Understanding communication at sea

October, 2002

By Tom Snyder

I grew up living and cruising aboard sailboats captained by my father. He had a way with words that can be explained by five years of being strafed, kamikazed, torpedoed, and fired on by other ships. Linguistically, he brought all of the resulting urgency to our family cruising. And even though our family was not officially in a declared state of war, we were daily bathed in the colorful language of the navy – and not just in times of high alert.

I can only imagine how effectively naval speech patterns worked during the Second World War. After all, we won and the emperor and the fuehrer didn’t, which may be the greatest thing that ever happened. The vivid turns of nautical phrase were surely just the trick for avoiding ambiguity, and also for providing a much-needed release of tension. Later, however, in peacetime, family life was hard on a small sailboat populated by three kids, a mother that wasn’t crazy about the water, and a high-ranking officer who said things like, “Crank the goddamned winch faster, you no-good bastard.”

As one of the surviving crewmembers, now with a cruising family of my own, I have decided to modernize the language of the sea, to make it kinder, gentler, and more politically appropriate, without robbing it of the spice and candor from which it derives its power. I don’t propose to translate every salty phrase on record. That would take hours. Instead, I will give readers the tools to generate their own translations. A few examples will suffice.

Declarative Sentences

One night in 1963, as we were sailing into Plymouth Harbor, our ranking officer (Dad) took some meteorological measurements and announced to me and my 8-year-old sister that we should un-hank the jib because “it is going to blow like stink and be colder than a whore’s heart on Christmas Eve.”

The “blow like stink” portion of the statement can stand as is. It is evocative without being rude. The next portion, however, is demeaning, suggestive and unsuitable for some audiences. I would suggest the following change: “…it is going to blow like stink and be colder than a receptionist’s heart at a Christian Science reading room.” I submit that this works on two levels: Receptionist is a more gender-neutral profession, and the mention of a specific religion adds spice without hurt because that particular sect apparently does not suffer physical pain as we know it.

Let’s look at another one. Later that same night in ’63, Dad confirmed his forecast and said to my mother, “What did I tell you? It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”

I propose replacing “balls” with “ball” because it seems so much less sexual, but I would leave the “brass monkey” because no one knows what that is anyway.

Now you try one for practice. During that same summer, as we were approaching an anchorage, a larger boat cut across our bow. Dad explained to us that “the son of a bitch steers like a dirty Irish Catholic.” See if you can polish this chestnut into something more usable.

The Imperative Case

For this example, let’s use the sentence quoted above: “Crank the goddamned winch faster, you no-good bastard.” Clearly, there are multiple issues here. First, and least important, taking the Lord’s name in vain is considered unlucky in most cultures. A simple fix is to leave in the oath, but to spell damn without the “n”. Second, and also less important, “…you no-good bastard” can come off a bit negative. A simple fix there would be to replace “no-good” with “lovable.” Say it out loud and see if it doesn’t sound downright supportive. Third, and most important, there is no “please” or “please” substitute to soften the command. “Please” substitutes are constructed around multiple levels of indirection as popularized by Protestants in wealthy suburbs. Take a look at two possible translations:

“I wonder what would happen if you cranked the goddammed winch faster, you lovable bastard.”

Or, “I was thinking that if when you had a chance, you might think about whether it might not be fun to crank the goddammed winch faster, you lovable bastard.”

I know it must seem that it would require a lot of education to translate like this. Not true. It just takes practice. Speaking of which, try re-engineering the phrase my father used once when we were on a collision course with a freighter:

“Grab your socks and drop your cocks. We’ve got company.” Hint: Don’t forget the “please” substitute.

Tom Snyder lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife Anne, and two children. He sails his Island Packet 350, Blue Moon, out of Peaks Island, Maine.