Nor has this province been neglected, as the efforts of Captain John Smith (of mine own clan), Maynwaring, Boteler, Blanckley, Falconer, Young, and many others, testify; and however they may fall short of what naval science demands, they are full of initiative training. Indeed they may all be advantageously consulted, for honey is not the less sweet because it is gathered from many flowers; and I have freely availed myself of their various works, as far as they go, though I have adopted no[6] term without holding myself responsible for its actuality. Such a vaunt may be considered to savour of the parturiunt montes apothegm, but the reader may confidently rest assured that whatever shortcomings he may detect they are not the result of negligence.

It has been pronounced that such lexicography may be too diffuse; that to describe the track of every particular rope through its different channels, however requisite for seamen, would be useless and unintelligible to a landsman. But surely nothing can be considered useless which tends directly to information, nor can that be unintelligible which is clearly defined. Moreover, such a work may be so carried out as not only to be instructive in professional minutiæ, but also to be a vehicle for making us acquainted with the rules which guided the seamen of former times, thereby affording an insight into those which are likely to direct them in their own.

From the causes already stated, my project of a full sailor's dictionary fell to the ground; yet in course of time, and at the age of seventy-seven, finding leisure at last on hand, I thought it feasible to work my materials into a sort of maritime glossary. The objects of such a digest are to afford a ready reference to young or old, professional or non-professional, persons, who by consulting it may obtain an instant answer to a given question. Now although many of the explanations may be superfluous to some seamen, still they may lead others to a right understanding of various brackish expressions and phrases, without having to put crude queries, many of which those inquired of might be unable to solve. Nor is it only those afloat who are to be thus considered; all the empire is more or less connected with its navy and its commerce, and nautical phraseology is thereby daily becoming more habitual with all classes of the lieges than of erst. Even our parliamentary orators, with a proper national bias, talk of swamping a measure, danger ahead, taking the wind out of an antagonist's sails, drifting into war, steering a bill through the shoals of opposition or throwing it overboard, following in the wake of a leader, trimming to the breeze, tiding a question over the session, opinions above or below the gangway, and the like, so rife of late in St.

Stephen's; even when a member "rats" on seeing that the pumps cannot keep his party from falling to leeward, he is but imitating the vermin that quit a sinking-ship.

This predilection for sea idiom is assuredly proper in a maritime people, especially as many of the phrases are at once graphic, terse, and perspicuous.[7] How could the whereabouts of an aching tooth be better pointed out to an operative dentist than Jack's "'Tis the aftermost grinder aloft, on the starboard quarter." The ship expressions preserve many British and Anglo-Saxon words, with their quaint old preterites and telling colloquialisms; and such may require explanation, as well for the youthful aspirant as for the cocoa-nut-headed prelector in nautic lore. It is indeed remarkable how largely that foundation of the English language has been preserved by means of our sailors.

This phraseology has necessarily been added to from time to time, and consequently bears the stamp of our successive ages of sea-life. In the "ancient and fishlike" terms that brave Raleigh derived from his predecessors, many epithets must have resulted from ardent recollections of home and those at home, for in a ship we find—

Most of the real sea-terms are pregnant with meaning; but those who undertake to expound them ought to be tolerably versed in the topic. Thus perhaps there was no great harm in Dr. Johnson's being utterly ignorant of maritime language, but it was temerariously vain in that sturdy lexicographer to assert that belay is a sea-phrase for splicing a rope; main sheet, for the largest sail in a ship; and bight, for the circumference of a coil of rope; and we long had him on the hip respecting the purser, a personage whom he—misled by Burser—at once pronounced to be the paymaster of a ship; as the then purser was, in fact, more familiar with slops, tobacco, pork, dips, biscuit, and the like, than with cash payments—for, excepting short-allowance dues, he had very little meddling with money matters. But the Admiralty have recently swamped the well-known and distinctive nautical title—despite of its time-honoured claims to repute—and introduced the army appellative, PAYMASTER, in its stead.

The pithy conciseness of the brackish tongue renders it eminently useful on duty. In some of their sea-phrases the French, our great rivals, use a heap of words more than we are wont to do. An instance is given—supposing a ship of the former met with one of ours, and they should[8] desire to salute each other, the English commander would sing out, "Man ship! " but the French captain would have to exclaim, "Rangez du monde sur les vergues pour donner des cris de salut! " By the way, there is a ben trovato respecting the difficulty of doing our naval tidings into French: a translator of note made quite a mull of a ship being brought up by her anchors, and of another which was stranded from borrowing too much; while "a man-of-war riding easily in the road at Spithead" was rendered "Un homme de guerre se promenait à cheval à son aise sur le chemin de Spithead.

" Some of the French terms, however, are recommended by their Parisian stamp, as in calling iron bilboes "bas de soie"—the waist-netting "Saint Aubinet"—the quarter-gallery a "jardin d'amour:" but similar elegance was not manifested in dubbing the open-hearted thorough-bred tar "un loup de mer.

In the work before us, the nautical import of the terms is duly considered, and the orthography, as far as feasible, is ruled by authority and custom, with an occasional slight glance at the probable etymology of the words—slight, because derivation is a seductive and frequently illusory pilot. Our language is said to have been arraigned by foreigners for its hissing enunciation; but, regardless of the rebuke, our pundits have, of late, unnecessarily increased the whistling by substituting the sibilant s for the vocal z, in all sorts of cases. Happily this same s not being yet acclimatized to the galley, Jack will continue to give tongue to an enterprizing cruize after Portugueze merchandize, and there anent.

The plan of our work may be said to comprise the treating de omnibus rebus nauticis, for many branches of knowledge are demanded of the intelligent seaman. Thus in Naval Architecture, the terms used in the construction of ships, the plans and sections, and the mechanical means of the builders, are undoubted requirements of a sea word-book. So also in Astronomy, or that portion of nautical science constituting observations which are necessary to the determinations of the navigator. In Mathematics, especially the branch distinguished as practical, the doctrine which teaches whatever is capable of being numbered or measured, requires verbal elucidation, not so much for the educated youth, as for him who labours under difficulties—who is

Many of the words in our columns are not de facto sea-terms, but as they are in rife and familiar use on ship-board, they obtained a lodgment;[9] whence it becomes rather a difficult matter to mark a boundary for nautic language. Various expressions are also retained which, though unused or all but obsolete, occur so frequently in professional treatises and antiquated journals, that their exposition may often be welcomed by a general reader: they are here introduced, not as worthy of revival, yet as necessary to be understood when fallen in with. And it should be remembered, that—especially during our last conflict with France—so many combined enterprises occurred, that the most general naval and military phrases pertained, in a manner, to both arms of the service.

What may be termed mere galley-slang also demands explanation, since even officers are sometimes ashore—I was going to say at sea—respecting its purport; and I recollect at a court-martial holden on a seaman for insolence to his superior, the lingo used by the shrewd culprit was liable to be thought respectful or otherwise according to the manner of utterance, and he was admitted to the benefit of the doubtful meaning. Still it must be admitted that all vulgarisms, as far as practicable, should be indignantly spurned from our noble English language—a language unequalled for excellence in fluency, capacity, and strength. A stern critic may also, and in truth, aver that terms are included on our roll the which are not altogether of maritime usage. This we have admitted, but the allegation will be greatly weakened on scrutiny, for they are here given in the sense entertained of them in nautic parlance. Such are generally illustrative of some of the lingual or local peculiarities of sea-life, or borne on its literature, and therefore are necessarily admitted as having a footing in maritime philology.

Some of our misused words and archaic phrases are, by influence of the newspaper magnates, brought across the Atlantic, and re-appear among us under the style and title of Americanisms: after which fashion, in the lapse of time and the mutation of dialect, vocables once differing in origin and meaning may become identical in sense and sound.

[A] As for example the word alarm, alarum, a bell, from the German lärm; but the military alarm on a drum is the Italian all'arme.

Finally, Natural History, a taste for which is a substantial blessing to the sailor, is too vast a department for our professional pages. However, a few requisite definitions of the familiar products of the air, earth, and water are introduced. Numbers of marine birds and many fishes—so often misnamed—are entered upon the muster; and especially those[10] which the blue-jackets vote to be very good eating; yet, as a reverend author has well observed, we should, in such cases, recur to the probable state of their appetites at the time of experiment. The most general nautic dishes and refections are likewise cited, to the making of which most of our sea-cooks are competent—there being no purée, entremet, or fricandeau to trouble them. But though they are at times libelled as being sent from the infernal regions, they are pretty fair in their way; and though no great shakes in domestic chemistry, they can enter the lists against any white-aproned artiste at pea-soup, beef-steak, lobscouse, pillau, curried shark, twice-laid, or savoury sea-pie.

Still, a more luxurious tendency in this department is casting its shadow before; and there are Sybarites invading the ocean to whom the taste of junk is all but unknown.

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