Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnM
Hee hee. You think it may be difficult to understand ... Just bear in mind that, apart from the captain, very few of the crews of these ships could read or write. So the names of all the sheets, and yards, and ropes, and lines, and hawsers, etc, etc, had to be committed to memory. When the Cap'n or Bos'n gave orders for adjustments, the crew needed to know exactly what they were talkin' about.  |
In fact I think that the names of all the components of the ship were purposelly changed to prevent that any landdweller be able to understand a word. Sailing, like any profession (And I'm a programmer) tends to create a self-contained world with it's own vocabulary