Lingo

[Frank E. Price]

Anyone care to elucidate on how/when/why "rail cap" became "caprail"? And why doesn't our favorite magazine edit that turkey out'a there?

Breathlessly waiting,
Frank

[Hughman]

Welcome, Frank.

Tall ship, ribs, Knots per hour, oh, I could go on, but I won't.

:D

.....Breathe, Frank

[Frank E. Price]

So, do you reckon WB no longer cares to further our educations in nautical usage, or is it just that no one is proofing the proofreader? That other rag, Ocean Navigator , does the same thing and I suppose by now it's a Lost Cause.

Frank

[huisjen]

Moving to Maine has been a little bit of a lesson in linguistic humility. I recognize that the words I've been taught are not used the same way here as elsewhere. For instance, what I would call a pier (a structure for docking extending perpendicularly from the shore on pilings) is called a wharf here.

I ask forgiveness for my own idiosyncracies. I often say "rail" when referring to the cap rail- inwale-outwale-sheerstrake assemblage. I know this isn't proper, but it's stuck in my head from the command "Man the Lee Rail!" (*york*).

At least I don't say "salon" instead of "saloon".

Dan

[paladin]

how many saloons duzz you hang your hat in Dan.....and do they still serve 10 cent beer with roast beef (free) lunches?.....

[Frank E. Price]

Holy smokes! No. 175 has a railcap ("New Toerails for . . ."), not a cap rail in sight. So who gets the credit, the writer or the editor?

Frank

[ahp]

Does anyone remember the meaning of the term" Lee Rail Viking"?

[JimD]

A few issues back Pacific Yachting had a pic of a ketch and called it a schooner :rolleyes:

[Art Read]

Was it this issue someone bitched about the term "aft cabin"? Or was it in a back issue I was reading? And it wasn't too long ago "fly bridge" was ridiculed in their pages. At least they're trying! (Gonna be harder without Uncle Pete there to keep 'em honest though...)

[ahp]

Why is a "Bridge" called a bridge?

[Art Read]

ahp... Don't know for sure, but my brother once built a model of CSS ALABAMA, an early auxiliary, steam powered warship. Just forward of the stack amidships was a "new feature". An elevated platform "bridgeing" the deck at the same level as the top of the gunwales. For improved visability around the bulky, on-deck machinery I assume. Sounds good to me anyway...

[Meerkat]

A wharf is decking built upon timber piles; a pier is a pile of rocks with a dressed stone surface. Both extend from the shore to deeper water. Leastwise, that's how I think of it. Either way, one docks at it! ;)

[rbgarr]

Huisjen-

I know what you mean about different usages in New England. I've lived in five different NE towns on the ocean and terms differ in each. A 'wharf' in one town is a 'dock' in another... a 'ramp' here is a 'run' there... in another, a 'dock' is a 'float', while a 'finger pier' is a 'pontoon' or even a 'tie-off'.

Then there are different terms for:

-wood logs used for supporting or placing shoreside structures

-launching places for boats on trailers

-moorings and the buoys/lines for attaching to the boats that use them

-small oar-powered boats for reaching moored boats

-protected beaches

The list is endless and fascinating! :cool: smile.gif

[ 11-09-2003, 03:54 PM: Message edited by: rbgarr ]

[Norm Harris]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
A wharf is decking built upon timber piles; a pier is a pile of rocks with a dressed stone surface. Both extend from the shore to deeper water. Leastwise, that's how I think of it. Either way, one docks at it! ;) Meer,
Doesn't one dock In the dock, and not at it? The dock is the receptacle, as in being in dry dock, being in the docks, etc.

Ah, I love the precision of the nautical language. :D

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Originally posted by Art Read:
ahp... Don't know for sure, but my brother once built a model of CSS ALABAMA, an early auxiliary, steam powered warship. Just forward of the stack amidships was a "new feature". An elevated platform "bridgeing" the deck at the same level as the top of the gunwales. For improved visability around the bulky, on-deck machinery I assume. Sounds good to me anyway...Full marks, top of the class. It was impractical to steer and con early steamships from the poop, because the paddle boxes obscured the view (and the smoke got in the helmsman's eyes when steaming to windward!) so a "bridge" deck was added, which soon came to incorporate the "wheelhouse"

[Meerkat]

Norm; I've heard the usage "tie up to the dock", "she was tied up alongside the dock" etc. Aren't drydocks a specialized form of dock?
dock
n.
The area of water between two piers or alongside a pier that receives a ship for loading, unloading, or repairs.
A pier; a wharf.
A group of piers on a commercial waterfront that serve as a general landing area for ships or boats. Often used in the plural.
A platform at which trucks or trains load or unload cargo.

v. docked, dock·ing, docks
v. tr.
To maneuver (a vessel or vehicle) into or next to a dock.
To couple (two or more spacecraft, for example) in space.

v. intr.
To move or come into a dock.
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[Dutch dok, from Middle Dutch doc, from dken, to go under water, dive.] wharf
n. pl. wharves (hwôrvz, wôrvz) or wharfs
A landing place or pier where ships may tie up and load or unload.
Obsolete. A shore or riverbank.

v. wharfed, wharf·ing, wharfs
v. tr.
To moor (a vessel) at a wharf.
To take to or store (cargo) on a wharf.
To furnish, equip, or protect with wharves or a wharf.

v. intr.
To berth at a wharf.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English, from Old English hwearf.] pier
n.
A platform extending from a shore over water and supported by piles or pillars, used to secure, protect, and provide access to ships or boats.
Such a structure used predominantly for entertainment.
A supporting structure at the junction of connecting spans of a bridge.
Architecture. Any of various vertical supporting structures, especially:
A pillar, generally rectangular in cross section, supporting an arch or roof.
The portion of a wall between windows, doors, or other openings.
A reinforcing structure that projects from a wall; a buttress.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English per, bridge support, partly from Norman French pere, piere(from Old French puiere, a support, from puie, from puier, to support, from Vulgar Latin *podire, from Latin podium, platform. See podium), and partly from Medieval Latin pera(from Old North French pire, piere, breakwater, possibly from Latin petra, rock, from Greek petr.).]

[bud]

I grew along a "creek" that was wider & longer than the "rivers" around here, and when I went to see Walden Pond, I said "hey, it's a lake!" It's several miles around. And in England a bog is...

[Mike Field]

.
Out here, most creeks are fresh-water, whereas I understand the UK definition is that they must be salt-water -- otherwise they're streams or burns or becks or somesuch.

With the exception of a graving dock or dry-dock, we might use "dock" for somewhere a liner berths. (Docks are usually associated with wharves -- see below.) But for smaller boats the structures are either jetties or piers. A pier is generally the longer of the two, but the distinction is blurred.

"Wharf" is reserved for a berthing structure built along a shore-line (often a river bank,) rather than extending out from it as does a jetty.
.

[ 11-10-2003, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: Mike Field ]

[Jack Heinlen]

Full marks, top of the class. It was impractical to steer and con early steamships from the poop, because the paddle boxes obscured the view (and the smoke got in the helmsman's eyes when steaming to windward!) so a "bridge" deck was added, which soon came to incorporate the "wheelhouse"
And I wonder if the usage isn't older still. Early fishing and cargo carrying sailing vessels had large expanses of deck, framed open for hatches and holds, and needed strong 'bridge decks' to compensate. These are natural--read the only place--places to put a cockpit and/or a wheel. It seems a short jump to an enclosed wheel house, and then to a raised structure to see ahead effectively, for reasons Andrew mentions.

It's speculation on my point, but the reinforced decking between large deck openings would seem a natural for the 'bridge' epithet. And even now, in boats built so, we call the raised portion of a cockpit, flush decked, forward the cockpit and aft the companionway, a 'bridge deck'.

There's a word for you, 'companionway'. Is it its narrowness, and hence a natural companionship in using it? I'm almost sure that's not it. smile.gif

[ 11-10-2003, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: Jack Heinlen ]

[Eric Sea Frog]

A company would also mean a crew, if I'm right.
That would make sense.

[L.W. Baxter]

Would a companionway be a small corridor running parallel to a larger one?

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
A wharf is decking built upon timber piles; a pier is a pile of rocks with a dressed stone surface. Both extend from the shore to deeper water. Leastwise, that's how I think of it. Either way, one docks at it! ;) Actually, a wharf runs parallel to the shore, whilst a pier or a dock runs perpindicular to the shore.

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by Nicholas Carey:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Meerkat:
A wharf is decking built upon timber piles; a pier is a pile of rocks with a dressed stone surface. Both extend from the shore to deeper water. Leastwise, that's how I think of it. Either way, one docks at it! ;) Actually, a wharf runs parallel to the shore, whilst a pier or a dock runs perpindicular to the shore.</font>[/QUOTE]Perhaps you're using a different dictionary.

[Tom Galyen]

It all goes back to the copy writer/clerk who changed "ded" reckoning (abbreviation for "deduced") to "dead" reckoning because being a landlubber and unknown in seamans language thought the captain had left out a letter. His decendants are still in the business of screwing up a perfectly useful language to fit what they think is right.

Now you know the rest of the story from your "Old Uncle Tom" that vast encyclopedia of perfectly useless information.

Tom G.

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by Meerkat:
Perhaps you're using a different dictionary.True enough. I use a dictionary dating from a time when people cared about fine gradations in meaning.

I use the ARTFL (http://humanities.uchicago.edu/ARTFL/ARTFL.html) project of the University of Chicago's Webster's 1913 Revised Unabridged Dictionary (http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/webster.form.html). I've listed its definitions for dock, pier, quay and wharf below.

As you can see from the definitions below, every time "wharf" is used in the sense of a projection, it is explicitly qualified as such (a "projecting wharf"). The default definition is clearly that of a structure along the the shore rather than projecting from it. The current edition of Merriam-Webster agrees as well: 1. a structure built along or at an angle from the shore of navigable waters so that ships may lie alongside to receive and discharge cargo and passengers.
2. (obsolete) the bank of a river or the shore of the sea.Pier (http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=%5Epier%24&FLOAT=ON)

1. (Arch.) (a) Any detached mass of masonry, whether insulated or supporting one side of an arch or lintel, as of a bridge; the piece of wall between two openings. (b) Any additional or auxiliary mass of masonry used to stiffen a wall. See Buttress.

2. A projecting (emphasis mine) wharf or landing place.

Wharf (http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=%5Ewharf%24&FLOAT=ON)

1. A structure or platform of timber, masonry, iron, earth, or other material, built on the shore (emphasis mine) of a harbor, river, canal, or the like, and usually extending from the shore to deep water, so that vessels may lie close alongside to receive and discharge cargo, passengers, etc.; a quay; a pier. Commerce pushes its wharves into the sea. Bancroft.
Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and burgher, lord and dame. Tennyson.(n.b., The plural of this word is generally written wharves in the United States, and wharfs in England; but many recent English writers use wharves.)

2. The bank of a river, or the shore of the sea. The fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf. Shak.Wharf boat, a kind of boat moored at the bank of a river, and used for a wharf, in places where the height of the water is so variable that a fixed wharf would be useless.

Quay (http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=%5Equay%24&FLOAT=ON)

A mole, bank, or wharf, formed toward the sea, or at the side of a harbor, river, or other navigable water, for convenience in loading and unloading vessels. [Written also key.]

Dock

Curiously, "dock" does not mean what one usually thinks it means. A dock is a waterway, or an enclosure for vessels (hence, its corollary sense of the pen in which the prisoner stands during his trial):

Dock (http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WORD=%5Edock%24&FLOAT=ON)

1. An artificial basin or an inclosure in connection with a harbor or river&mdash;used for the reception of vessels, and provided with gates for keeping in or shutting out the tide.

2. The slip or waterway extending between two piers or projecting wharves, for the reception of ships&mdash;sometimes including the piers themselves; as, to be down on the dock.

3. The place in court where a criminal or accused person stands.

Balance dock, a kind of floating dock which is kept level by pumping water out of, or letting it into, the compartments of side chambers.&mdash;Dry dock, a dock from which the water may be shut or pumped out, especially, one in the form of a chamber having walls and floor, often of masonry and communicating with deep water, but having appliances for excluding it;&mdash;used in constructing or repairing ships. The name includes structures used for the examination, repairing, or building of vessels, as graving docks, floating docks, hydraulic docks, etc.&mdash;Floating dock, a dock which is made to become buoyant, and, by floating, to lift a vessel out of water.&mdash;Graving dock, a dock for holding a ship for graving or cleaning the bottom, etc.&mdash;Hydraulic dock, a dock in which a vessel is raised clear of the water by hydraulic presses.Naval dock, a dock connected with which are naval stores, materials, and all conveniences for the construction and repair of ships.Sectional dock, a form of floating dock made in separate sections or caissons.&mdash;Slip dock, a dock having a sloping floor that extends from deep water to above high-water mark, and upon which is a railway on which runs a cradle carrying the ship.&mdash;Wet dock, a dock where the water is shut in, and kept at a given level, to facilitate the loading and unloading of ships;&mdash;also sometimes used as a place of safety; a basin.

&mdash;

[Alan D. Hyde]

Probably one of Felix Reisenberg's books gives a good definition, and I would suspect it agrees with that in the post directly above...

Alan

[ 11-14-2003, 10:23 AM: Message edited by: Alan D. Hyde ]

[rbgarr]

Jetty=breakwater=groin in some places!

[Frank E. Price]

Does anyone suppose people a century or two ago were any more consistent or precise in their use of nautical lingo than we are today?

Maybe they were, simply because so many more lubbers have boats today. On the other hand, I don't suppose a salt farmer had any need to learn the jargon to sail his farm skiff. Or a fisherman either. There is far more consistency among the fishermen I know in their use of fishing gear terms than in terms relating solely to the boat.

Frank

[Frank E. Price]

Hey, #178 is nice! Have only glanced through it as yet, but have already spotted a couple of rail caps and nary a caprail. Do you suppose someone's paying attention?

Frank

[John B]

Lee rail viking .LOL.

same as driving the porcelain truck or calling for Ruth on the big white telephone eh.

[ 05-02-2004, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: John B ]

[NormMessinger]

A picture is worth a thousand definitions.

[MarkC]

Wharfs are where people go on strike- no body strikes on a pier unless it is a fish.

But when is a pier a jetty?

And when is a dock a pen?

Ah ha!

[Frank E. Price]

#179: Just when I thought it was safe to turn the page again -- leech instead of luff! And it's repeated, so evidently there's been some downsizing of the editorial staff since #178. Go figger.

Mark, isn't a pier a jetty when it's made of a pile of rocks? And a pen? I reckon that'd have to be an enclosed dock, no? Given that the dock is the space alongside the wharf occupied by a vessel. In Nicholas' Dock no. 1, that's a graving dock in my experience.

Frank

[Frank E. Price]

Looks like it's confirmed: there is no editorial intent to preserve appropriate, or even logical, maritime nomenclature. #184 has at least two "caprails," and one is by our Editor Himself. For a while there I thought perhaps the editorial staff had been reading Chapelle or Billy or John Atkin or a Herreshoff. Guess not.

Frank

P.S. I can understand "caprail" coming from the owner of a plastic boat with its only exposed wood being its varnished railcap, but the editors of WoodenBoat magazine? We are all Doomed!

[ 05-07-2005, 03:56 PM: Message edited by: Frank E. Price ]

[N. Scheuer]

Love that "Lee Rail Viking"!

Having one worked in the Plumbing Business, with emphasis on waste piping and toilet flushing equipment, where for some reason we often drank too much, we always liked "Kneeling at the Throne".

Moby Nick

[Hughman]

The current imprecision of the term "ship", to mean any large thing that floats, as opposed to a three masted square rigged vessel is excuseable, I suppose, as such a rig hasn't been seen in this age...but "pinnace"?"

Even students of the arcane can't tell us exactly what such a thing is, or was. Yet the replica people use it with abandon. Like the sound of it, I guess.

[John B]

You mean like 'Pilot Cutter'. ;)

what about this one . "gaff boom" for gaff. I hate that. A gaff is a gaff is a gaff.once written, it becomes a factoid.