Life in
the Time of Sailing Ships
By Jayne
Davis
Some nautical phrases that have entered everyday language,
and changed their meaning.
A
second-rate ship…
Today, this phrase would mean a ship that was sub-standard
in some way, not as good as it could be. This was the case originally, too, but
only in terms of fire-power. Warships
were rated from 1st rate to 6th rate depending on the
number of guns they were designed to carry. This also correlated with the size
of the vessel – the more guns it carried, the more men were needed to man them
and the bigger the ship had to be.
Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, had 104 guns on three gun
decks, making it a 1st rate ship of the line.
 |
| The damaged HMS Victory being towed into Gibraltar after the Battle of Trafalgar. HMS Victory is now in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in the UK. |
The table shows the rating system used during the Napoleonic
Wars. (Information from Wikipedia)
Rate
|
Guns
|
Gun decks
|
Men
|
1st
|
100
|
3
|
850-875
|
2nd
|
90-98
|
3
|
700-750
|
3rd
|
64-80
|
2
|
500-650
|
4th
|
50-60
|
2
|
320-402
|
5th
|
32-44
|
1 or 2
|
200-300
|
6th
|
20-28
|
1
|
140-160
|
1st, 2nd and 3rd rate ships were referred to as ships of the line. There were very few 1st and 2nd rate ships (less than 10 of each), but many more 3rd rate ships. 5th and 6th rate ships were called frigates (although the term was sometimes used quite loosely). Smaller ships such as sloops-of-war, gun-brigs etc were unrated.
 |
| HMS Trincomalee is a frigate built right at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and can be visited in Hartlepool, UK. |
Loose
cannon
Today, a loose cannon is a dangerously uncontrollable
person, and the origin of the phrase is from
a cannon that has come loose. Loose from what, you may ask.
The photo below shows the cannon on one of HMS Victory’s gun
decks.
 |
| One of HMS Victory’s gun decks. Sadly almost all of the guns on display on the ship today are made of fibreglass, as the old structure is not strong enough to take the weight of real ones. |
The largest guns on Victory were 32 pounders—this meant the
weight of each cannonball was 32 lbs (15 kg). The cannon itself weighed about
56 hundredweight, or nearly 3 tonnes. The thick ropes in the photo are to
absorb the force of the recoil when the gun fires, and limit the movement to a
few feet. This is enough to allow men to reload it, before the thinner ropes
are used to pull it closer to the bulkhead again for the next shot.
A ship at sea is rarely still, and often pitching and
rolling violently. I leave you to imagine the damage that could be if the restraining
ropes break. With 3 tonnes of metal loose on a rolling deck, a ‘loose cannon’
could be very dangerous indeed.
Nipper
‘Nipper’ is UK slang for a child, and comes from the boys
used to ‘nip’ anchor cables.
 |
| HMS Victory, showing one of her anchors and its cable, with a handy dockyard worker for scale. |
As you can see in the photo, the anchor cable is at least as
thick as the man’s arm. Each anchor weighed a couple of tonnes, and the length
of cable itself weighed over 4 tonnes. On Victory, the anchor was ‘weighed’ by
over 100 men turning two capstans (one mounted above the other on two decks).
This cable is far too thick and stiff to be wound around the capstan, so the
anchor cable was ‘nipped’ (i.e. fastened) to a thinner, more flexible rope
called the messenger cable.
Young boys were responsible for fastening the anchor cable
to the messenger cable, then unfastening it again before the anchor cable was
fed down to its storage on the orlop deck, and were called nippers.
There’s a video here that explains in more detail, if you’re
interested (not my video!):
That’s it for now, there are lots more!
The Mrs MacKinnons
England, 1799
Major
Matthew Southam returns from India, hoping to put the trauma of war behind him and
forget his past. Instead, he finds a derelict estate and a family who wish he'd
died abroad.
Charlotte
MacKinnon married without love to avoid her father’s unpleasant choice of
husband. Now a widow with a young son, she lives in a small Cotswold village
with only the money she earns by her writing.
Matthew
is haunted by his past, and Charlotte is fearful of her father’s renewed
meddling in her future. After a disastrous first meeting, can they help each
other find happiness?
4.7* average on Amazon, available
on Kindle Unlimited.
Jayne Davis
Jayne Davis writes historical
romances set in the late Georgian/Regency era, published as both ebooks and
paperbacks.
She was hooked on Jane Austen
and Georgette Heyer as a teenager, and longed to write similar novels herself.
Real life intervened, and she had several careers, including as a non-fiction
author under another name. That wasn't quite
the writing career she had in mind...
Finally, she got around to
polishing up stories written for her own amusement in long winter evenings, and
became the kind of author she’d dreamed of in her teens. She is now working on
the first few books in the Marstone Series, set in the late Georgian/early
Regency period.
