Our nautical heritage

"Breezing up" - Winslow Homer

Massachusetts has a long, proud, maritime tradition going back nearly four hundred years.  The early European settlers arriving on our shores were mariners extraordinaire and we have been a seagoing folk ever since.  We have utilized the bounty of the sea for sustenance and trade and to this day have some of the nation’s busiest fishery ports.  And it’s no wonder.  The coastline of Massachusetts is over 300 miles, thanks largely to the enormous proboscis of Cape Cod.  And when you include inlets, salt marshes, and islands, the overall tidal shoreline is in excess of 1,500 miles.

It is not surprising that we have contributed greatly to nautical terminology and continue to use it idiomatically in our vernacular. Words and phrases with nautical roots permeate our language.

Here is a quite realistic example – “The project had run afoul of local regulations and quickly lost headway.  It didn’t help that the chairman was acting groggy, seeming three sheets to the wind.  But after arguing to the bitter end, the committee voted to take a different tack.  Now we are running on an even keel.”

These phrases are familiar and we know their intended meanings, but it is interesting to understand their nautical origins.  Let’s explore a few of them.

“Run afoul” now means to contravene, or go against laws, regulations, or popular sentiment; to clash.  The original gist of “afoul” was for a ship to run aground or become entangled with lines or collide with another ship.  The sense of conflict is consistent in both definitions. 

“To lose headway” is to run out of steam, to fail to make forward progress.  In nautical usage, when a ship is making headway, it is making forward progress against a tide, current, or unfavorable winds.  When it loses headway, that progress is lost. Again, the definitions are congruent. 

Today, to be “groggy” is to be dazed, weak, or unsteady, most usually from lack of sleep.  Sailors in the olden days were issued a daily ration of grog (watered down rum) to maintain morale.  The effect of too much grog was to make one groggy, i.e., drunk.

To understand “three sheets to the wind,” we must first know that a sheet is a line connected to a sail and is used to control that sail.  A typical sloop has a headsail which needs two sheets, one for each tack. The main sail has a only single sheet, giving a total of three. When a sheet is “to the wind,” it is unattached and the sail flaps aimlessly.  So with three sheets to the wind, the boat has no motive force and simply heaves about in the waves, much like a wandering drunkard. 

“To the bitter end” colloquially means that one will continue to a conclusion irrespective of difficulties or obstacles.  This one takes some explaining.  On an old sailing vessel, there existed posts, called bitts, to which lines were tied off (most often the anchor bitts).  The loose end of the line, after being secured to a bitt, is the bitter end.  To pursue something to the bitter end is to continue to the very end.

To “take a different tack” is to try another fundamentally different course of action.  In sailing, a boat makes her way upwind by tacking alternately to port and starboard of the wind. Sometimes it is misstated as to “take a different tact” which is just plain nonsensical, as “tact” has to do with gentile social graces, not direction of action.  Taking a different tack implies trying a different course of action against some resistance, hopefully to result in making headway.

A ship floating on an “even keel” is properly level and not listing, remaining upright and stable.  If badly loaded, or laden with water from leaks, a ship may list to the side and be swamped by the waves.  In the vernacular, to “run on an even keel” is a very desirable state of affairs.

There are many more such phrases but we’ll save them for another time.  Perhaps in the dead of winter when dreams of sun and waves and wind and getting back on the water become acute, another dose of nautical phrases may prove animating.