THE LEXICON OF LINES

 

Image courtesy of shellback
Miles McCoy,
Orcas Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.

Lore from The Lazarette.... a look back
Courtesy of the Honourable Doug Adkins and

The Cruising Club of America

The vocabulary of sailing is absorbed and then employed by those of us who engage in the adventurous use of the sea. We use it with ease and sometimes forget how unusual and arcane it must seem to those who do not speak our seasalted mother tongue. The great Cruising Club historian Jack Parkinson gave us the indispensable Nowhere is Too Far, The Annals of the Cruising Club of America which chronicled our history by each year from 1922 through 1959. He clearly loved language. His account of the year 1947 included a remarkable poem by Thorvald S. Ross of the Boston Station, he the third New Englander to serve as Commodore of the CCA. The Commodore ranged widely and sailed with fellow members from across the roster. He wrote a ballad as his answer to the old, old question of "How many ropes on a full-rigged ship?" and Parkinson, to our everlasting benefit, included it in his annual account. 

Enjoy Seven Ropes by Past Commodore Thorvald Ross.

SEVEN ROPES

In taproom, when the wind was wailing,

  Old bo's'ns yarned of serve and splice,

Of wagers won by mighty sailing,

  Of whip and warp, of trim and trice.

No more are clippers trade-wind driven; 

  We scarce remember, save in rhymes,

The names their riggin's all were given-

  Lost lingo of hard-bitten times.

A maze of flax and coir and cotton,

  Of ramie, sisal, hemp, and jute,

The very twists and lays forgotten,

  Since steam and diesel won repute.

We class their halyards, sheets, and braces,

  Their lifts and lanyards, vangs, and guys,

As ropes that ran to mystic places

  And sinewed spars in multi-plies.

But take a full-rigged ship, from master

  Down to the boy, they knew each one,

And how to haul and pay it faster

  Or reeve or snub or let it run.

Yet ropes as such they had but seven

  In all that lexicon of lines,

That cobweb spun from deck to heaven,

  Which Knight in Seamanship defines;

Man rope, on gangway to the landing; 

  Foot rope, the beckets under yard

To furl and reef-a risky standing!

  They held their swabs in light regard.

The top rope swayed topm'st for staying;

  The bolt rope edged the cloth for roach;

The bell rope was for watch and praying;

  The wheel rope whirled to save a broach.

There was one more, and it no piker,

  I'd like to've been it if I could,

The back rope of the dolphin striker-

  That tough and trusty stick of wood.

From sheer to bow past bobstay bending,

  It held the jib boom to its search

For new horizons, never-ending,

  And foiled the sea at plunge or lurch.

It's gone the way of all its brothers;

  It did its job, not best or worst,

But on the voyage with all the others

It led the rest and did it first.