"The sailor's commendatory term for the landsman's old
salt. Some authorities say that it comes from his back being bent like a shell;
but it seems more probable that the implication is that the shellback is
growing barnacles from having been at sea so long.
The
term is fairly well known to landspeople. The degree of "able
shellback," signed by Rex Neptune, is currently [1945] being conferred
upon men crossing the Line for the first time aboard troopships."Sea Language Comes Ashore, Joanna Carver Colcord. Cornell Maritime Press, N.Y. 1945.
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