True or False??

[Lady_Guenivere]

My grandad was a submariner, and evidently he taught my mom some choice words and phrases. The one she often used was "rotten fucking god-damn piece of shit bastard son of a bitch!"


I have no idea what that means in nautical terms but I'm sure the story behind has to be charming.

That's funny!

 

[fifty5]

By and large

Meaning: On the whole; generally speaking; all things considered.

Origin
Many phrases are wrongly ascribed a nautical origin just because they sound like mariner's lingo. This one really is and, like many such nautical phrases, it originated in the days of sail.

To get a sense of the original meaning of the phrase we need to understand the nautical terms 'by' and 'large'. 'Large' is easier, so we'll start there.

To those who have actually sailed a sailing boat, 'by' is easiest: instead of trying to sail by a compass course (where that isn't feasible) one sails "by' the wind: as close upwind as will keep the sails full and drawing well.

With a fore and aft rigged boat/ship, that is about 45 degrees to the wind.

Your description of 'large' seems to extend that to square-rigged sails, presumably braced as diagonally as possible.

That implies to me that 'by' applies to fore and aft only, but 'by and large' extends the same idea to include square rig as well: "as close to the wind as one can sail to keep square as well as fore-and-aft sails drawing" - the best approximation to the course actually wanted as is effective and efficient.

NB Most square riggers also had a number of fore and aft sails, like staysails, jibs and spankers.

 

[Techomancer]

Then there's the technical description of keelhauling.

A stout rope is run under the boat and then tied to itself to make a loop around the "waist" of the ship. The condemned is then tied by the wrists to the rope and the crew starts pulling. Once under the ship the condemned would have been dragged across rough wood, nails, copper plates, barnacles and coral chunks embedded in the ship. If you survived, your chest, face, back and arms were shreddded.

The crew could also face the lash if they pulled too quickly.

The size of the ship also made a difference. Getting keelhauled on a Galleon take much longer that a sloop.