In the previous edition of this column, I shared with you a number of pirate
riddles and jokes, such as “Where does a pirate go to buy his hook? The second-hand store” and
Why are pirate kids so annoying on car trips? They keep asking, “Aaaar we there yet?”

As a follow-up, I share, in today’s column and the one that will follow a flotilla of
seaworthy words and phrases, a good fit for our seafaring town.
In “Sea Fever” (1902), the poet John Masefield sang:

I must go down to the seas again,
To the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship
And a star to steer her by.

Relatively few of us go down to the seas anymore, and even fewer of us get to steer a tall
ship. Having lost our intimacy with the sea and with sailing, we no longer taste the salty flavor of
the metaphors that ebb and flow through our language.

Consider our use of the word ship. We continue to ship goods, even when that shipping is
done by truck, train, or plane. We compliment someone on “running a tight ship,” even when that
“ship” is an office or a classroom. And many things besides ships can be shipshape or sinking
ships.

The lapping of the sea at our language is not a difficult concept to fathom. When we try
to fathom an idea, we are making poetic use of an old word that originally meant “the span
between two outstretched arms.” Then the word came to mean “a unit of six feet used for
measuring the depth of water.” By poetic extension the verb to fathom now means “to get to the
bottom of” something, and that something doesn’t have to be the ocean.

To help you learn the ropes and get your bearings with seafaring metaphors, take a turn at
the helm. The coast is clear for you to sound out the lay of the land by taking a different tack and
playing a landmark game. Don’t go overboard by barging ahead, come hell or high water. If you
feel all washed up, on the rocks, in over your head, and sinking fast in a wave of confusion, try to
stay on an even keel. As your friendly anchorman, I won’t rock the boat by lowering the boom on
you.

Now that you get my drift, consider how the following idioms of sailing and the sea
sprinkle salt on our tongues: shape up or ship out, to take the wind out of his sails, the tide turns,
a sea of faces, down the hatch, hit the deck, to steer clear of, don’t rock the boat, to harbor a
grudge, and to give a wide berth to.

As a barefoot boy sitting on the banks of the Mississippi River, Samuel Clemens watched
stern-wheeler boats churning the muddy waters, and he heard the leadsmen sounding the depth
of the river by calling out to the captains, “By the deep six . . . by the mark five . . . by the deep
four . . . by the mark three.” When the river bottom was only two fathoms, or twelve feet down,
he would hear the lusty cry “by the mark twain.” After he left the Mississippi, and after various
careers as a riverboat pilot, prospector, and printer, Sam Clemens, now a journalist, contributed
an article to the Nevada Territorial Enterprise on February 3, 1863, and signed it with a new
name — Mark Twain

To dock this nautical disquisition, I share with you one of my favorite Irish toasts:

There are good ships,
And there are wood ships,
The ships that sail the sea,
But the best ships are friendships.
May they always be.

***

On Saturday, October 10, 1-4 pm I’ll be at my book table at a Howl-O-Ween Pet
Adoption Fair on the patio of Rancho Bernardo Oasis, 17170 Bernardo Center Drive. The event
is sponsored by Frosty Faces, dedicated to rescuing senior animals otherwise facing euthanasia in
the shelter system. Admission is free.
A dog’s life may mean little in the grand scheme of the universe, but it sure means a lot to
the dog.