Stockwin's Maritime Miscellany (26 page)

The merchant navy followed naval practice fairly closely up until about 1800. The advent of the clipper ship saw a trend for female forms, often with one or both breasts bared. Sailors thought women on board were generally unlucky, but a half-naked woman was believed to be able to charm a storm at sea.

A figurehead, as the personification of the ship’s spirit, should never be desecrated. When the wooden hat of the Duke of Brunswick, figurehead of HMS
Brunswick
, was shot away during the Glorious First of June, Captain Harvey at once handed the ship’s carpenter his own cocked hat to be hammered into place on the duke’s bald pate.

The famous clipper
Cutty Sark
, now in permanent dry dock in Greenwich, has a bare-breasted Nannie, the witch of Robert Burns’s poem, reaching out, in her pursuit of Tam o’ Shanter, for the tail of his mare Meg. In the ship’s glory days, after one particular sea passage in which she had indeed gone like a witch, a tail of teased rope yarns was fastened into Nannie’s hand, an addition that remains to this day. Other famous figureheads include
Golden Hinde
’s gilded deer,
Mary Rose
’s unicorn,
Revenge
’s lion and the image of King Edgar for S
overeign of the Sea
. Many figureheads have survived and been preserved in maritime museums around the world.

The myth persists that after he died on board HMS
Victory
of his wounds sustained at the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson’s body was preserved in a cask of rum before being returned to England for burial. On the way home, according to some versions of the story, the sailors on board
Victory
drilled a small hole in the cask and drank the rum, hoping to imbibe some of his strength and courage. To this day in the Royal Navy rum is known as ‘Nelson’s blood’.

Most sailors were committed to the deep if they died at sea, but Nelson had made it plain that he did not wish such a fate. This presented surgeon Beatty with the task of preserving the body. There was not sufficient lead on board to make an airtight coffin, and he had neither the equipment nor the knowledge for embalming. After cutting off Nelson’s hair for Lady Hamilton, Beatty placed the shirt-clad body in a water leaguer, the largest barrel aboard. He filled this with brandy, probably taken from a French prize, and lashed the barrel to the mainmast on the middle deck. There, it was guarded day and night by an armed marine.

En route to Gibraltar the sentry got the fright of his life when the lid of the barrel began to rise up, no doubt as a result of the body’s release of internal gases. At Gibraltar it was found that Nelson’s body had absorbed a quantity of the brandy, which was replaced with spirits of wine, a better preservative. Owing to bad weather the long voyage back to England took over four weeks and during the course of it the cask was renewed twice with two parts of brandy to one part spirits of wine.

In England Nelson’s body was placed in the ‘
L’Orient
coffin’ (
see here
), which in turn was sealed into an ornate outer coffin covered in black velvet and gold chasings, and the nation’s hero lay in state within the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital before the state funeral. Admiral Nelson was finally laid to rest in St Paul’s Cathedral.

TURNING A BLIND EYE – knowing what is happening but ignoring it.
DERIVATION
: at the Battle of Copenhagen Admiral Parker hoisted a signal to Nelson to discontinue the action. Nelson, in one of the most famous acts of insubordination in the annals of the Royal Navy, turned to one of his officers and said, ‘I have only one eye. I have a right to be blind sometimes.’ He then put the glass to his blind eye and said, ‘I really do not see the signal.’ He went on to win the battle.

The caul, the thin membrane covering the heads of some new-born children, has long been held by mariners to bring good luck. It was also believed to guard against drowning and shipwreck. As long as the person born with the caul kept it with him, the life-saving powers would protect him. If it was sold, they would pass to the buyer.

In February 1813 an advertisement in
The Times
offered a caul for 12 guineas. It was not unusual to see them for sale this way. Another paper announced the sale of a caul ‘having been afloat with its late owner forty years, through the periods of a seaman’s life and he died at last in his bed, at his place of birth’.

Having paid handsomely for them, sailors would often sew them into their canvas trousers. One old tar with a caul secreted on his person in this way was told his amulet was a ‘vulgar error’. He replied: ‘A vulgar error saving me from Davy Jones is as good as any other.’

Admiral Smyth in his classic book of nautical terms published in 1867 observes that a caul was sought as eagerly by the Roman lawyers as by modern voyagers. The lawyers apparently believed it would guarantee they would be eloquent and successful in all their cases.

We always call a ship a ‘she’ and not without a reason For she displays a well-shaped knee regardless of the season She scorns the man whose heart is faint and shows him no pity And like a girl she needs the paint to keep her looking pretty

A ship has long been traditionally called ‘she’ by most seafarers (the Russians, Germans and French excepted). No one knows how and when this first started, but given the dependence the early seafarers had on their ships for life and sustenance, the use of the feminine form is perhaps not surprising. To this day mariners feel a deep affection for any ship that has safely borne them at her bosom over the ocean, and it seems only natural to them to call a ship ‘she’.

Another anonymous explanation goes like this:

A boat is called she because there’s always a great deal of bustle around her… because there’s usually a gang of men around… because she has a waist and stays… because she takes a lot of paint to keep her looking good… because it’s not the initial expense that breaks you, it’s the upkeep… because she is all decked out… because it takes a good man to handle her right… because she shows her topsides, hides her bottom, and, when coming into port, always heads for the buoys.

When Lloyd’s List, founded in 1734, announced in 2002 that it would change the gender of ships from ‘she’ to ‘it’ the decision generated considerable opposition from traditionalists. The Royal Navy responded that it would continue to use the female pronoun, and in the face of overwhelming protest Lloyds List subsequently reversed its decision.

IN SOMEONE’S BLACK BOOK – contravening someone’s personal code of conduct.
DERIVATION
: the Admiralty Black Book, dating from the fourteenth century, is an ancient volume concerned with naval laws and discipline. It is preserved in the Public Records Office at Kew, London.

Seafarers crossing the vast expanse of oceans spoke of a world below the waves populated by merfolk. These creatures were half human, half fish. If they were tormented they could wreak terrible revenge. Mermaids would sing to sailors, distracting them from their work and causing shipwrecks, or sometimes inadvertently squeeze the life out of drowning men while trying to rescue them.

There are a number of recorded historical sightings of mermaids. Columbus reported seeing three mermaids on his first voyage to the Americas. On 4 January 1493 he wrote in his log that the female forms ‘rose high out of the sea, but were not as beautiful as they are represented’.

In 1608 the English navigator Henry Hudson was sailing off the Arctic coast of Russia and made this log entry on 15 June:

This morning, one of our companie looking over board saw a mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to see her, one more came up, and by that time shee was close to the ship’s side, looking earnestly upon the men: a little after a Sea came and overturned her. From the navill upward, her backe and breasts were like a woman’s… her boday as big as any one of us; her skin very white; and long haire hanging down behinde, of colour blacke; in her going down they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a Porposse, and speckled like a Macrell.

Six years later in the Caribbean another captain, John Smith, spotted a mermaid ‘swimming about with all possible grace’.

Dutch sailors caught a ‘sea wyf’ off the coast of Borneo and kept her in a large vat for nearly a week. She was known as the Mermaid of Amboine.

Throughout the nineteenth century a number of so-called mermaids were exhibited. One, brought to London by Captain Eades of Boston in 1822, was visited by Sir Everard Home, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, who pronounced it a ‘palpable imposition’ – the cranium of an orang-utang, teeth, jaws and trunk of a baboon, padded breasts and lower body of a large fish. Nevertheless, nearly 400 people paid a shilling each to view it at the Turf Coffee House, St James. In July 1842 a Dr J. Griffin arrived in New York with a specimen that was to become known as ‘the Feejee Mermaid’. The mummified body was exhibited by the showman P.T. Barnum for the next 20 years.

Many mariners’ beliefs concerned the weather. Sometimes a horse-shoe was nailed upside down to the mast of a ship to avert storms and shipwreck. Nelson was said to have had one on the mainmast of HMS
Victory
.

Seamen were particularly anxious about squalls. It would certainly bring bad luck not to follow the advice of the old ditty:

When the rain’s before the wind

Strike your tops’ls, reef your main

When the wind’s before the rain

Shake ’em out and go again

Among American sailors felines were thought creatures of ill omen: should cats frolic aboard this was a sure sign of a storm; if they washed behind their ears this would bring rain, and if one was seen climbing the rigging the ship was doomed!

The appearance of a waterspout, often accompanied by flashes of lightning and a sulphurous smell, generated terror aboard ship. Sailors knew the wind which blew in sudden gusts in their vicinity was sufficient to capsize small vessels carrying a large spread of sail. One remedy against such disaster that was popular with the mariners who accompanied Columbus was to hold a knife with a black handle in one hand and, reading the Gospel of St John, cut the air with the knife afore the waterspout.

The phenomenon of St Elmo’s fire, which goes by many names, has long been seen as an omen at sea. St Elmo was the patron saint of Mediterranean sailors. He died at sea during a storm, and in his last moments he promised the crew he would return and show himself to them in some form if they were destined to survive the storm. Soon after he died a strange light appeared at the masthead
.

Sailors read various interpretations into the configuration of St Elmo’s fire. One light is a warning of a storm, two lights are a sign that the storm centre has passed, but three lights portend a gale of overwhelming proportions. If the lights go up the mast, good weather is expected, but if they go down things will get worse. It is dangerous to attempt to touch the light, or even go near to it, and if it shines like a halo around a man’s head his speedy death is certain! Columbus gave cheer to his disgruntled crew on the voyage to America by pointing to St Elmo’s fire at the masthead and predicting an early end to their perils.