Talk:Line-crossing ceremony

Technically...
Technically, all the pollywogs are "cleansed" from the ship before King Neptune allows it to continue. Consequently, the pollywogs do not become shellbacks. Once you are granted status as a shellback, it's assumed you've always been a shellback.

In fact, after spending the morning crawling around on their hands and knees, wogs appear before King Neptune's court where they answer charges for their wogness, always found guilty then led off to be "executed" in the stockade and "buried" in a wooden coffin filled with water. After a few moments in the watery grave, the executioner reopens the coffin and asks, "Who goes there?!" The proper response is, "An honorable shellback!" whereupon the executioner helps the (new) shellback out of the coffin saying something along the lines of, "Well, what the Hell are you doing in there?!?" The wog is dead and a shellback magically appears where the wog once was. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Z1311 (talk • contribs) 16:04, 25 April 2007

Note that this page currently calls sailors who cross at the point where the equator meets the Prime Meridian "Royal Diamond Shellbacks" whereas the page Equator calls them "Emerald Shellbacks". Possibly both are correct. Could someone who knows about these titles edit either or both pages to show either the correct or both names. :-)

Stelio 21:18, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

At the moment, both are still in use, at seperate occasions in the article. I will add in "or", until someone can come up with a decision. Jess xx (talk) 01:43, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

When crossing the Equator at the Prime Meridian (000*), (also known as the Greenwich) Meridian, one becomes an Emerald Shellback (Emerald=Green-wich). The term Royal Diamond Shellback is sometimes (incorrectly) used to denote this unique event.

When crossing the Equator at the International Date Line (180°) one becomes a Golden Shellback.Shinolasails (talk) 05:40, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Merge Request
Hey, I'm a bit new to editing (although I've been avidly reading for a couple months now). I spotted Baptism on the Line and this article today, and thought it would make more sense if Baptism was merged into this one, but I thought I'd defer to any older editors who may be watching this page.

Feel free to offer your $0.02, or (I wish) do it for me. User:CelestialRender

Got no objections on either page or my talk page, so I went through with the change. In the process, I put in section headings, since that seemed the most logical way to incorporate the other article. CelestialRender 23:13, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

BBC Article
The beginning line of the controversy page and the last paragraph of the "line-corssing ceremony" section of the following BBC article are strikingly similar... is that allowed? In any case, the similarity is just quite interesting.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/equator/5264326.stm

Clarity Issue
''On New Year's Eve, 1999, USS TOPEKA (SSN 754), an American fast attack submarine, crossed the equator at the international date line exactly at midnight, making the crew of 120 men "Golden Millennium Shellbacks" - a feat that cannot be repeated until the year 3000. ''

Is the the above actually relevant? Should it be moved to what would amount to a Trivia section about such ceremonies? Z1311 16:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this is relevant or trivia, I was on the USS L.Y. Spear AS-36, a submarine tender, we crossed on 28 April, 1980 and was the first ship in US Navy history to have women shellback on board. If anyone is interested, please verify, I think it should have at least a foot note. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:CA:202:52D0:90C7:DE90:A0C6:A05E (talk) 02:46, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Article from NSRC
wrote: rm section by editor who added this citing his/her own magazine, The rituals etc. mentioned here aren't necessarily line-crossing ones, so mention is misplaced and self-serving
 * That article centers around the background and social implications of the Shellbacking Ceremony. As for the "citing his/her own magazine" portion of your objection, I can see potential for a conflict of interests, but I do not see any actual abuse here. The magazine referenced is an academic journal, published by an accredited university; while the contributer admits to working there, the journal is not that user's "own magazine". I agree that the paragraph you deleted was a bit out of sequence. However, the reference was valid, and the points expressed in that paragraph support the remainder of the section. — Bigwyrm watch me wake me  23:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Other tradtions
I once saw a documentary about crossing the equator that said sailors would drink their own vomit. Is this true?--Beowulf1978 (talk) 07:03, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Response - This is just a general comment. First, the vomit comment is not true, at least not currently. The ceremony has really been "watered" down for lack of a better description. I am not sure how it was many many years ago, but today, sailors have an option to not take place in it, which is understandable, and the "cleansing" is much much much less than it use to be. This article is incredibly unfactual in that sense. Even within the two years between when I went through the ceremony and when I was able to do the "cleansing" I saw major differences. It actually got to the point to where I just went back up to my berthing compartment and watched TV. I am not much for physical punishment, but it really got rediculous. We were not even allowed to raise our voices to the wogs. I cannot imagine what it is like now. I would not be suprised if the US Navy just does away with it altogether in trying to uphold their political correctness. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.36.33.199 (talk) 13:04, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

homoeroticism
These ceremonies are notorious for their homoeroticism, an issue this article pretty much sidesteps. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 14:51, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

It's the Navy, after all, what do you expect? Winston Churchill's famous observation, later the title of an album by The Pogues, comes irresistibly to mind. You would think a co-ed Navy would put an end to all that, but there's no sign of it. Nuttyskin (talk) 19:03, 5 April 2017 (UTC) Nuttyskin (talk) 19:03, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

POV?
The introduction's description of initiation rites includes uncited examples of abusive behavior as if these were current practices, without mentioning controversy or reform. I've put a fact tag on the paragraph but am inclined to add a POV tag. Durova Charge! 00:45, 8 March 2008 (UTC) (Shellback, Order of the Golden Dragon)
 * No responses, so added fact tags and a POV flag for the page. Durova Charge! 09:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm calling BS on the POV tag and will remove it. There are plenty of references to reform, many of them cited. Will leave the remaining cite tags alone, even if I personally believe most of them are unwarranted. gloin (talk) 01:56, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation
The term "golden shellback" redirects users to this page but this term is ambiguous since it also refers to the new waterproof coating developed by Northeast Maritime Institute.

Golden Shellback homepage —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gcaptain (talk • contribs) 23:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Jolly Roger
I've heard that US Naval vessels fly the Jolly Roger during the rites.LorenzoB (talk) 18:59, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I believe the Carrier (documentary) showed this, yes.--Father Goose (talk) 21:34, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Quote too long
Is the quote under In the western world too long? I edited it so it is in actual quotes, but have a feeling that whoever added it quoted too much, even though the account provides a vivid description of the process. Someone help me here, I'm pretty new to this type of article formatting...--Onomou (talk) 22:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Contradictory parenthetical comment
From the controversy section - "As late as World War II, the line-crossing ceremony was still rather rough and involved activities such as the "Devil's Tongue", which was an electrified piece of metal poked into the sides of those deemed pollywogs. Beatings were often still common, usually with wet firehoses (they were not wet but rather salt-hardened from sea water), and several World War II Navy deck logs speak of sailors visiting sickbay after crossing the line." I have removed the parenthetical comment about hoses being salt-hardened as it seemed to be an instance of a later editor adding commentary without integrating the information. Leaving it in makes the paragraph contradictory. If anyone can produce references it can be re-added in a more elegant fashion. --Khajidha (talk) 15:41, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Are these mandatory?
This strikes me as just... sick. Are sailors allowed to opt out? - Sikon (talk) 12:15, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Merchant shipping
This article implies that this tradition is predominantly a military tradition on war ships. However it is also carried out on merchant shipping and was common on cruise liners (and it may well still be so). Obviously if one has paid a fortune to go on a long sea cruise one would not appreciate some of the more brutal practices described on this page, but that does not prohibit a memorable time being had by those who take part. I think it would be a good idea if this article was to emphasise those aspects more and change the lead so that it does not imply that this is predominantly a military event.

Here are a couple of books selected from the first page returned by a Google Book search on equator ceremony liner: Another two books returned by the same search reports in snippet views that in: "1953 Royal liner crosses the equator, Ceremony on escort. Aboard the Gothic, Friday the 4th [of December 1953]. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their Pacific voyage to the Fiji Islands crossed the equator at about 11:30 am today. On a cloudy, overcast morning with a slight drizzle the Royal couple watched through binoculars the traditional crossing-the-line ceremony on the fore-castle deck of the escort cruiser Sheffield, two cables length (quarter of a mile) away on the Gothic's starboard beam."

- Harry Miller Lydenberg (1957)


 * The same article also appears in
 * The same article also appears in

The Lydenberg link also includes a link to http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq92-4.htm which links to http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq92-1.htm that both contain some interesting information about the US Navy. (and should be added as sources to the section in the article called Honors)

That the line crossing ceremony is still carried out on ordinary merchant ships is recorded by the CEO of Tullecho (2008) --found using a Google Book search [equator ceremony SS]. The story relates to a voyage by a keg of beer and a man called Peter Brown who left Rio de Janeiro in 2007 on a container ship bound for Mumbai via the Cape of Good Hope "and as he was crossing [the equator] for the first time, a ceremony was held ... Brown was a polliwog ..." -- PBS (talk) 00:16, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point in principle, no doubt some of the memoirs of merchant shipping may have examples. One possible confusion here: "the Royal couple watched through binoculars the traditional crossing-the-line ceremony on the fore-castle deck of the escort cruiser Sheffield" refers to a naval ceremony, not a ceremony on a cruise ship. Sheffield was a cruiser in a rather different sense. . . dave souza, talk 06:54, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Pollywog
Is this term derived from the West Country folk term for a woodlouse (pillbug to US readers, I do believe)? My Devon granny used to talk about Pollywogs, whereas my Wiltshire granny called them Grey Gramfers (grandfathers). I have always called them pollywogs and only recently found out about the use of the term for the line crossing ceremony, and wondered about its etymology. It would make sense, as in woodlouse/pollywog = crustacean with no shell, and shellback = crustacean with shell.86.133.212.6 (talk) 14:37, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * no. pollywog is a metamorphal stage between frog egg and adult frog during which time the frogling has a tail which diminishes in size as its legs develop. tpk (talk) 04:08, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Hard to read
I came here to get the answer to a simple question - what does a crossing the line ceremony on a normal, civilian cruise ship involve? That's been so submerged beneath the acres of overly detailed coverage given to the U.S. Navy that I've given up. The RMS St Helena, admittedly not a cruise ship as such but one that does take holiday passengers, definitely still has some sort of ceremony, as mentioned here, so it obviously hasn't died out. 86.185.217.104 (talk) 03:25, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

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Controversy section
The material included in the preceding section ("Historical descriptions"), from "California Maritime Academy" to the end of the section, I move ought to included in the following section,"Controversy". Nuttyskin (talk) 19:10, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

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"Order of the Polar Bear" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Order of the Polar Bear and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 12 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 22:37, 12 April 2022 (UTC)