nautical terms
Striper77 is correct about a lot of these terms.Im a maritime history buff
Mutiny on the bounty and Capt. cook being my 2 favorites and found alot
of these terms go back to the 17th and
18th century.
A few that I know.
Back before chartplotters and radar mariners needed to know how fast they were going to help determine where they were .to do this they tied a bunch of knots at regular intervals in a length of rope with a log tied to the end,went to the head of the ship and dropped the log over the side, then with an hour glass timed how many "knots" went over the side,Which was how fast they were going. Now when captains filled out there daily journals and recorded the ships avg speed for the day this became known as the tale of the log,and soon became referred to as the daily log.
another one : Back in the 18th century
gunners in british warships used to sleep in hammocks strung up between the cannons,lived,slept and died with those big cannons and when they were in port often had their wifes girlfriends or ladys of the night come and sleep with them on board Tween the big guns,any son that was born as a result of these liassons were referred to as a"son of a gun".
another:
when mariners had to relieve themselves
they often would go up and climb in the netting beneath the bowsprit at the "head" of the boat.this worked out well because any nasty remnants left by sailors who werent as clean as others was always washed away by the constant
action of the waves aginst the bow.
of course we know this as "goin to the head".
Dan.
