Explore "Sea Phrases" by W. Clark Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"The sea-language," says Sir William Monson in his "Naval Tracts," "is / not soon learned, and much less understood, being only proper to him / that has served his apprenticeship; besides that, a boisterous sea and / stormy weather will make a man not bred to it so sick that it bereaves / him of legs, stomach, and courage so much as to fight with his meat; and / in such weather, when he hears the seamen cry starboard or port, or to / bide aloof,[33] or flat a sheet, or haul home a clew-line, he thinks he / hears a barbarous speech, which he conceives not the meaning of. " This / is as true now as then. But the landsman is not to blame. There is no / dialect peculiar to a calling so crowded with strange words as the / language of the sea. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who is never more diverting / than when he thunders forth his abhorrence of naval life and of sailors / as a community of persons, has in some cases perpetuated, and in some / cases created, the most ludicrous errors regarding ships, their / furniture and crews. If, as Macaulay declares, the Doctor was at the / mercy of Junius and Skinner in many of his shore-going derivatives, he / was equally at the mercy of Bailey and Harris when he came to the ocean. / A few samples will suffice.
Footnote 33: / "Keep your luff! "