Favorite Nautical Sayings and Quotes

The safest place for a ship is in the harbor but, then what good is she?

Old Phart - using Wiki not fair

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey


Cannon balls were steel. When stacked they required a plate with large dimples at the bottom. Brass was the choice because it was malleable. The two metals froze and contracted at different rates. At some point the brass monkey contracted so much it popped the cannon balls from their nice neat pyramid

Sorry Beau. Just not possible. Imagine a pyramid of cannon balls on a ship at sea. Bowling for sailors once first decent wave hits the ship.

Looked it up after I typed explanation and then added link. Admin might be able to verify timing.

P.S.- Did find the other explanations interesting, though.

Hmmmmm

I checked my version online between typing and posting.

I just checked your monkey version online.

Oops!

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_monkey_(colloquial_expression)

snopes.com: Brass Monkeys

"Freezing the balls off the brass monkey," a Navy phrase about cannon balls-Fiction!

Darn it. That was always a good one to recite after a few Dark and Stormies!

" A day spent sailing is not deducted from one`s lifespan "

Alright, how 'bout this one: "pay the devil"


Square riggers used to caulk their seams with tar, which the "tars" called "pay"

The board on either side of the keel was called the "devil" . It was the most difficult board for a sailer to "pay" particular when the ship was careened on a beach for cleaning while on station . Captains assigned paying the devil as disciplinary action for minor offenses. Much better than the "cat".

Three sheets...

I was told at a traditional windmill site that the 4 panels that power the mill would have 4 sails/sheets mounted in typical weather, but be reduced to 2 in high winds. When they were going from 4 to 2 or vice versa they'd have to let it spin one half a revolution during the change. If it got away with 3 sails/sheets mounted the whole mill would shudder violently... hence the term 3 sheets to the wind for an unsteady sailor....

Chuckb

The great thing about these sayings is the questionable origins and multiple explanations. But its great fun. As old phart suggests, Go to wiki and see Sun of Gun - a bullet shot thru a man's "vitals" impregnated a woman???

So true regarding the multiple explanations! The son of a gun stuff is funny too... I was looking for a similar favorite but then found the following quote that cracked me up...

"It looks like frozen snot." -L. Francis Herreshoff, looking at a Herreshoff Bullseye built of fiberglass.

Of course I have a weakness for classics....

Paul Harvey told that story one time on radio. I heard it from a friend in middle school too. I always figured it to be a fish story. I mean ... come on.

Blue Ghost

If you check wiki they explain that it started as a joke then some newspaper or other publication.? picked it up and offered it as truth

Son of a gun

I am crushed............

This is how my folks explained away the difference in my age and their wedding day...........

Chesapeake

...explains his limp?

His limp and with the hole in my mama's belly, I hadda womb with a view.....

From a plaque in Old Saybrook, CT:

The River Pilot Speaks

Oh, I'm tired of hearing praises of the deepsea sailormen
With tugs to nurse 'em into port and pull 'em out again,
And all the wide blue ocean for to mismanuever in.

I'd like to see some offshore hero of reknown
A 'navigatin' thru the fog to docks at Middletown
With unseen land ten feet away, starboard, port and down.

When you're passing out your tributes and ecomiums galore
Don't overlook the riverman whose oft repeated chore
Consists of laying courses by the echoes from the shore.

Anonymous

J. Pierpont Morgan's advice about yachting, "If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it."

......If you don't want it to rock, put it back on the blocks!