depth, from the waterline to the keel? Wouldn't anybody ever need to refer to those? Thanks. 99.9.112.31 (talk) 20:10, 11 December 2010 (UTC)NotWillDecker


 * Waterline to the keel is the draft. Keel to the top deck is the moulded depth. Basically, freeboard + draft = depth. --Xanzzibar (talk) 20:40, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Belay
If I'm not mistaken, to belay a thing means to put it away where it belongs. Unfree (talk) 07:00, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * To stow something means to put it away where it belongs. To belay a thing means to fasten (temporarily) the end of a piece of running rigging. Idiomatically, "stow it" can mean "shut up," or more literally, "put away that line of talk." "Belay" can have a related meaning: "stop what you are doing" (from the connotation of tying up a loose end.) __ Just plain Bill (talk) 21:25, 11 December 2010 (UTC)