Every profession has its insider language, and the Navy is no exception. While some of the jargon remains specific to the trade and known only to the cognoscenti, other words and expressions have been assimilated into everyday civilian speech.
Early in my career, on the first two of my eight ships, I was appointed as the Training Petty Officer for the thirty or so men of my division, responsible for giving monthly lectures, both of a technical nature and of general interest. My favorite subject was naval history and traditions where I was free to share my appreciation for those on whose shoulders we stood and to explain historical events related to wherever we happened to be. Although it sounds like “indoctrination,” I basically had free rein, with no script, unlike the communist commissars spouting socialist propaganda to sailors on ships of the former Soviet Union.
When I was first told that I had this responsibility, my response was a classic example of the adage that you can ignore everything in a sentence that appears before the word “but:”
“There must be someone else more qualified, but ...”
“I will love you forever, but ...”
“You appear to be in good health, but ...”
However, such a responsibility was not to be taken lightly. When you report onboard a new ship, you will find that it’s a very insular environment, a closed society, and that you must prove yourself before you are taken seriously. You must “make your bones” before you are accepted. There were basically two ways to gain a seat at the table: by going ashore with the old timers and out-drinking them; or by working hard and gaining their respect. I was raised around alcoholics, so I chose the latter route. There always seemed to be at least one hard case, however, who was impossible to win over. Unless he was senior to you, this often had to be settled in a fist fight. If you backed down, you would lose all creditability. I had my first such fight when I was 17 and working in the scullery, washing dishes three times a day for 1200 men on a guided missile cruiser in the Mediterranean. It was thankless, hot, and nasty work. I was the “captain,” in charge, and one of my crew persisted in collecting handfuls of butter from the dirty meal trays and throwing them at me. I told him to stop. He didn’t. So, I put his head in the dish water. No problems after that.
There were some World War II-era guys left in the early days, and they generally ran the show. Invariably, they called me “Reb.” Over the seven years of my enlisted career, before I became an officer, I sat at the feet of war heroes, sea-going cowboys, lost souls, and total misfits. I learned something from all of them. Since I knew I was in the Navy for life, I bought into the stories, myths, and traditions and learned as many as I could. What was always funny to me was that, while underway and off watch, sailors, of all ranks, would sit around in our living compartment and discuss women, how much they hated the Navy, and what they planned to do when their EOOS (Expiration of Obligated Service) finally arrived. Then, the loudest complainers would almost always “ship over,” or reenlist, for another four years and end up as “lifers” (career sailors).
I never said much in such conversations. Even today, I generally keep quiet as people pontificate. I always figured it was better to keep your mouth shut and let people wonder if you have any sense than to open it and show them that you don’t. In fact, I never said much to anyone when I was young. In the 8th grade, my classmates voted me the “Quietest Boy.” I was reading Sartre and Camus, and my understanding of existentialism was that you are drawn to your fate like a moth to a flame. So, I was content to just watch and let things “play out.”
I’ve often wondered what drew me to the sea. My daddy served in the Navy during the Second World War, but he never talked about it; other than to say he’d had two ships shot out from under him in the Pacific. He only had a 6th grade education, but he loved to read. In fact, his love of reading led to my knowing how to read even before I started the first grade. Every Sunday morning, he would meet the Greyhound bus in Lumberton as it came up from New Orleans to be sure and get a copy of the “Times Picayune” newspaper which it delivered. I always got the comic section, and one day, I just “knew how to read.”
I don’t know how it happened – there were no phonics or sight words involved. I suppose I associated the gestures and facial expressions of the cartoon characters, “Prince Valiant,” “Little Orphan Annie,” the “Katenjammer Kids,” etc., with the printed text, and one day, it just “clicked.” Unfortunately, my reading ability didn’t help me a bit in first grade. All year, I sat on the back row, “zoned out” and bored silly, while my classmates pursued Dick and Jane up and down the hill and watched Spot run. As far as that goes, I don’t remember a single thing I learned in public school, other than the books I read on my own. Not surprisingly, nautical-themed adventure books were my favorite.
Anyway, back to language, what we could authentically refer to as “Navy Speak,” it always surprised me how little my shipmates knew about something as simple as the language they were using every day. Discounting curse words, which seemed to pepper every conversation, I delighted in explaining the provenance of words and expressions I heard them use. Today, for you, I will share a few of the more interesting ones, and briefly explain them; although, I could fill this newspaper with examples.
Since sailors travel so much, at least in the “old” Navy (I had been to 25 countries before I was 20), many words of foreign origin are commonly found in their vocabulary; for example, “bokoo,” “chit,” and “geedunk.” Many an old salt will boast that he has had bokoo this or that or has done something bokoo times in his career. The picturesque sound of bokoo may cause one to wonder how it came to mean “many” or “a lot.” In reality, bokoo is the corruption of the legitimate French word, “beaucoup,” which means “very many.”
“Chit” is a word of Hindu origin and describes a piece of paper that you send up through the chain of command to make an official request – for example, a leave or transfer chit. If it comes back signed in green ink, that means the captain has seen it, and it’s a “go.” To most sailors, the word, “geedunk,” means ice cream, candy, potato chips, and other assorted snacks, or even the place on the ship where they can be purchased – the snack bar. Although no one is sure, geedunk probably comes from the Chinese word “gee dung,” which means a place of idleness. Incidentally, “Geedunk!” is also the sound made by a vending machine when it dispenses a soft drink in a can. Most ships run out of soda pop after about a month underway, however, so you won’t hear that sound long.
Although animal mascots have been banned on ships in the Navy since shortly after World War II, there are still beaucoup expressions bantered about that sound like zoo talk: “dead horse,” “monkey’s fist,” “crow’s nest,” “horse latitudes,” and “dog watch.” A dead horse is something every sailor wants to avoid, and I did except for once. What it means today is that you draw up to 30 days pay in advance and pay it back in installments over time. These repayments are deducted from your pay and hang around your neck like a dead horse. In the old British sailing Navy, where they ate salted horse meat, and when similar advanced pay was finally repaid, the recipient would often build an effigy of a horse out of odds and ends, set it afire, and cast it afloat to the cheers of his friends.
A monkey’s fist is simply a type of knot, favored by old boatswain mates, so named because it looks like a small, bunched fist or paw. It is tied at the end of a rope to serve as a weight, making it easier to throw. The crow’s nest, a platform on the highest part of the main mast where a lookout stood his post, was once where crows’ cages were kept. In the days when navigation was inexact, and especially under foggy conditions, the birds would be released, and the ship would follow their flight because they would always head to the nearest land.
When Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1834), “Idle as a painted ship on a painted ocean,” he could well have been describing the horse latitudes, which are located near the West Indies between 30- and 40-degrees north latitude. This area was infamous for capricious winds which becalmed ships sailing between Europe and America. Often ships carrying cattle or horses, caught in the doldrums, would have to toss some animals overboard to conserve water, giving the area its dubious name. The dog watch is the name given to the two early evening (1600-1800 and 1800-2000) watches aboard a ship underway. The watches rotate so that the crew can “dodge” having to stand the same watches every day. Over time, “dodge” got corrupted to “dog.”
Other expressions of uniquely naval origin, such as “bitter end,” “chewing the fat,” “he knows the ropes,” and “mind your Ps and Qs”, have become commonplace in civilian usage. As most any sailor worth his salt could tell you, a turn of a line around a bitt, those wooden or iron posts sticking up through a ship’s deck, is called a “bitter.” Over time, the term has come to mean the end of any line, secured to a bitt or not. In civilian usage, it means sticking to a course of action without regard to the consequences, as in - “I’m sticking by you until the bitter end.”
In civilian parlance, when someone “chews the fat,” it means that they are engaged in an extended conversation. That was certainly not its original meaning. The saying aboard sailing ships of the 18th and 19th centuries was “God made the vittles, but the devil made the cook.” This was a back-handed criticism of the salt meat which was a staple of a sailor’s diet. This cheap, tough, cured beef was suitable for long voyages because, unrefrigerated, nothing would keep as well. It also required prolonged chewing to make it edible. Sailors often chewed one hunk for hours, like we chew gum today, and referred to it as “chewing the fat.”
Today, when we say that “someone knows the ropes,” we are saying that they are competent and inferring that he or she can handle most any situation. Originally, this statement was printed on a seaman’s discharge papers to indicate that he knew the names and primary usage of the many ropes aboard a sailing ship. The phrase turned the discharge paper into an informal letter of recommendation.
Most of us have been admonished at one time or another to “Mind our Ps and Qs,” meaning to act right, straighten up, and be good. Surprisingly, this expression began as a method of keeping books on the waterfront. In the days of sail when sailors were often shanghaied and or paid a pittance, they drank their ale or grog on credit in the waterfront bars. Since many were illiterate, the shopkeepers kept a tally of the pints (P) and quarts (Q) consumed on a chalk board behind the bar. Because some of these tavern owners were often unscrupulous cheaters, wary sailors were warned to stay sober, and to keep an accurate “weather eye” on the board – thereby “minding their Ps and Qs.”
If you think about your own profession, you could probably come up with words and expressions that are unique to your line of work. When all is said and done, these terms are a great part of who you are and, for some of us, who we were.
Light a candle for me.
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Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
