And here's....

Over a Barrel
Modern meaning: To be or to have someone else in a position over which they have no control.
In Nelson’s time the majority of seamen could not swim, many of them in effect choosing a quick death by drowning over surviving a shipwreck and a drawn out death trying to survive in the sea. Sometimes however a seaman would be rescued from drowning but would be in a comatose unconscious condition. In the days before modern resuscitation techniques, the method of reviving the casualty was to secure him face down over one of the large storage barrels and roll it rapidly back and forth, the rolling pressure against his ribs providing a primitive means of forcing the water from his lungs. This method worked on occasion but whether it did or not, the victim had no say in the matter, he was literally held ‘over a barrel’!

Under the Weather
Modern meaning: To be feeling miserable, either by a minor illness or by the effects of drink.
Of all the lookout positions to which a seaman might be ordered to, the most detested was the bow lookout on the windward or ‘weather’ side of the ship. Any person posted to this position would face being constantly drenched in a cold sea spray in any sea state other than dead calm. The unfortunate seaman would soon be feeling wet, depressed and ‘under the weather’.


Glossary:

Barrel: A wooden receptacle composed of shaped sections of wood called ‘staves’ which, when joined together create a bulged cylinder. The staves are fixed in position by metal bands, which are heated before hammering them over the barrel and then cooled, shrinking them down to hold the staves tightly bound. Barrels came in all sizes and are used for both wet and dry goods from gunpowder to water and rum.

Thanks Jase, glad you're enjoying them! The first definitions came from my 'ordinary' reference books just by way of interesting little facts. This thread has been well received though so I've been activelly hunting down more words and phrases from various sources so there's a lot more yet to come!

As in ........


Coast is Clear (The coast is clear)
Modern meaning: Nothing in sight to interfere with one’s plans
This phrase actually has two distinct nautical origins. The first involves any vessel which is leaving a port or harbour and heading out to sea. Until the ship was in deep water, there was always a risk of running aground on hidden rocks or sandbars but once far enough out the ship was said to have ‘Cleared the Coast’. When asked by the Captain how far out his command had sailed, the Master would often reply “The Coast is Clear”
The second origin is in some ways the reverse of the above and dates from the heyday of the Smuggler. In some areas of the country it was the custom for a local farm boy to lead a white horse along the cliff top paths above the smugglers usual landing beaches to signal that there were no Revenue men in the area waiting to ambush the local ‘fishermen’. In this respect the signal was declaring that it was the actual coast that was clear, not that the vessel had cleared that coast.

Close Quarters
Modern meaning: Hand to hand combat as in CQB (Close Quarter Battle)
The first definition of this phrase dates back to the 1600’s or possibly even back to the days of Elizabeth the First. It was initially called ‘Close Fight’ and the term was applied to both the act of hand to hand combat and also to moveable wooden barriers which could be erected around the ship’s decks to impede a boarding action and provide the defenders with what was essentially a temporary fort within the vessel. By 1750 the Close Fight defences became more like semi permanent sections of the ship complete with lockable doors and loop holes and were considered as part of the crews normal quarters. The name slowly changed from Close Fight to Close Quarters and the term was eventually equally applied to both the defences and the combat which took place in them.

Glossary:
Revenue Men: The forerunners of today’s Customs Officers. The Revenue Men were enlisted by the Government to crack down on the rampant smuggling which took place all around the coasts of Britain bringing luxury goods such as rum, spirits, fine cloths and even tea into the country without paying the exorbitant import duties imposed by the Government to pay for the Napoleonic Campaigns. (We’re at war dammit, somebody’s going to have to pay for it!) The Revenue Men worked closely with the Navy attempting to corner the ‘Free Traders’ both on land and out to sea. There were several pitched battles between gangs of smugglers and the Revenues and many infamous gang leaders and their men went to the gallows for murdering locals who had enlisted with the Revenue Men.
Loop Holes: Small openings in a defensive wall to allow the defenders to fire their muskets whilst still in cover, the word comes from the French “Louvre” or window.

And for today...

‘Oppo’
Modern meaning: A partner or associate usually concerned with performing a trade or job as in ‘the electrician and his oppo rewired the house’
The word oppo is derived from the term ‘opposite number’ which is itself still used today to mean the same thing, eg a work companion. The phrase comes from the Royal Navy’s practise of keeping a record of the crew of a warship in the crew’s list or “Watch Bill” In this list the crew members would be listed by name and a crew number and each seaman would be listed in his own watch from top to bottom down the page in order of assigned number. Each man was listed by name and by designation (gunner, topman, etc) and the list of the first watch on the left hand page of the Bill was mirrored by the second watch personnel written down the right hand page. Each member of the crew therefore had his partner from the other watch written down opposite his own entry, his ‘opposite number’.
It was generally regarded as a good thing to make your 'oppo' a close friend on board ship. As you were going on duty he would be coming off duty and heading below and a good friend would make sure that his opposite number was informed about any problems in the part of the ship he was responsible for.

Parcel
Modern meaning: a package or item, which has been covered in a protective covering for posting.
This is one Naval term which has moved further from it’s original meaning than most. In Nelson’s time, to parcel something was to wrap it in a tarred strip of canvas which was then bound around with rope or cord to protect the parcelled item from damage due to abrasion. This could be any part of the running rigging where a rope had to pass over or alongside a part of the superstructure and the constant movement would eventually wear through the rope. The most obvious example of ‘parcelling’ in model period ships is around the iron ring at the top of the anchor shank, which attaches the anchor to the hawse cable. This was wrapped in a strip of canvas and then tightly bound around in white and black rope or cord to produce a patterned effect and was employed to protect both the hawse cable and the iron ring from rubbing into each other when the anchor was in use.
Today the term parcel has come to mean any item in which a protective layer has been wrapped around it as well as the materials used ie, Parcel Tape.


Glossary:
Watch Bill: A heavy bound book, probably with lined pages in which the ship’s crew were entered by name, number and occupation/rating. It was also used on occasion to record relevant comments about the crewmen eg KIA or deserted etc.
Shank: The official term for the shaft of the iron anchor, the piece which goes from the curved bottom with the triangular points (Palms) to the iron ring above the wooden stock.

Know the Ropes
Modern meaning: Exactly the same, describing a man as competent and skilled as in “Don’t worry about him, he knows the ropes!”
‘Knowing the ropes’ in Nelson’s day was an official recognition of a seaman’s level of skill and experience. Those who knew the ropes were the most skilled of the crew, and would be the ones who worked aloft in the rigging; the ‘Topmen’. When one of these men retired from the Navy, his discharge papers would be marked “Knows the Ropes”, such a statement was in effect giving him an Honourable Discharge often with a larger pension.

Bow and Scrape
Modern meaning: To be excessively servile. ‘He’s always bowing and scraping to his boss!”
This phrase comes from the etiquette among the officers of Nelson’s Navy. It was customary for junior officers to doff their hats and bow in order to greet a superior officer when they came on board. The ‘bowing’ part is fairly obvious but the scraping bit is a little more subtle. A junior officer’s cocked hat looked quite a bit like the wooden tool used by the cook to remove the slush from the surface of the boiled beef he had cooked for the crew (see Perks), this tool was called a scraper and the ship’s crew jokingly referred to the cocked hats by the same name. Therefore the junior officer would bow and remove his hat or ‘scrape’ hence ‘bowing and scraping’!


Glossary:

Cocked Hat: The standard Officer uniform head-dress of both the army and navy. The headgear of the British military throughout the 18th and 19th centuries was descended from the common wide brimmed hat of the English Civil War era. This floppy brimmed hat was worn by most soldiers and ancillaries, such as wagon drivers and gunners etc. The first change (in the army) was to raise the front of the brim up to form a vertical peak (the film Cut Throat Island shows this really well on the English infantry) and this is the style that the soldiers carried on the SOTS would have worn. The next stage came in the 1700’s where the brim was folded up on three sides to form the famous Tricorn hat worn by both sides in the American Revolution. In the true ‘cocked hat’ which was also worn by higher ranking naval officers at the same time as the tricorn, the brim is folded up into two peaks, either front to back or side to side. Again, the true version was side to side (as worn by Nelson himself) and the front brim was slightly smaller than the rear, the front brim was called the cock and the rear the fan, hence a ‘cocked hat’. Many Captains and junior officers wore the fore and aft version with equal sized brims but they too were generally known as cocked hats. The other name for this style was the Bicorn Hat (Bicorn = two brims, Tricorn = three brims,… simples!)

Back again!

Flogging a Dead Horse
Modern meaning: Putting precious time and money into something that either won’t work or isn’t worth it, eg “It’ll be flogging a dead horse trying to get that engine to run”
This phrase comes from the days of the long distance sailing ships when crewmen would sign on for the voyage. It was often necessary for them to be outfitted by the ship’s owners with clothing, victuals and tools of their trade. The cost of this was deducted from the seaman’s first month’s wages and so for that first month, he was effectively working hard for no reward just like flogging a dead horse to make it work. For some strange reason it was customary to raise a small effigy of a horse up into the masts at the end of that first month to signify that the seamen were now actually earning money!

Derrick
Modern meaning: A type of lifting crane jib mostly but not exclusively applied to cranes on board a ship.
This is one example of how a single person’s name has become a common place word. The Derrick in question was a professional hangman employed in the court of Queen Elizabeth the First (San Francisco II era). Derrick employed a portable gallows of his own design which consisted of a solid wooden beam which was raised and lowered by a block and tackle arrangement (hanging from this apparatus was therefore a slow and painful death as there was no ‘long dropper’ to break the victim’s neck as in the later gallows). Derrick became so notorious at his profession that the similar arrangements of spare spars and ropes used on board Elizabethan galleons to raise stores and gun barrels on board became known as ‘Derricks’. The name has since come down through the centuries to mean the ‘jib’ part of any modern crane. By WW1 most naval cranes were equipped with a steel lattice framework as the derrick. Stick one of those vertically into the ground and you have the archetypal Oil Derrick found sticking up over all terrestrial oil fields!

Glossary:
Victuals: An old word for food, meals, rations etc.
‘Long Dropper’: Slang for the act of snapping the neck of a condemned person by dropping them through a trapdoor with a noose around their neck. Immortalised in the sea shanty “Hanging Johnny” with the words “I’d hang a Ruddy Copper, I’d give him the Long Dropper!”

Spinning a Yarn
Modern meaning: Making up a fanciful story, often an excuse for something.
This phrase has changed a little since Nelson’s day, today it means the actual act of telling a story but back on board ship it actually meant making the story longer than it needed to be, in fact the phrase “Spinning it out” is actually closer to the original meaning and also stems from the self same source. That source was one of the tasks of the seamen, making new rope out of old. This was regarded as a cushy little number, which didn’t involve hard labour or dangerous work up high. A group of sailors would commonly sit in a circle and painstakingly unravel lengths of worn rope reducing it down to the individual fibres. These would then be re-plaited back into useable rope (spinning the yarn). As this was a time when the men could chat together without too much interference from the officers, they could tell each other tall tales, deliberately making them longer and longer so as to make their task of rope making drag out (sparing them from more arduous tasks). Eventually the rope making and story telling became one and the same – spinning a yarn.

Swinging the Lead (that’s LED not LEED!)
Modern meaning: Same as the original, taking longer than necessary to perform a task.
I’ve put this phrase in with ‘Spinning a Yarn’ because their original meanings were almost identical! Like the gentle art of rope making, swinging the lead or ‘taking a sounding’ was regarded as an easy task which got you out of doing something more strenuous for as long as you could make it last. It was not unknown for seamen to make a few ‘trial runs’ with the lead to pass the time without actually using the thing to measure the depth of water. Any sailor who was found to be avoiding hard work by pretending to do something else was said to be ‘swinging the lead’, a phrase which later spread ashore and came to mean anybody who was deliberately not pulling their own weight.

Glossary:
Yarn: One of the smallest elements of a rope. Nelson’s ropes were commonly made of hemp with the smallest part being an individual fibre. Several fibres were spun together to form a Yarn (like a stiff form of string), the yarns were then spun together to form Rope and the largest of all were the Cables, which were formed from multiple ropes. These ropes and cables were formed in huge rope making factories within the confines of the Naval Dockyards. Chatham Dockyard possesses a magnificent building called the Rope Walk or the Ropery where huge lengths of rope and cable (cordage) were made for Nelson’s Navy. It is nearly a quarter of a mile in length and is still used today with later Victorian machinery to make traditional ropes including those on the Victory today!
Lead: The Lead was a tool designed for testing the depth of water under the keel of a vessel. It consists of a heavy solid cylinder of lead (or possibly an iron hollow cylinder filled with lead) with an eye bolt set into the lead at the top and a shallow depression indented into the bottom. A rope was attached to the lead with markings set to fathoms or fractions of fathoms. To take a sounding (test the depth), first a dollop of tallow (soft fat) was pressed into the bottom of the lead, the seaman, usually standing on one of the chainwales, would then twirl the lead vertically around on the outboard side (swinging the lead) before launching it forwards ahead of the ship. The lead would sink rapidly to the sea bed (if it was shallow enough) pulling out the rope as it sinks. When the lead reaches the bottom the seaman would check the measurement marked on the rope (like a primitive tape measure) and pull up the lead from the sea bed. Once he had the lead back in his hands he could check the bottom of it, sand or broken sea shell would be stuck to the tallow, a clean or ‘dimpled’ impression in the tallow indicated rock. He would then cry out to the Officer of the Watch something like “Two fathoms and sandy” or Three fathoms and rock” depending on the results.

Just for reference.A pig's ear or Put-dale as they were known.This design dates from 1702.Time and motion would love this
Kind Regards Nigel

It would be for the gun crew stood at the side
Kind Regards Nigel

Interesting stuff Robin, keep en comin'

Hi to All!

A quickie today just to correct an error in a reply I posted on Bernd’s Victory diary a few weeks ago! Bernd has almost completed his wonderful model and had posted some photos of the flags, treated to preserve their ‘flapping in the wind’ effect (VERY nice too Bernd) and in my reply I mentioned the Union Jack flag and when and when not to call it that. In checking my research for this entry, it now seems I was completely wrong! So here it is!

Union Jack (The British National Flag)

The Union Jack is the result of the combined flags of England (the Cross of St George) and Scotland (the Cross of St Andrew). This was first introduced when the Scottish King James, the son of Mary Queen of Scots became King James the First of England after the death of Queen Elizabeth the First. Until then, English ships flew the Cross of St George (a red cross on a white background) and Scottish vessels flew the Cross of St Andrew ( a diagonal white cross or “Saltire” on a blue background) Being the instigator of the Act of Union which joined England and Scotland to become Britain (and the larger partner) the English cross was placed in front of the Scottish one. (One Scottish Laird had a huge flag, yards across, made up with the Scottish cross in the foreground – it looks really weird! ((sorry Gandale!))
This is the flag which was flown all across the world on far flung battlefields including the American Revolution and many others.
This flag was already known as the Union Jack or the Union Flag almost from the start. I had always believed that the Union Jack was only ever called that when it was flown from the Jack Staff on a Royal Navy Warship – but apparently not! The Jack Staff is the small flag staff which was once found about half way up the bowsprit, (on Victory and many other ships of the line it is attached to the rectangular block which joins the bowsprit, the jib and the flying jib all together. In modern warships lacking a bowsprit, the Jack Staff is the small flag pole situated right at the bow. Since the days of James I, the flag flown from the Jack Staff was simply called the “Jack” and when Royal decrees were issued instructing all His Majesty’s Ships of the Navy Royal to fly the Union Flag from that position, the flag naturally become known as the Union Jack. Various discussions in Parliament through the centuries questioned the legality of calling the National Flag by it’s ‘acquired’ name but by the early 1900’s it was generally agreed that the Union Flag could be called a Jack wherever it was flown from. What many people don’t realise (me included!) is that it always has been, - and still is – a criminal offence to fly the National British Flag from any British vessel that is not a Royal Naval or Royal Air Force ship or boat! James I was very insistent upon this, and Charles II threatened ‘grievous displeasure’ upon any merchant vessel daring to employ this act. (Royal Navy vessels were exempt from harbour dues, hint, hint!) British merchant and civilian vessels fly either the Red Ensign (Red Duster) or, with special permission, such as Royal Yacht Clubs etc, the Blue Ensign.
The 18th Century Union Jack was altered to its modern appearance after the Act of Union with Ireland when the Cross of St Patrick, a red diagonal cross on a white background was added. When Ireland gained her independence it was suggested that the ‘Jack’ should revert to it’s former appearance but Heraldry is a stupendously expensive business and it was discovered that changing the Union Jack back would have cost over £2,000,000 (and that’s the ‘back then amount’, not a contemporary updated increase!! Fortunately, the province of Northern Ireland voted to remain a part of Great Britain so the need to change the flag was quietly dropped. (Even if they hadn’t, St Patrick was actually a Briton, not Irish, so there!)
The Union Jack followed the British Empire all around the world and today, many countries have either retained the Union Flag as their National Emblem (even Canada with it’s own Canadian Maple Leaf Flag still retains the Union Jack as an official emblem which is flown on special days God Bless ‘Em, and Canadian citizens may fly it at any time) or they have included the Jack into their new Independent Flags usually in the top left corner.
So there you have it – it IS a Union Jack wherever you choose to fly it, on land anyway. And just for our unfortunate cousins, the city of Taunton, Massachusetts, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania all have the old 1776 Union Jack retained in their city and county emblems, as does the entire State of Hawaii!

Tee Hee

Robin

Just realised I haven't done a Glossary for this one, I'll add that on later!

Glossary:

Saltire: The Heraldic term for a diagonal cross on a shield or Coat of Arms.
Jack Staff: The small flag pole fitted to the Bowsprit on a sailing vessel from which a ‘Jack’ flag was flown. When ironclads superseded the wooden vessels and the ‘Dreadnoughts’ superseded them, the bowsprit disappeared and the Jack Staff was moved to the main deck right at the bow. The true Jack staff is still only found on warships however.
Bowsprit: The angled structure projecting from the bows, which carried the small jib sails. The bowsprit is essentially just another mast which is stuck into the hull at a slanting angle to increase the area of sail carried.